AWS
Best Practices
Cloud Infrastructure
Why and When Do You Need a Cloud Asset Inventory?
TL;DR
You need a cloud asset inventory when you can't answer basic questions about your AWS resources—what exists, where it is, who owns it, and what it costs. Organizations need inventories to solve three critical challenges: security governance (you can't secure what you can't see), cost optimization (you can't optimize spending on resources you don't know exist), and operational excellence (you can't adapt to change without understanding your current state). When resource counts exceed manual tracking, when multi-account complexity increases, or when compliance requirements demand visibility—that's when you need a cloud asset inventory.
You probably have 847 different AWS resources running across six accounts right now. Or maybe it's 1,200 resources across nine accounts.
The scary part? You probably can't tell me if those numbers are right or wrong.
This is exactly when you need a cloud asset inventory.
If you've been building cloud infrastructure in AWS for any amount of time—spinning up EC2 instances, creating S3 buckets, deploying RDS databases, launching prototype projects—you've likely lost track of at least a few resources along the way.
That engineer who spun up a test environment six months ago and forgot to tear it down? The RDS database from that abandoned prototype still running in us-west-2? The S3 buckets created for one-time data migrations? They're all still there, consuming resources and costing money.
In this foundational video, AWS Partner Solutions Architect Keegan Marazzi and CloudQuery Developer Advocate Joe Karlsson break down why you need a cloud asset inventory, when organizations should implement one, and what makes an effective inventory system.
What Is a Cloud Asset? #
Formal definition: Cloud infrastructure resources including compute, storage, networking, security, and everything from networking configurations to VPC setups.
Practical definition: Every component and configuration that keeps your application running—whether it's an engineer's test account or a production environment serving customers.
Cloud assets include:
- Compute resources: EC2 instances, Lambda functions, ECS containers, Fargate tasks
- Storage resources: S3 buckets, EBS volumes, EFS file systems, RDS databases
- Networking resources: VPCs, security groups, network ACLs, load balancers, CloudFront distributions
- Security resources: IAM roles, policies, KMS keys, certificates, secrets
- Configuration and metadata: Tags, launch times, ownership information, relationships between resources
Think of cloud assets as everything that shows up in your AWS bill—and all the configuration that determines how those resources behave, connect, and cost.
What Is a Cloud Asset Inventory? #
A cloud asset inventory is a centralized database of all your cloud assets, bringing together resources from across accounts, regions, and services into one queryable system.
How Cloud Asset Inventories Are Built #
Cloud asset inventories systematically collect data from AWS APIs and transform it into accessible formats:
- Call AWS APIs for each service (EC2's
DescribeInstances, S3'sListBuckets, etc.) - Extract configuration data for all resources, including metadata, tags, and settings
- Map relationships between resources (which security groups protect which instances, which IAM roles can access which resources)
- Store in queryable formats (databases, data warehouses, data lakes) that enable analysis
AWS provides extensive APIs out of the box:
- EC2's
DescribeInstancesfor compute resources - S3's
ListBucketsfor storage - IAM's
ListRolesfor security permissions - 240+ services with comprehensive API coverage
These APIs expose detailed configuration data about your entire AWS cloud. However, calling these APIs yourself is confounding and complex—each service uses different authentication methods, pagination strategies, rate limits, and data formats. Your inventory systematically calls these endpoints, handles all the complexity, extracts resource details, and makes everything queryable in one place.
Why You Need a Cloud Asset Inventory #
After working with companies struggling to scale cloud infrastructure, three strategic reasons consistently emerge for why you need a cloud asset inventory—each aligned with the AWS Well-Architected Framework.
1. Why You Need an Inventory: Security Governance #
You need a cloud asset inventory because you can't secure what you can't see.
Without comprehensive visibility into your resources, you can't effectively implement security controls or detect misconfigurations.
