Set up your organization with Resource Directory - Resource Management

With Resource Directory, you can organize your organization's Alibaba Cloud accounts and resources into a hierarchy that reflects your business needs. This guide walks you through the essential steps to establish your organization: enabling a resource directory, creating folders, and adding member accounts.

Before you begin

Before you create your organization, ensure that the Alibaba Cloud account you intend to use as the management account meets the follow conditions:

Your account must be an enterprise account. Individual accounts cannot be used.
Your account has security information configured, such as a mobile phone number or email address.
Your account is not a member of another resource directory.

Methods used to enable a resource directory

After an account meets the prerequisites, you can enable a resource directory. As a best practice, the management account of your resource directory should be a dedicated account, separate from those running business workloads. This separation of concerns simplifies governance and enhances security. Therefore, the method you choose to enable the directory depends on whether the current account already contains resources. You can go to the Resource Center to check whether the current account contains resources.

Use the current logon account to enable a resource directory
This method is suitable for accounts that do not have any existing resources or business workloads deployed.
Use a new account to enable a resource directory
This method is recommended if the current account already contains business resources or runs active workloads.
If you use this method, you must create an Alibaba Cloud account and use this account as the management account of the resource directory. The new account inherits the enterprise verification information of the current logon account. The current logon account becomes a member of the resource directory.
Warning
After the current logon account becomes a member of the resource directory, you can remove the current logon account from the resource directory by using only the new account.

Step 1: Enable your resource directory

The first step is to enable a resource directory for your management account. This is a one-time action that establishes your account as the root of your new organization.

Log on to the Resource Management console.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Resource Directory > Enable Resource Directory.
On the page that appears, click Enable Resource Directory.
After you enable the resource directory, the system creates the Root folder and uses the current logon account as the management account of the resource directory.
In addition, the system creates a service-linked role named AliyunServiceRoleForResourceDirectory within the management account. This role is used to grant access permissions on the resource directory to trusted services that are integrated with the Resource Directory service. For more information about service-linked roles, see RAM roles in a resource directory.

Step 2: Create your organizational structure with folders

Folders are organizational units that you can use to group accounts and other folders. This allows you to structure your resource directory to represent your enterprise's departments, projects, or environments (such as production vs. development).

Log on to the Resource Management console with a management account.
In the left-side navigation pane, choose Resource Directory > Management.
In the upper-right corner of the page that appears, click Resource Organization View.
Use one of the following methods to create a folder:
- Move the pointer over the desired folder in the left-side navigation tree, click the icon, and then click Create Folder.
  
  Note
  A subfolder will be created in the folder.
- Click the desired folder in the left-side navigation tree. On the Member tab of the right-side pane, click Create Folder.
  
  Note
  A subfolder will be created in the folder.
In the Create Folder dialog box, enter a name in Folder Name and click OK.

Note
The name you specify must be unique in the current resource directory.

Step 3: Add accounts to your organization

You can populate your organization by creating new member accounts or by inviting existing Alibaba Cloud accounts to join.

Method 1: Create a new member account

Create a new account directly within your resource directory. This account is automatically part of your organization and is used to isolate a project's or an application's resources.

On the Resource Directory page, click Create Member.
On the Create Member page, set the Account Name, Display Name, and Billing Account.
Select the parent folder where you want to place the new account and click Confirm.

Method 2: Invite an existing Alibaba Cloud account

Invite a pre-existing, standalone Alibaba Cloud account to join your resource directory.

On the Resource Directory page, click Invite Member.
Enter the ID or email address of the Alibaba Cloud account that you want to invite.
Enter any notes for the invitation and click OK.
An invitation is sent to the specified account. The owner of the invited account must log on to the Resource Management console and accept the invitation. For more information, see Process an invitation.

Resource Management:Set up your organization with Resource Directory