AWS Operations

Common AWS CLI operations for infrastructure management.

When to Use This Skill

Use this skill when:

• Managing AWS resources
• Querying resource state
• Troubleshooting AWS issues
• Cost investigation

Setup & Authentication

Check Current Identity

# Who am I?
aws sts get-caller-identity

# Current region
aws configure get region

Switch Profile/Region

# Use specific profile
export AWS_PROFILE=production

# Or per-command
aws s3 ls --profile production

# Switch region
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-2

List Profiles

aws configure list-profiles

EC2 Instances

List Instances

# All instances with key info
aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,State.Name,InstanceType,PrivateIpAddress,Tags[?Key==`Name`].Value|[0]]' \
  --output table

# Running only
aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --filters "Name=instance-state-name,Values=running" \
  --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,InstanceType,PrivateIpAddress,Tags[?Key==`Name`].Value|[0]]' \
  --output table

# By tag
aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --filters "Name=tag:Environment,Values=production"

Instance Actions

# Start instance
aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

# Stop instance
aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

# Reboot instance
aws ec2 reboot-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

# Get console output (for debugging)
aws ec2 get-console-output --instance-id i-1234567890abcdef0

Instance Details

# Full details
aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0

# Security groups
aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids i-1234567890abcdef0 \
  --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].SecurityGroups'

S3 Storage

List Buckets & Objects

# List buckets
aws s3 ls

# List objects in bucket
aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/

# With sizes (human readable)
aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/ --human-readable --summarize

# Recursive
aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name/ --recursive

Copy Files

# Upload
aws s3 cp file.txt s3://bucket-name/

# Download
aws s3 cp s3://bucket-name/file.txt ./

# Sync directory
aws s3 sync ./local-dir s3://bucket-name/prefix/

# Sync with delete
aws s3 sync ./local-dir s3://bucket-name/prefix/ --delete

Bucket Info

# Bucket location
aws s3api get-bucket-location --bucket bucket-name

# Bucket size (can be slow for large buckets)
aws s3 ls s3://bucket-name --recursive --summarize | tail -2

EKS (Kubernetes)

List Clusters

aws eks list-clusters

Update Kubeconfig

# Add cluster to kubeconfig
aws eks update-kubeconfig --name cluster-name --region us-east-1

# With specific profile
aws eks update-kubeconfig --name cluster-name --profile production

Cluster Info

aws eks describe-cluster --name cluster-name

CloudWatch Logs

List Log Groups

aws logs describe-log-groups \
  --query 'logGroups[].logGroupName'

Tail Logs

# Tail logs (requires awslogs or use CloudWatch Insights)
aws logs tail /aws/lambda/function-name --follow

# Get recent logs
aws logs get-log-events \
  --log-group-name /aws/lambda/function-name \
  --log-stream-name 'stream-name' \
  --limit 50

Search Logs (Insights)

# Start query
aws logs start-query \
  --log-group-name /aws/lambda/function-name \
  --start-time $(date -d '1 hour ago' +%s) \
  --end-time $(date +%s) \
  --query-string 'fields @timestamp, @message | filter @message like /ERROR/ | limit 20'

# Get results (use query-id from above)
aws logs get-query-results --query-id "query-id-here"

IAM

Current User/Role

aws sts get-caller-identity

List Users/Roles

# Users
aws iam list-users --query 'Users[].[UserName,CreateDate]' --output table

# Roles
aws iam list-roles --query 'Roles[].[RoleName,CreateDate]' --output table

Check Permissions

# Simulate policy
aws iam simulate-principal-policy \
  --policy-source-arn arn:aws:iam::123456789:user/myuser \
  --action-names s3:GetObject \
  --resource-arns arn:aws:s3:::bucket-name/*

Lambda

List Functions

aws lambda list-functions \
  --query 'Functions[].[FunctionName,Runtime,LastModified]' \
  --output table

Invoke Function

# Invoke
aws lambda invoke \
  --function-name my-function \
  --payload '{"key": "value"}' \
  response.json

# View response
cat response.json

View Logs

aws logs tail /aws/lambda/my-function --follow

RDS

List Databases

aws rds describe-db-instances \
  --query 'DBInstances[].[DBInstanceIdentifier,DBInstanceStatus,Engine,DBInstanceClass]' \
  --output table

Database Status

aws rds describe-db-instances \
  --db-instance-identifier my-database

Cost & Billing

Quick Cost Check

# Month-to-date costs
aws ce get-cost-and-usage \
  --time-period Start=$(date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-01)" +%Y-%m-%d),End=$(date +%Y-%m-%d) \
  --granularity MONTHLY \
  --metrics BlendedCost \
  --query 'ResultsByTime[].Total.BlendedCost'

Cost by Service

aws ce get-cost-and-usage \
  --time-period Start=$(date -d "$(date +%Y-%m-01)" +%Y-%m-%d),End=$(date +%Y-%m-%d) \
  --granularity MONTHLY \
  --metrics BlendedCost \
  --group-by Type=DIMENSION,Key=SERVICE \
  --query 'ResultsByTime[].Groups[].[Keys[0],Metrics.BlendedCost.Amount]' \
  --output table

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

Issue	Check	Command
Access Denied	IAM permissions	aws sts get-caller-identity
Resource not found	Region mismatch	aws configure get region
Rate limiting	API throttling	Add --debug flag
Credential issues	Profile/env vars	aws configure list

Debug Mode

# Verbose output
aws s3 ls --debug 2>&1 | head -50

Quick Reference

# EC2: List running instances
aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=instance-state-name,Values=running" --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,Tags[?Key==`Name`].Value|[0]]' --output table

# S3: Bucket sizes
aws s3api list-buckets --query 'Buckets[].Name' --output text | xargs -I {} sh -c 'echo -n "{}: "; aws s3 ls s3://{} --recursive --summarize 2>/dev/null | tail -1'

# Lambda: Recent errors
aws logs tail /aws/lambda/FUNCTION --since 1h --filter-pattern "ERROR"

# Costs: This month
aws ce get-cost-and-usage --time-period Start=$(date +%Y-%m-01),End=$(date +%Y-%m-%d) --granularity MONTHLY --metrics BlendedCost

Related Skills

• cost-optimization: For detailed cost analysis
• terraform-workflow: For IaC management
• incident-response: For AWS-related incidents