Why this matters:
- Can't identify public S3 buckets without knowing all S3 buckets exist
- Can't detect overly permissive security groups without visibility into all security groups
- Can't find unencrypted databases without comprehensive database inventory
- Can't remediate vulnerabilities affecting specific resource types without knowing where they exist
Security use cases inventories enable:
- Identify all publicly accessible resources
- Find unencrypted data stores
- Detect IAM permission sprawl
- Map network connectivity and exposure
- Audit compliance with security policies
- Respond to vulnerability disclosures by identifying affected resources in minutes, not days
Without clear visibility into all your assets, security becomes reactive guesswork instead of proactive governance.
2. Why You Need an Inventory: Cost Optimization #
You need a cloud asset inventory because you can't optimize spending on resources you don't know exist.
Visibility into resource utilization identifies idle resources, underutilized capacity, and zombie infrastructure wasting budget.
Why this matters:
- Unattached EBS volumes costing storage fees
- Idle RDS instances running 24/7 for occasional use
- Unassociated Elastic IPs (charged when not attached)
- Over-provisioned EC2 instances running at 5% CPU
- Forgotten test environments left running
- Reserved capacity purchased but unused
Cost optimization use cases:
- Identify unused resources to decommission
- Right-size over-provisioned infrastructure
- Find zombie resources from abandoned projects
- Track cost allocation by team, project, or environment through tag analysis
- Forecast spending based on current resource utilization
By having a complete view of all your assets, you can optimize spending you didn't even know existed.
3. Why You Need an Inventory: Operational Excellence #
You need a cloud asset inventory because you can't adapt to change without understanding your current state.
Maintaining accurate inventory is key to incident response, capacity planning, and future-proofing infrastructure.
Why this matters:
- Incident response: When something breaks at 2 a.m., know what changed and when
- Capacity planning: Understand current resource usage to forecast future needs
- Dependency mapping: Identify which resources depend on others for safe decommissioning
- Change management: Track infrastructure evolution over time
- Disaster recovery: Document complete infrastructure state for business continuity planning
- Compliance auditing: Demonstrate governance and policy adherence
Without good understanding of assets in your environment, adapting to change means stumbling in the dark instead of executing with confidence.
When Do You Need a Cloud Asset Inventory? #
Knowing why you need an inventory is one thing. Understanding when to implement one is equally important. Here are the clear signals that indicate it's time to invest in cloud asset inventory:
When Resource Counts Exceed Manual Tracking #
You need a cloud asset inventory when: You can't accurately answer "how many resources do we have?" without checking multiple AWS accounts and regions.
The trigger: Once you exceed 100-200 resources or operate across multiple AWS accounts, manual tracking becomes impossible. Spreadsheets become outdated the moment you create them.
When Multi-Account Complexity Increases #
You need a cloud asset inventory when: Your organization adopts multi-account AWS architectures (separate accounts for production, staging, development, different teams, or different business units).
The trigger: Managing 2-3 accounts manually is feasible. Beyond that, you lose visibility into what exists where, who owns what, and how accounts connect.
When Security or Compliance Requirements Demand Visibility #
You need a cloud asset inventory when: You face security audits, compliance frameworks (SOC2, PCI, HIPAA, ISO 27001), or need to demonstrate security controls to customers or auditors.
The trigger: The first time an auditor asks "show me all databases with encryption enabled" and you can't answer in seconds, you need an inventory.
When Cost Optimization Becomes a Priority #
You need a cloud asset inventory when: AWS bills grow unexpectedly, finance teams demand cost allocation by team or project, or leadership asks where cloud spending goes.
The trigger: If you're spending more than $10,000/month on AWS and can't attribute costs to specific owners, teams, or projects, you need visibility into resource ownership and utilization.
When Incident Response Takes Too Long #
You need a cloud asset inventory when: It takes hours or days to identify what resources are affected by security vulnerabilities, outages, or infrastructure changes.
The trigger: When your team spends more time searching for affected resources than actually fixing problems, you need centralized visibility.
