I agree that AWS can definitely feel clunky at times, especially with regions and metadata stuff.
A few things that helped me: for regions, tagging is key. I use Resource Groups to create a global view, and Systems Manager is awesome for managing instances across regions.
For metadata, the Name tag works just like renaming, and CloudTrail logs who created what. If you need to track running services, I’d suggest tagging consistently or using CloudWatch Agent to log what’s running.
For SSH, I switched to Session Manager; no more keys to manage, and it’s all logged. If you’re sticking with keys, Secrets Manager or Parameter Store can help you organize them better. Hope some of this helps, it took me a while to figure it all out as well.
A few things that helped me: for regions, tagging is key. I use Resource Groups to create a global view, and Systems Manager is awesome for managing instances across regions.
For metadata, the Name tag works just like renaming, and CloudTrail logs who created what. If you need to track running services, I’d suggest tagging consistently or using CloudWatch Agent to log what’s running.
For SSH, I switched to Session Manager; no more keys to manage, and it’s all logged. If you’re sticking with keys, Secrets Manager or Parameter Store can help you organize them better. Hope some of this helps, it took me a while to figure it all out as well.