Using the AWS CLI on Windows with Powershell

Overview

Building on the lessons from AWS - Configure the AWS CLI with SSO and multiple profiles, we can perform similar queries from a Windows machine with the AWS CLI using Powershell to extract similar instance metadata.

How-to

1. Set the Windows Powershell environment variable for the profile we wish to use:

    $Env:AWS_PROFILE="dev-account.developer"
   

2. Test that the SSO profile has works as expected:

    PS> aws ec2 describe-instances
   

3. Filter the output of aws ec2 describe-instances:

    PS> aws ec2 describe-instances | ConvertFrom-Json | `
    Select-Object -ExpandProperty Reservations | ForEach-Object { $_.Instances | `
    ForEach-Object { $tag = ($_.Tags | Where-Object { $_.Key -eq 'aws:cloud9:owner' }); `
    if ($tag) { [PSCustomObject]@{ "Instance ID" = $_.InstanceId; "Tag aws:cloud9:owner" = $tag.Value; "Instance State" = $_.State.Name } } } }
   

4. Review the output:

    Instance ID         Tag aws:cloud9:owner                 Instance State
    -----------         --------------------                 --------------
    i-034e459b55d574564 A0880D35011EEA187F057:bob.typeytype  stopped
    i-0af34b3e0f9fecc9e A0880D35011EEA187F057:alan.syscall   running
   

5. Optionally, start the desired instance:

    PS> aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids i-034e459b55d574564 
   

6. And connect via SSH or SSH over SSM:

    PS> aws ssm start-session --target i-034e459b55d574564 
   

   Alternative Queries

   As an alternative to Powershell, it’s also straightforward to select/filter specific instance data using jq:

   aws ec2 describe-instances | jq -r '.Reservations[].Instances[] | "\(.InstanceId),\(.Tags[] | select(.Key == "SERVERNAME").Value),\(.Tags[] | select(.Key == "aws:cloudformation:logical-id").Value)"'
   i-034e459b55d574564,VM01,AppInstance
   i-0af34b3e0f9fecc9e,VM02,DatabaseInstance
   

Further reading