When Shadow IT Becomes a Problem #
You need a cloud asset inventory when: Engineers create resources without central IT knowledge, leading to security risks, compliance gaps, and uncontrolled spending.
The trigger: Discovering critical resources during incidents that no one on the team knew existed means you need automated discovery and inventory.
Bottom line: If you recognize any of these scenarios, you need a cloud asset inventory now—before visibility problems become security incidents, compliance failures, or cost overruns.
The Four Core Pillars of Effective Cloud Asset Inventories #
After analyzing hundreds of cloud environments—from small startups to massive enterprises—four capabilities consistently separate effective cloud asset inventories from failed implementations.
Pillar 1: Discovery and Collection #
This is your data ingestion engine. Everything falls apart without good data discovery.
What discovery and collection requires:
- API configurations that send data from all AWS services to your inventory
- Coverage across all services (not just EC2 and S3—all 240+ AWS services)
- Multi-account and multi-region support to capture your entire footprint
- Automated discovery of new services as AWS releases them
- Comprehensive metadata extraction including tags, configurations, and relationships
Quality discovery means no assets get left behind. If you're only tracking 60% of your infrastructure, the other 40% is where your security vulnerabilities, cost waste, and operational risks hide.
Pillar 2: Relationship Mapping #
This is where it gets interesting. Relationships between resources reveal dependencies, security boundaries, and operational patterns.
What relationship mapping captures:
- Security groups mapped to EC2 instances they protect
- VPC connectivity through transit gateways and peering connections
- IAM permission boundaries showing what roles can access which resources
- Code-to-infrastructure relationships correlating GitHub/GitLab repositories with deployed resources
- Network topology showing which resources communicate with each other
Why this matters: Your cloud asset inventory becomes the central nervous system connecting cloud resources to your entire operational context.
When you understand not just what exists but how everything connects, you can:
- Safely decommission resources without breaking dependencies
- Trace security exposure paths
- Understand blast radius for potential failures
- Map compliance boundaries
Pillar 3: Change Tracking #
When something breaks at 2 a.m., you need to know what changed and when.
What change tracking provides:
- Audit trail of when changes were made
- Attribution showing who made changes
- Historical state for comparison and rollback planning
- Pattern identification in utilization and access trends
- Integration with logging (CloudWatch, CloudTrail) for complete operational context
Why this matters: Without change tracking, troubleshooting becomes archaeological guesswork. With it, you can correlate infrastructure changes with application issues, security events, and performance degradation.
Pillar 4: Querying and Analysis #
Data without queryability is useless.
You could spend months building comprehensive inventories that sync every AWS resource, capture all metadata, and map every relationship. But if teams can't ask questions and get answers fast, the entire investment is wasted.
Example scenario: Your security team discovers a vulnerability affecting a specific Lambda runtime. If you can't quickly identify all affected functions across all accounts, your inventory has failed.
What queryability requires:
- Ad-hoc query capabilities for exploration and investigation
- Standardized query languages (SQL) that teams already know
- API access for programmatic integration and automation
- Pre-built queries for common questions (show me all untagged resources, find all public S3 buckets)
- Integration with BI tools for visualization and reporting
Critical questions your inventory should answer in seconds:
- Show me all untagged resources in production accounts
- Find all databases without encryption at rest
- List EC2 instances with public IPs
- Identify resources owned by specific teams
- Calculate cost by environment (production vs staging vs development)
If you can't ask common questions like these and get instant answers, your inventory tool is monitoring infrastructure—not enabling operational intelligence.
