Recording Resources in the AWS Config Console - AWS Config
Considerations When Recording Resources

Recording Resources in the AWS Config Console

You can use the AWS Config console to select the types of resources that AWS Config records.

To select resources

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the AWS Config console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/config/.

  2. Choose Settings in the left navigation pane, and then choose Edit. For the list of supported Regions, see AWS Config endpoints and quotas in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

  3. In the Recording method section, choose a recording strategy. You can specify the AWS resources that you want AWS Config to record.

    All resource types with customizable overrides

    Set up AWS Config to record configuration changes for all current and future supported resource types in this Region. You can override the recording frequency for specific resource types or exclude specific resource types from recording. For more information, see Supported Resource Types.

    • Default settings

      Configure the default recording frequency for all current and future supported resource types. For more information see, Recording Frequency.

      • Continuous recording – AWS Config will record configuration changes continuously whenever a change occurs.

      • Daily recording – You will receive a configuration item (CI) representing the most recent state of your resources over the last 24-hour period, only if it’s different from the previous CI recorded.

      Note

      AWS Firewall Manager depends on continuous recording to monitor your resources. If you are using Firewall Manager, it is recommended that you set the recording frequency to Continuous.

    • Override settings

      Override the recording frequency for specific resource types, or exclude specific resource types from recording. If you change the recording frequency for a resource type or stop recording a resource type, the configuration items that were already recorded will remain unchanged.

    Specific resource types

    Set up AWS Config to record configuration changes for only the resource types that you specify.

    • Specific resource types

      Choose a resource type to record and its frequency. For more information see, Recording Frequency.

      • Continuous recording – AWS Config will record configuration changes continuously whenever a change occurs.

      • Daily recording – You will receive a configuration item (CI) representing the most recent state of your resources over the last 24-hour period, only if it’s different from the previous CI recorded.

      Note

      AWS Firewall Manager depends on continuous recording to monitor your resources. If you are using Firewall Manager, it is recommended that you set the recording frequency to Continuous.

      If you change the recording frequency for a resource type or stop recording a resource type, the configuration items that were already recorded will remain unchanged.

  4. Choose Save to save your changes.

Considerations When Recording Resources

High Number of AWS Config Evaluations

You may notice increased activity in your account during your initial month recording with AWS Config when compared to subsequent months. During the initial bootstrapping process, AWS Config runs evaluations on all the resources in your account that you have selected for AWS Config to record.

If you are running ephemeral workloads, you may see increased activity from AWS Config as it records configuration changes associated with creating and deleting these temporary resources. An ephemeral workload is a temporary use of computing resources that are loaded and run when needed. Examples include Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Spot Instances, Amazon EMR jobs, and AWS Auto Scaling. . If you want to avoid the increased activity from running ephemeral workloads, you can set up the configuration recorder to exclude these resource types from being recorded, or run these types of workloads in a separate account with AWS Config turned off to avoid increased configuration recording and rule evaluations.

Considerations: All resource types with customizable overrides

Globally recorded resource types | Aurora global clusters are initially included in recording

The AWS::RDS::GlobalCluster resource type will be recorded in all supported AWS Config Regions where the configuration recorder is enabled.

If you do not want to record AWS::RDS::GlobalCluster in all enabled Regions, choose "AWS RDS GlobalCluster", and choose the override "Exclude from recording".

Global resource types | IAM resource types are initially excluded from recording

The global IAM resource types are initially excluded from recording to help you reduce costs. This bundle includes IAM users, groups, roles, and customer managed policies. Choose Remove to remove the override and include these resources in your recording.

The exception is for US East (N. Virginia). The global IAM resource types are initially included in the US East (N. Virginia) Region as this Region functions as the home Region for the global IAM resource types.

Additionally, the global IAM resource types (AWS::IAM::User, AWS::IAM::Group, AWS::IAM::Role, and AWS::IAM::Policy) cannot be recorded in Regions supported by AWS Config after February 2022. For a list of those Regions, see Recording AWS Resources | Global Resources.

Limits

You can add up to 100 frequency overrides and 600 exclusion overrides.

Daily recording is not supported for the following resource types:

  • AWS::Config::ResourceCompliance

  • AWS::Config::ConformancePackCompliance

  • AWS::Config::ConfigurationRecorder

Considerations: Specific resource types

Region Availability

Before specifying a resource type for AWS Config to track, check Resource Coverage by Region Availability to see if the resource type is supported in the AWS Region where you set up AWS Config. If a resource type is supported by AWS Config in at least one Region, you can enable the recording of that resource type in all Regions supported by AWS Config, even if the specified resource type is not supported in the AWS Region where you set up AWS Config.

Limits

No limits if all resource types have the same frequency. You can add up to 100 resource types with Daily frequency if at least one resource type is set to Continuous.

The Daily frequency is not supported for the following resource types:

  • AWS::Config::ResourceCompliance

  • AWS::Config::ConformancePackCompliance

  • AWS::Config::ConfigurationRecorder