CLI scripting basics in AWS - Mini Project: Build & Apply

CLI scripting basics

📖 Scenario: You are managing a small cloud environment on AWS. You want to automate the process of listing your EC2 instances and filtering them by a specific tag using AWS CLI commands in a script.

🎯 Goal: Create a simple AWS CLI script that lists all EC2 instances, filters them by a tag named Environment with the value Development, and outputs the instance IDs.

📋 What You'll Learn

Use AWS CLI commands to list EC2 instances

Filter instances by the tag Environment with value Development

Extract and output only the instance IDs

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

Automating AWS resource management using CLI scripts saves time and reduces errors in cloud operations.

💼 Career

Cloud engineers and DevOps professionals often write CLI scripts to manage and automate cloud infrastructure efficiently.

1

Create a variable with the AWS CLI command to list all EC2 instances

Create a variable called list_instances_cmd and assign it the AWS CLI command string aws ec2 describe-instances.

AWS

# Create a variable called list_instances_cmd with the command string
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Assign the exact string aws ec2 describe-instances to the variable list_instances_cmd.

2

Add a filter variable for the tag Environment=Development

Create a variable called filter_tag and assign it the AWS CLI filter string --filters Name=tag:Environment,Values=Development.

AWS

list_instances_cmd = "aws ec2 describe-instances"
# Create a variable called filter_tag with the filter string
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use the exact filter string with --filters Name=tag:Environment,Values=Development.

3

Combine the command and filter to list filtered instances

Create a variable called filtered_cmd that combines list_instances_cmd and filter_tag separated by a space.

AWS

list_instances_cmd = "aws ec2 describe-instances"
filter_tag = "--filters Name=tag:Environment,Values=Development"
# Combine list_instances_cmd and filter_tag into filtered_cmd
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Join the two strings with a space between them.

4

Add the query to output only instance IDs

Update the variable final_cmd by adding the query option --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId' --output text to filtered_cmd separated by a space.

AWS

list_instances_cmd = "aws ec2 describe-instances"
filter_tag = "--filters Name=tag:Environment,Values=Development"
filtered_cmd = list_instances_cmd + " " + filter_tag
# Add query and output options to filtered_cmd and assign to final_cmd
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Append the exact query and output options to the filtered command string.