Putting It All Together: Why and When You Need an Inventory #
Why you need a cloud asset inventory:
- Security governance - You can't secure what you can't see
- Cost optimization - You can't optimize spending on resources you don't know exist
- Operational excellence - You can't adapt to change without understanding your current state
When you need a cloud asset inventory:
- When resource counts exceed manual tracking (100+ resources)
- When multi-account complexity increases (3+ AWS accounts)
- When security or compliance requirements demand visibility
- When cost optimization becomes a priority (spending $10K+/month)
- When incident response takes too long to identify affected resources
- When shadow IT becomes a problem
Four core pillars determine whether your inventory succeeds or fails:
- Discovery and collection - See everything
- Relationship mapping - Understand how everything connects
- Change tracking - Know what changed and when
- Querying and analysis - Get answers to critical questions in seconds
Cloud asset inventories are foundational to everything else you need to do in the cloud. Without comprehensive visibility, you're managing infrastructure blindly—reacting to incidents instead of preventing them, wasting money on resources you don't know exist, and failing compliance requirements you can't track.
The sooner you implement inventory, the sooner you gain control over your cloud environment.
Ready to build your cloud asset inventory? Continue with our guides on design principles for effective inventories, maximizing value from cloud visibility, and getting started with CloudQuery.
Video Transcript #
Keegan: Hi, everyone. I'm Keegan Marazzi, a partner solutions architect at AWS, where my job is to discover, develop and deliver solutions with our partners. Today I'm joined here with Joe Carlson. He's a senior cloud developer advocate at Cloud Query. Say hi, Joe.
Joe: Hi. By the way, that is a lot of clouds all at once. My job is basically just helping people get visibility into their AWS environments.
Keegan: Awesome. So today we're going to be talking about the fundamentals of cloud asset inventories. why you might need one and what makes a great cloud outside inventory. So Joe, take us away with our current scenario.
Joe: Yeah. So Keegan, I know that you have your AWS environment right now and you probably have like 847 different resources running across six different accounts. And I know this for a fact, because I just made all those numbers up. But the scary part is Keegan, you probably couldn't tell me if I'm right or if I'm wrong. And if you've been building out cloud infrastructure in AWS for any amount of time, spinning up brand new EC2 instances, creating new S3 buckets or decommissioning them or someone set up a new prototype project and forgot to spin down the RDS database somewhere along the way there, you may have lost track of a few of the resources that you actually have.
Keegan: So the first question we should be asking is what is a cloud asset? And as you see on the top left, our formal definition is infrastructure that contains resources like compute, storage, networking, security, and everything else from networking configurations to different VPC configurations, it really can depend on every different account and you can think of it as every setup or every part of your infrastructure that keeps your application running. So whether it's an engineer's test account or whether it's a production account that's actually running the application, All of these are components that come together which consist of cloud assets. Joe, with all these different types of assets, how do we organize and structure them in a way that's actually productive for use?
Joe: Yeah. Well, there's lots of different components of what we consider to be an asset. But an inventory is just a collection of all those different resources to centralize databases of all of your cloud assets that you're managing all in one place. And cloud-ass inventories are built by collecting data from AWS APIs and then storing that in some sort of database or some sort of format that can make that accessible to other people or other systems. AWS actually provides a ton of APIs for services out of the box. So EC2s describe instances or S3s list buckets. These APIs expose detailed configuration data about your AWS cloud. Your inventory If you're building one out is made up of systemically, you know, making calls out to these API endpoints, extracting that data for all those resources and all that metadata, doing some mapping on those metadata resources so they're mapped correctly, so the right metadata and the right tags are on the right resource, and then pulling them together in a queryable format. So, yeah, let's talk a little bit about why you may need a cloud asset inventory.
