AWS Instance ID

[ppyrzynski]

Hello, 
Does agent installed on an AWS instance collects the instance's ID?

Thanks, 
Paweł

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

Yes, the instance ID and other cloud service provider metadata appears in an NDI file similar to the following:

<Hardware Class="MGS_CloudMetadata" Name="Amazon Web Services" Evidence="metadata">
    <Property Name="instance-id" Value="i-08a70ef00e6c7d249" Evidence="/latest/meta-data/instance-id"/>
    <Property Name="document" Value="[encoded data]" Evidence="/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document"/>
</Hardware>

[ChrisG]

Yes. The instance ID details are gathered and used to match the inventory details with instance details gathered using the AWS connector so you can see the relationship between both sets of data on the Cloud Service Provider Inventory page.

[ppyrzynski]

So am I getting you right @ChrisG ? So I should see it in the ndi file?

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

Yes, the instance ID and other cloud service provider metadata appears in an NDI file similar to the following:

<Hardware Class="MGS_CloudMetadata" Name="Amazon Web Services" Evidence="metadata">
    <Property Name="instance-id" Value="i-08a70ef00e6c7d249" Evidence="/latest/meta-data/instance-id"/>
    <Property Name="document" Value="[encoded data]" Evidence="/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document"/>
</Hardware>

[ppyrzynski]

Thanks @ChrisG!. 
So now I just have to figure out why I am not seeing those lines in the ndi file from a test server where we installed the 2023 R1 agent. Any ideas what to look for?

[ChrisG · Accepted solution]

You could check in the tracker.log file to see whether it shows any kind of error when connecting to the AWS Instance Metadata Service (IMDS), which is where the instance details are gathered from.

One thing to consider is that you will need to use a newer agent if that your AWS environment has IMDSv1 disabled and only IMDSv2 is available (see https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/configuring-instance-metadata-service.html). Support for IMDSv2 is available in agent releases 20.3.1 (2023 R1.2) and later.

[longdinh]

Hi @ChrisG thank you for the detail. When I am looking for the AWS connection using the EC2 role-based access - is that also supporting the Metadata Version 2? I couldn't find that details in Flexera documentation. Thank you.

https://docs.flexera.com/flexera/EN/ITAssets/IB-ConnectAWSfib.htm

[ppyrzynski]

Thank you very much @ChrisG.
In the log I can see:

[12/5/2023 2:56:14 PM (G, 0)] {3420} The following error e069009a occurred while retrieving data from 'http://169.254.169.254/metadata/instance/compute/vmId?api-version=2018-02-01&format=text'
Authentication method not supported

So it seems this is it. 
Not sure what answer I should mark as a solution. Both are equally important 🙂 

[mfranz]

I believe, you can mark multiple answers as solution.