What Is Config?

Description

Config allows you to search for, record, and continuously evaluate your resource configurations to make sure that your resources are in expected status.

To get full functionality of Config, you need to enable the resource recorder. If the resource recorder is disabled, you may fail to update your resource data, create and use rules, or to aggregate resource data. For details about how to enable and configure the resource recorder, see Configuring the Resource Recorder.

Architecture

Config provides you with resource information, such as resource inventory, details, relationships, and change records. It stores your resource data every 24 hours and notifications of your resource changes every 6 hours. It will also notify you when a change is made to your resources. In addition, it enables you to use Config rules to evaluate your resources.

• Viewing resource details: You can set multiple search options to query your resources on Config console.
• Viewing resource relationships: You can view relationships between resources on Config console.
• Viewing resource change records: You can enable and configure the resource recorder to continuously monitor resource changes.
• Sending notifications: Config will notify you when a change is made to your resources after you have enabled the resource recorder and configured a Simple Message Notification (SMN) topic.
• Storing resource change notifications: Config will store your resource change notifications every 6 hours after you have enabled the resource recorder and configured an SMN topic and an Object Storage Bucket (OBS) bucket.
• Storing resource snapshots: Config will store your resource snapshots into the specified OBS bucket every 24 hours after you have enabled the resource recorder and configured an OBS bucket.
• Evaluating resource compliance: Config evaluates your resources using rules to check whether they are compliant or not.
• Advanced query: Allows you to customize queries with ResourceQL to search for your resources.
• Resource aggregator: A resource aggregator enables you to aggregate resource configurations and compliance data from multiple accounts or an organization, so that you can centrally view or search for resource data.
• Conformance package: A conformance package is a collection of rules. You can use conformance packages to centrally create and manage rules, and query compliance data.

Access Methods

You can use either of the following methods to access Config.

• Management Console

  The console is a web-based UI, where you can perform operations easily. Log in to the management console, click in the upper left corner, and choose Management & Governance > Config.

• Application Programming Interfaces (APIs)

  To integrate Config into a third-party system for secondary development, you need to access the service by calling APIs. For details, see Config API Reference.