Keegan: Yeah, so I've worked with companies that struggle with scaling their cloud asset inventories. And as a solutions architect, I think there's three main structural reasons that align with the AWS well architected framework that identify why you should make one. So the first is going to be security, right? At AWS, we have a saying called secure by design. And without a comprehensive inventory, you can't effectively implement good security controls or detect misconfigurations. If you don't have a clear view of all of your assets, the second is going to be cost optimization. Similar to the security pillar, visibility into your resource utilization will help you identify when you're not using idling resources or when you're under utilizing other users. other resources. So by having a clear, well rounded view of all your assets, you're able to optimize on costs that you can use better or you don't need at all. And finally is operational excellence. So maintaining an accurate inventory is key to adapting to change and also being future proof, which we'll talk about in a little bit, but being able to change and having a good understanding of the assets in your environment will help you adapt to changes. So This leaves me with a question. Given that we have these structures and we have these benefits of a cloud asset inventory, can you explain a little bit what the capabilities are of a good cloud asset inventory?
Joe: Yeah, I think it can be broken down into four main pillars that every effective cloud asset inventory has. And we know this from analyzing hundreds of different environments ranging from small all the way up to massive. And here's what we think works at scale. There's four key pillars, and we're going to break these down. But the four pillars are discovery and collection, relationship mapping, change tracking, and querying, and analysis. So let's start with the first pillar, Keegan.
Keegan: Awesome. So this is your data ingestion engine. Everything falls apart if you don't have good data discovery. So this comes from making sure that all your API configurations are sending data to your inventory. Making sure that they're organized and that you're able to capture new services if they become available. Just making sure that you have a good track of all the different resources that are there and that no specific assets are left out. As we mentioned before, making sure that all your cloud assets are in your inventory is key to make sure you're able to make the most of it. That's perfect. Well said.
Joe: Pillar two, relationship mapping. And this is where I personally think it gets interesting, but this is where you're mapping different metadata to the resources, right? You want to map your security groups to your EC2, get those relationships, track VPC connectivity paths through transit gateway architectures, and maybe even understand IM permission boundaries. What do they have access in? Do you have a holistic view of that perimeter? You might also need to correlate things like your GitHub or GitLab repositories and code changes with your EC2 instances. What code changes led to your EC2 instances spinning up or terminating prematurely? I don't know, but your cloud config data has that, especially when you can combine that with your code. Your asset inventory at that time can become the central nervous system, connecting your cloud resources to your entire operations.
Keegan: Awesome. Awesome. So that brings us to our third pillar, which is called change tracking. So when something breaks at 2 a.m., you need to know what changed and when it happened. Your asset inventory must be able to contain a clear audit trail of when changes are made within your AWS accounts and who made them. So you're able to remediate when needed. So For the change tracking pillar, you must be able to identify different patterns, whether that's utilization patterns or whether that's accessing patterns. You're always going to need to connect with the different services like Amazon CloudWatch that provides logs for your services in order to maintain relevancy with your AWS accounts and the overall health of your environment. So that takes us to the fourth pillar.
Joe: Queering and analysis. So you may spend months bringing together all these different cloud configuration details and metadata onto one database. But it's like your security team comes to you and they discover a new vulnerability in a Lambda build. And if you can't quickly identify all the affected functions across all of your accounts, then it's useless. If you can't identify zombie architecture that you're paying for but not using, that's a problem, right? The goal should be able to construct a system that is easy to access that data, analyze it, and actually get value from that. Without a way for people to be able to ask common questions like, show me all my untagged resources on my AWS environment, your inventory tool is just going to be there for monitoring and not going to be a part of a core part of operational intelligence for building and scaling out your AWS environment. Great, we got through a lot there. But let's do a quick recap. So remember, cloud assets encompass everything within your entire AWS infrastructure. That includes your compute, storage, network security and everything else like metadata, tag data, etc. And your cloud asset inventory is a complete catalog of all those resources across your environment, all in one place that is easy to query and analyze it. We've also covered four core pillars of What makes a great cloud-ass inventory? Those are discovery and collection, relationship mapping, change tracking, and querying and analysis. It's all about leveraging the knowledge you can get inside of your cloud-ass inventory to build faster, safer, and more scalable apps on AWS. A cloud-ass inventory is foundational to everything else you need to do in the cloud. So in our next video, we're going to be walking through design considerations you should take when you're building a cloud asset inventory for AWS. Some of the architectural decisions, some of the services you may use, and implementation patterns that we find actually work in production.
