Configure the AWS CLI with multiple profiles

Overview

Set up the AWS CLI with multiple profiles (for example work, training or personal accounts)

Background

To quote chaper-and-verse from the AWS documentation:

The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is a unified tool to manage your AWS services. With just one tool to download and configure, you can control multiple AWS services from the command line and automate them through scripts.

Having the CLI to-hand can streamline an engineer’s workflow, reducing context switching from the development environment or terminal to the AWS management console UI.

How-to

Install the CLI

There are a number of installation options available, however when using a distribution with a mature but up-to-date package ecosystem, it can be as simple as installing from the package manager.

 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ sudo dnf info awscli2
 Last metadata expiration check: 0:00:23 ago on Wed 21 Feb 2024 15:44:01 GMT.
 Installed Packages
 Name         : awscli2
 Version      : 2.15.2
 Release      : 1.fc39
 Architecture : noarch
 Size         : 103 M
 Source       : awscli2-2.15.2-1.fc39.src.rpm
 Repository   : @System
 From repo    : updates
 Summary      : Universal Command Line Environment for AWS, version 2
 URL          : https://github.com/aws/aws-cli/tree/v2
 License      : Apache-2.0 AND MIT
 Description  : This package provides version 2 of the unified command line
              : interface to Amazon Web Services.

 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ sudo dnf -y install awscli2

Validate that the AWS CLI is installed and runs

 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ aws
    
 usage: aws [options] <command> <subcommand> [<subcommand> ...] [parameters]
 To see help text, you can run:

 aws help
 aws <command> help
 aws <command> <subcommand> help

 aws: error: the following arguments are required: command

Configure a personal ‘home’ profile in the AWS CLI:

 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ aws configure --profile home
 AWS Access Key ID [None]: <<accesskey>>
 AWS Secret Access Key [None]: <<secretkey>>
 Default region name [None]: eu-west-1
 Default output format [None]: 

Verify that the CLI and profile can retreive data from AWS:

 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ aws ec2 describe-instances --profile home | jq '.[][].Instances[].InstanceId'
 "i-06170215c6344402c"

Set the current profile in the AWS_PROFILE environment variable and re-verify:

 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ export AWS_PROFILE=home
 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ aws ec2 describe-instances
 {
 "Reservations": [
     {
         "Groups": [],
         "Instances": [
             {
                 "AmiLaunchIndex": 0,
                 "ImageId": "ami-0694d931cee176e7d",
                 "InstanceId": "i-06170215c6344402c",
                 "InstanceType": "t2.medium",
                 ...

Rinse and repeat the profile setup for a ‘work’ profile in the AWS CLI:

 wmcdonald@fedora:~$ aws configure --profile work
 AWS Access Key ID [None]: <<workaccesskey>>
 AWS Secret Access Key [None]: <<worksecretkey>>
 Default region name [None]: us-east-1
 Default output format [None]: 

Summary

We now have the AWS CLI configured with two profiles and a relatively simple environment variable that can be set to switch between profiles.

Overview

Background

How-to

Summary

Further reading