Amazon Web Services (AWS) Service Catalog simplifies and accelerates the governance and distribution of infrastructure as code (IaC) templates for enterprises. You use AWS CloudFormation templates to define a collection of AWS resources (stacks) required for a product. AWS CloudFormation StackSets extends this functionality by enabling you to create, update, or delete stacks across multiple accounts and AWS Regions with a single operation.
AWS Service Catalog administrators create products by using CloudFormation templates that are authored by developers, and publish them. These products are then associated with a portfolio, and constraints are applied for governance. To make your products available to users in other AWS accounts or organizational units (OUs), you typically share your portfolio with them. This pattern describes an alternative approach for managing AWS Service Catalog product offerings that is based on AWS CloudFormation StackSets. Instead of sharing portfolios, you use stack set constraints to set AWS Regions and accounts where your product can be deployed and used. By using this approach, you can provision your AWS Service Catalog products in multiple accounts, OUs, and AWS Regions, and manage them from a central location, while meeting your governance requirements.
Benefits of this approach:
The product is provisioned and managed from the primary account, and not shared with other accounts.
This approach provides a consolidated view of all provisioned products (stacks) that are based on a specific product.
Configuration with AWS Service Management Connector is easier, because it targets only one account.
It's easier to query and use products from AWS Service Catalog.
