Understanding Data Centers and Availability Zones in Cloud Discovery – Are They Really Duplicates?SummaryLets take a practical example: You run Cloud Discovery on three AWS cloud service accounts. Each account will have its own AWS data centers (regions), and Discovery will create separate records in the cmdb_ci_logical_datacenter table—one per account per region. These datacenter records are dependent CIs, meaning they can't exist independently. They are associated with their respective cloud service account using the relationship Hosted on::Hosts. Furthermore, each availability zone (e.g., us-east-1a, ap-south-1b) is discovered as part of that datacenter and stored in the cmdb_ci_availability_zone table. These are also dependent CIs, related to the datacenter using the Contained by::Contains relationship. Why It May Look Like a Duplicate Since region and availability zone names are reused across different cloud accounts (e.g., us-east-1 in all 3 accounts of AWS), it might appear that multiple identical CIs are being created. But they are not duplicates—they are intentionally separate because: -They belong to different cloud service accounts. -They are dependent CIs, and their identity is defined through their relationship with the parent CI (cloud account or datacenter). Understanding Dependent CIs Dependent Configuration Items (CIs) rely on another CI to be correctly identified. They cannot exist meaningfully on their own. For example: Availability Zone → Dependent on DataCenter DataCenter → Dependent on Cloud Service Account How CMDB Handles Them -Independent Identification Rule: Identifies CIs using their own attributes (e.g., a server with a serial number). -Dependent Identification Rule: Identifies CIs only in context of their parent CI, using relationships (e.g., an availability zone within a specific region and account). Therefore, the CMDB intentionally allows similar-looking records (same names) if their parent context differs. Conclusion Seeing the same region or zone name across different accounts is expected. These records are not duplicates, but accurate representations of separate cloud environments. Their identity and uniqueness come from their dependent relationships, not just their name or object ID.Facts-Cloud Discovery creates logical data center (cmdb_ci_logical_datacenter) and availability zone (cmdb_ci_availability_zone) records per account and region. -Same region or zone names (e.g., us-east-1, us-east-1a) across accounts are not duplicates, because they represent different infrastructures. -These records are dependent CIs and cannot exist meaningfully without their parent CIs (like cloud accounts or data centers). -Data centers are related to the cloud service account using Hosted on::Hosts relationship. -Availability zones are linked to data centers using the Contained by::Contains relationship. -The CMDB uses dependent identification rules for these CIs, meaning they are identified based on their parent relationships, not just by name or object ID.ReleaseAll release