Discover and import resources
Scan a connected cloud provider account for existing resources and bring them under emma management.
Overview
Page navigation — Open a Project group → click Import resources.
Once a provider account is connected as an existing account (BYOA), it may already have resources that were created outside emma — VMs, disks, networks, security groups, and similar ("brownfield" resources). Discovery scans the connected account for these resources; import brings the ones you choose under emma management without recreating or modifying anything in the cloud.
How it works
Start discovery. Click Start discovery, choose one or more connected providers (or All providers), and confirm. Discovery can take up to 30 minutes. Importing stays disabled for the Project group until it finishes.
Review discovered resources. Once discovery completes, the table lists every discovered resource with its provider, cloud resource ID, emma resource type, and discovery date. Assign each resource you want to keep to a target project — this marks it Ready for import — or remove it from the list.
Review and import. Click Review and import to move to the confirmation step (disabled while an import is already running), then Import resources — enabled once at least one resource is Ready for import. Confirm in the dialog: import starts immediately, can take up to 30 minutes, and can't be paused or canceled once started. Import resources and Re-discovery stay disabled until it finishes.
Resource statuses
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ready for import | Assigned to a project — will be imported on the next import run. |
| Not imported | Found during discovery, but import hasn't started yet — not yet assigned to a project, or not included in an import run. |
| In progress | Import is running for this resource — wait until it finishes. |
| Imported | Successfully imported, or it already exists in emma. |
| Failed | Import failed. Run re-discovery to retry. |
| Not supported | emma doesn't support importing this resource type yet. |
Actions you can perform on this page
- Start discovery – scan connected provider accounts for resources emma doesn't yet manage.
- Re-discovery – re-scan a provider to refresh the discovered resource list. Disabled while an import is in progress.
- Assign a resource to a project – set or change the target project for a discovered resource before import.
- Remove a resource from the import list – exclude a discovered resource without importing it.
- Import resources – start importing every resource currently marked Ready for import.
Import doesn't move or recreate anything in the cloud — the resource keeps running on the provider exactly as it did before. Since it lives in your own (BYOA) cloud account, you keep paying the cloud provider directly; any cost emma shows for it is informational, not an emma invoice line.
Last updated on 21 Aug 2026