Keegan: Awesome. Thanks so much, Joe, for coming on and telling us about cloud asset inventory.
FAQ #
Q: Why do I need a cloud asset inventory if I already use AWS Config?
A: AWS Config provides configuration change tracking and compliance rules for AWS resources, but cloud asset inventories offer broader capabilities—multi-cloud support, custom SQL queries, flexible data models, integration with external platforms, and multiple storage destinations. You need an inventory when you require advanced querying, cross-platform visibility, or custom analysis that AWS Config alone can't provide.
Q: When should I implement a cloud asset inventory—early or later?
A: Implement early. The sooner you establish inventory practices, the easier it is to maintain visibility as complexity grows. Organizations that wait until they have hundreds of resources across dozens of accounts face months of cleanup work. Start when you have 50-100 resources or 2-3 accounts—before visibility problems become security incidents or cost overruns.
Q: What's the difference between a cloud asset inventory and a CMDB?
A: CMDBs (Configuration Management Databases) traditionally focus on intended state, change control workflows, and manual configuration tracking. Cloud asset inventories focus on actual running resources, real-time synchronization, and automated discovery. Cloud inventories excel at discovering what's actually deployed (including shadow IT), while CMDBs traditionally track what should be deployed according to change management processes.
Q: Why do I need a cloud asset inventory if I only have one AWS account?
A: You need an inventory even with a single account once resource counts exceed manual tracking (typically 100+ resources). Single-account environments still face security risks, cost waste, and operational challenges that inventories solve. Most organizations that start with one account eventually expand—building inventory practices early prevents visibility problems later.
Q: Can cloud asset inventories track resources outside AWS?
A: Yes. Modern cloud asset inventory platforms support multi-cloud environments (AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle Cloud) plus SaaS platforms (GitHub, GitLab, Datadog, Okta, etc.). This enables unified visibility across your entire technology stack, not just AWS resources.
Q: How often should asset inventory data be updated?
A: Depends on use cases. Security and compliance often require real-time or sub-five-minute updates. Cost optimization can work with daily syncs. Start with hourly updates as a baseline, then adjust based on stakeholder needs and operational requirements.
Q: What teams typically use cloud asset inventories?
A: Security teams (threat detection, compliance), FinOps teams (cost optimization), platform engineering (infrastructure management), compliance teams (audit preparation), application teams (dependency mapping), and executives (governance visibility). Effective inventories serve cross-functional stakeholders, not just one team.
Q: How much does it cost to build a cloud asset inventory?
A: Costs vary dramatically based on approach. Managed services like AWS Config or CloudQuery provide predictable pricing based on resources tracked. Building custom solutions requires significant engineering time—often 1-3 engineers for months, plus ongoing maintenance. Most organizations find managed solutions more cost-effective than dedicating engineering resources to building inventory systems.
Q: Can cloud asset inventories help with compliance (SOC2, PCI, HIPAA)?
A: Absolutely. Inventories provide the foundation for compliance monitoring—identifying resources subject to compliance requirements, tracking configuration against policies, demonstrating controls for audits, and automating evidence collection. Many compliance frameworks require asset inventory as a foundational control.
Q: What's the biggest mistake organizations make with cloud asset inventories?
A: Waiting too long to implement one, then building comprehensive data collection without clear use cases. Organizations either delay until visibility problems become crises, or they sync every possible resource without understanding why they need the data. Start early with specific problems (security compliance, cost waste, operational visibility), solve those well, demonstrate value, then expand scope.
Q: How do cloud asset inventories handle ephemeral infrastructure?
A: Modern inventories sync frequently enough to capture even short-lived resources. Change tracking records when resources are created and terminated, even if they only exist for minutes. This is especially important for auto-scaling infrastructure, serverless functions, and container environments where resources constantly appear and disappear.
