4 ms·

Show HN: Cloudyali.io – Instantly Discover Your Entire AWS Cloud in One Place

3 points by heldsteel7 5y ago

heldsteel7 5y ago
Hi HN, CloudYali is a service to discover AWS Cloud resources across accounts and regions instantly. I have worked in AWS cloud for last 6 years, and many times I had to get an inventory of resources in one place. The tools I found were not adequate, including AWS Config. Two major issues I found that needs to be fixed: 1. Coverage: Many these tools cover a limited set of AWS Resources. e.g. AWS Config covers merely ~103 resources across ~230 AWS services. The coverage is less than 20%. 2. Usability: These tools are either designed at regional or account level. Eg. AWS Config is at regional level, and requires configuration changes to make it work across regions. CloudYali, is designed to work across multiple accounts and regions by default. To begin with we have added support for ~250 resources (and will add more in going time). It is also possible to search for the resources based on Account IDs, regions, resource types. CloudYali, also maintains the resource configuration change history and shows a visual timeline for the changes. Which means, you can compare the configuration changes in UI head-to-head. CloudYali, also maintains the information about the "dead" or inactive resources. These are the resources which no longer active or live. CloudYali is easy to setup and is a readonly service. This post is for the AWS users who might be interested in such service. We are looking for cloud engineers who are willing to try our service and provide feedback. For the early signers we are giving 2 months free with multiple AWS account support. Please note that the product is slated to launch in September'21. The Live working demo will be functional by next week. Thank you!
samk005 5y ago
how do you handle credentials?
- heldsteel7 5y ago
  We don't use AWS Key and instead use cross-account IAM role with read-only permissions. We use CloudFormation to create this IAM role.
zerop 5y ago
Nice. How is it different from application discovery by AWS.. https://aws.amazon.com/application-discovery/ https://aws.amazon.com/application-discovery/
- heldsteel7 5y ago
  The AWS Application discovery is for on-premise server inventory. This information is used as base for on-premise to cloud migration. CloudYali, on other hand does the Cloud resource discovery. The cloud resources include EC2 instances, RDS, Lambda functions, CA Certificates and many more. CloudYali, is comparable to asset inventory functionality of AWS Config. In fact the limitations of AWS Config and similar such tools prompted us to write this service. I had previously collected information of such tools in a blog post: https://heldsteel7.medium.com/aws-cloud-scanners-10024e4bb16f https://heldsteel7.medium.com/aws-cloud-scanners-10024e4bb16... The problem, with AWS Config and other tools is that the coverage is very minimal. In fact AWS Config supports only ~100 cloud resources. Considering that Cloud resource inventory is basis of security (resource misconfigurations), cost (orphaned/unused resources), it is critical that we have a comprehensive inventory. With CloudYali we are attempting to do that. Another issue with existing tools is usability, which we are trying to address by bringing the information from multiple AWS accounts and regions at a single place. At the same time we keep the change history, which could be useful during troubleshooting. Please do let me know if you have further queries/doubts. You may also reach to us: support@cloudyali.io

3 points by heldsteel7 5y ago

Hi HN, CloudYali is a service to discover AWS Cloud resources across accounts and regions instantly. I have worked in AWS cloud for last 6 years, and many times I had to get an inventory of resources in one place. The tools I found were not adequate, including AWS Config. Two major issues I found that needs to be fixed: 1. Coverage: Many these tools cover a limited set of AWS Resources. e.g. AWS Config covers merely ~103 resources across ~230 AWS services. The coverage is less than 20%. 2. Usability: These tools are either designed at regional or account level. Eg. AWS Config is at regional level, and requires configuration changes to make it work across regions. CloudYali, is designed to work across multiple accounts and regions by default. To begin with we have added support for ~250 resources (and will add more in going time). It is also possible to search for the resources based on Account IDs, regions, resource types. CloudYali, also maintains the resource configuration change history and shows a visual timeline for the changes. Which means, you can compare the configuration changes in UI head-to-head. CloudYali, also maintains the information about the "dead" or inactive resources. These are the resources which no longer active or live. CloudYali is easy to setup and is a readonly service. This post is for the AWS users who might be interested in such service. We are looking for cloud engineers who are willing to try our service and provide feedback. For the early signers we are giving 2 months free with multiple AWS account support. Please note that the product is slated to launch in September'21. The Live working demo will be functional by next week. Thank you!

samk005 5y ago

how do you handle credentials?

heldsteel7 5y ago
We don't use AWS Key and instead use cross-account IAM role with read-only permissions. We use CloudFormation to create this IAM role.

zerop 5y ago

Nice. How is it different from application discovery by AWS.. https://aws.amazon.com/application-discovery/ https://aws.amazon.com/application-discovery/

heldsteel7 5y ago
The AWS Application discovery is for on-premise server inventory. This information is used as base for on-premise to cloud migration. CloudYali, on other hand does the Cloud resource discovery. The cloud resources include EC2 instances, RDS, Lambda functions, CA Certificates and many more. CloudYali, is comparable to asset inventory functionality of AWS Config. In fact the limitations of AWS Config and similar such tools prompted us to write this service. I had previously collected information of such tools in a blog post: https://heldsteel7.medium.com/aws-cloud-scanners-10024e4bb16f https://heldsteel7.medium.com/aws-cloud-scanners-10024e4bb16... The problem, with AWS Config and other tools is that the coverage is very minimal. In fact AWS Config supports only ~100 cloud resources. Considering that Cloud resource inventory is basis of security (resource misconfigurations), cost (orphaned/unused resources), it is critical that we have a comprehensive inventory. With CloudYali we are attempting to do that. Another issue with existing tools is usability, which we are trying to address by bringing the information from multiple AWS accounts and regions at a single place. At the same time we keep the change history, which could be useful during troubleshooting. Please do let me know if you have further queries/doubts. You may also reach to us: support@cloudyali.io