Cloud Service Provider Inventory Report Fields

[mmfish1]

We just enabled our Azure connector and I'm starting to use the Cloud Service Provider Inventory report and I can't find any information in the documentation on what the "Cloud Service Provider Date" field is and where the data comes from. I have a "Cloud Service Provider" field that shows Microsoft Azure and a "Creation Date" (which are all blank) and "Inventory Date". Instances where I have data in "inventory date" I will also have a date in "Cloud Service Provider date" and they are not always the same.  Anybody have any idea what this field is and means?

[cdubs76]

We have connections into AWS---and my understanding is the "Cloud Service Provider Date" is the date that the Cloud inventory connector ran and that instance/system was found in inventory.  That will help identify when that instance (i'm using AWS terms here) was last found in AWS, independent of when a system inventory was done.   If a system is typically kept OFF, but not deleted, then you might have an inventory date of 8/1/22, however, the cloud service provider date should be current on that, b/c it was found in cloud inventory by the connector.

If instances are terminated and no longer available in cloud inventory---these will still show some information in this window---and the "Cloud Service Provider Date" would show the last time it was found in that inventory---which can tell you when it was removed.

Haven't connected into Azure yet---but this is how i understand the AWS side.  Hope this helps.

[mmfish1]

Great, thank you for this information. How about when the "Cloud Service Provider Date" is blank and I have a date in "Inventory Date"?

[ChrisG]

My guess is that an instance with a blank "Cloud Service Provider Date" value would likely indicate that details of the instance have never been seen in results returned by the cloud service provider API, and that the details you see are probably only based on what has been returned by running a hardware & software inventory gathering process on the instance.