How to effectively manage multiple AWS accounts: Best practices and tool

Assume you're a software engineer for a rapidly expanding startup. You've been responsible for managing AWS resources across various AWS accounts for multiple environments - development, staging, and production. You initially believe it won't be too tough to manage several accounts, but as you begin exploring the specifics of managing multiple accounts, you rapidly discover it's a difficult undertaking with this blog post.

The following are some best practices for managing multiple AWS accounts:

1. Use AWS Organizations

AWS Organizations is a free service that allows you to combine multiple AWS accounts into a single organization, making it easier to manage and secure your resources. You can create and handle AWS accounts, and then use AWS Organizations to apply policies to those accounts.

1. Set up cross-account access

You can access resources in one account from another via cross-account access. This can be handy for managing resources shared by several accounts, such as Amazon S3 buckets or Amazon EC2 instances. AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles can be used to enable cross-account access.

1. Use AWS Config

AWS Config is a service that allows you to inspect, audit, and review the configuration of your Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources. AWS Config can be used to monitor and report on resource changes across various AWS accounts.

1. Use AWS CloudFormation

AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows you to use code to create and manage AWS resources. AWS CloudFormation templates may be used to build and manage resources across many AWS accounts, making infrastructure as code management easier.

1. Use AWS Security Hub

AWS Security Hub is a security service that allows you to view and manage your security alerts and compliance status across different AWS accounts from one place. AWS Security Hub allows you to automate compliance checks and view compliance outcomes across various accounts.

1. Use AWS Trusted Advisor

The AWS Trusted Advisor service provides best-practice advice to assist you in optimizing your AWS resources. AWS Trusted Advisor will help you find places where you can save money, enhance performance, and strengthen security across various AWS accounts.

1. Implement AWS Resource Groups

AWS Resource Groups enable you to organize related resources across different accounts and regions for easier management and monitoring. Resource Groups allow you to establish a single dashboard for a specified group of resources, making it easier to discover and troubleshoot problems.

Conclusion

To summarize, maintaining several AWS accounts can be a difficult task, but with the correct strategies and tools, it can be greatly simplified. You may effectively manage your resources, monitor your compliance and security status, and optimize your expenses and performance by using services such as AWS Organizations, cross-account access, AWS Config, AWS CloudFormation, AWS Security Hub, AWS Trusted Advisor, and AWS Resource Groups.