Cloud Asset Inventory
Engineering
What is a Cloud Asset Inventory?
I recently caught up with an old friend who works for a low-code application deployment platform.
Like a lot of our audience (and users), he is in a DevOps and Platform Engineering team, and during our talk, he asked several great questions about CloudQuery.
Questions like: “What is a Cloud Asset Inventory, and why would you need one?”
So, let’s answer that today.
What is a Cloud Asset Inventory? #
Fundamentally, a Cloud Asset Inventory is a centralized database of all the cloud assets you’re paying for.
In many ways, they are similar to a Data Center Infrastructure Management (DCIM) database in that they enable you to search through and monitor your assets, create dashboards, and analyze changes to deployments, access, and usage. But instead of tracking physically deployed assets, cabling, and circuits, it tracks cloud-deployed assets, networks, and connections.
A Cloud Asset Inventory is constructed by collecting information from the various Cloud Platform APIs (e.g. AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc.) and storing it in an accessible format, such as a SQL database.
Why do you need a Cloud Asset Inventory? #
A Cloud Asset Inventory enables engineers to identify, preempt, and mitigate a wide array of issues while simultaneously allowing engineers to perform risk and impact assessments quickly. They also enable otherwise complicated and expensive requests, such as identifying the source of a cost spike (in both simple single-cloud/single-account and complicated multi-cloud/multi-account platforms). Here are some examples of the benefits of a Cloud Asset Inventory:
- Comprehensive Visibility: Imagine having a single pane of glass that shows all your cloud assets across various accounts and providers. This holistic view ensures that no asset is overlooked, helping you understand and manage your infrastructure better.
- Risk Management: By identifying vulnerabilities and compliance issues promptly, a Cloud Asset Inventory enables you to mitigate risks proactively, ensuring that your cloud environment remains secure and compliant.
- Cost Optimization: One of the significant advantages is the ability to detect and manage unused or underutilized resources. This leads to substantial cost savings as you can eliminate wasteful expenditures and allocate resources more efficiently.
- Operational Efficiency: Automating asset discovery and inventory management reduces the manual effort required, streamlining operations and allowing your team to focus on more strategic tasks.
- Enhanced Security: Continuous monitoring of asset configurations and changes ensures that your cloud environment adheres to security policies, reducing the risk of breaches.
- Compliance Assurance: Maintaining an up-to-date inventory of all cloud assets simplifies the process of meeting regulatory requirements, providing peace of mind that you’re always compliant.
- Improved Incident Response: When incidents occur, quickly locating and assessing the impact on specific assets can significantly speed up resolution times, minimizing downtime and disruption.
- Strategic Decision-Making: The data-driven insights provided by a Cloud Asset Inventory inform your cloud strategy and infrastructure investments, helping you make better, more informed decisions.
What does a Cloud Asset Inventory actually look like? #
Let’s look at a real-world example. Let's say that you work at a company that uses AWS, and your COO has requested a summary of why there has been a drastic increase in cloud costs over the last month. You have two options: with a Cloud Asset Inventory and without a Cloud Asset Inventory.
Without a Cloud Asset Inventory #
The first time you gather your cloud asset data
- Open AWS Billing and Cost Management: Navigate to Cost Explorer and identify a spike in costs attributed to “EC2-Other.”
- Filter by Region: Adjust report parameters to identify the region, discovering the spike occurred in “us-east-1”.
- Daily Report Granularity: Switch to a daily view to pinpoint the day the change was introduced.
- Check Changelogs/Terraform Plans: Review logs and compare against the active deployment to find errors. (You do keep changelogs, right?)
- Write a Report: Conclude that a typo caused 64 blocks of 256 public IP addresses to be allocated instead of a single block of 64.
With a Cloud Asset Inventory #
COO asks again the following month, why there is a sudden increase in cloud costs.
- Repeat the Process: Open AWS Billing and Cost Management and navigate to Cost Explorer…
Without a Cloud Asset Inventory, identifying and addressing cloud cost issues involves a tedious and repetitive process, requiring extensive querying and data analysis to find the root cause.
With a Cloud Asset Inventory #
Now, let’s see how a Cloud Asset Inventory can streamline the process and provide a more efficient solution.
First time you set up your Cloud Asset Inventory
- Write an Initial SQL Query: Fetch costs over the last two months, grouped by region and month. Identify a spike in costs attributed to “EC2-Other” in “us-east-1”.
- Refine the Query: Narrow the focus to EC2-Other costs in “us-east-1” over the last month, grouping the data by day and hour.
- Identify Specific Resources: Create a query to display EC2 resources (excluding EC2 instances) deployed during the spike. Discover that 64 blocks of 256 public IP addresses were allocated instead of the expected single block of 64.
- Create a Dashboard: Develop a dashboard (e.g., in Grafana) that shows costs grouped by category and resources deployed, with filters for date range, region, and resource type.
- Send a Report: Provide a report identifying the root cause, include a link to the dashboard, and add a README so the COO can access the information directly.
Next time you gather your cloud asset data
When the COO notices an increase in costs and sees a significant rise in allocated Elastic Block Storage in “us-east-2” on the dashboard:
- Investigate the Issue: Identify a typo in the Terraform script causing 22 volumes per instance to be allocated instead of the expected two. Write a report detailing the issue.
If you want to start with the easiest, most customizable way to create a cloud asset inventory for any cloud provider and save the data into any data source on your infrastructure, try CloudQuery today (with no credit card required). Or, you can set up a demo with our team to see how CloudQuery can help you manage your cloud assets more effectively.
Share your horror stories that a Cloud Asset Inventory could have prevented on social media!
Frequently Asked Questions #
Q: What is a Cloud Asset Inventory?
A: A Cloud Asset Inventory is a centralized database that tracks all cloud assets within an organization, providing comprehensive visibility, management, and optimization capabilities.
Q: Why is a Cloud Asset Inventory important?
A: It helps identify, preempt, and mitigate issues, optimize costs, enhance security, ensure compliance, and improve operational efficiency by providing a clear overview of all cloud resources.
Q: How does a Cloud Asset Inventory help in cost management?
A: It allows you to detect and manage unused or underutilized resources, identify cost spikes, and optimize resource allocation, leading to significant cost savings.
Q: What platforms can CloudQuery integrate with?
A: CloudQuery can integrate with various cloud platforms including AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, and more, allowing for comprehensive asset inventory management in a multi-cloud asset inventory across multiple providers.
Q: How does a Cloud Asset Inventory enhance security?
A: By continuously monitoring asset configurations and changes, it ensures adherence to security policies and promptly identifies vulnerabilities and compliance issues.
Q: Can a Cloud Asset Inventory improve incident response times?
A: Yes, it allows for quick location and assessment of incidents’ impact on specific assets, significantly speeding up resolution times and minimizing downtime.
Q: What are the benefits of using a dashboard with a Cloud Asset Inventory?
A: A dashboard provides a visual representation of costs, resources, and changes, making it easier to analyze data, identify issues, and make informed decisions.
Q: How does CloudQuery simplify compliance tracking?
A: CloudQuery automates compliance reporting and ensures all cloud assets meet industry standards and regulations, simplifying continuous monitoring by providing real-time visibility into configuration changes and compliance drift.
Written by Tim Armstrong
Tim is a developer advocate and software engineer with experience in creating content and tutorials for programming, application security, networking and devops.
