AWS CLI Commands Reference
Essential AWS CLI Commands for Developers
The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is a powerful tool for developers to manage their AWS resources directly from the terminal. This guide provides a curated list of essential AWS CLI commands for common tasks related to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3).
General AWS CLI Commands
Start by understanding basic AWS CLI operations and configuration.
##############################################################################
# AWS
##############################################################################
# General
aws help
aws --version # Show the current AWS CLI version
aws configure # Configure your AWS Key ID, AWS Secret, default region and default output format for the AWS CLI
aws configure --profile <profile_name> # Configure using the profile name. By default, the list of profile is stored in ~/.aws.credentials (Linux and MacOS)
EC2 Instance Management Commands
Effectively manage your EC2 instances, from describing their status to starting, stopping, and terminating them.
# EC2
## We need to specify a region to use ec2 commands. We can configure a default region with "aws configure" or set the AWS_DEFAULT_REGION environment variable before the command line
## Example: AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1 aws ec2 describe-instances
aws ec2 describe-instances # Desribe all instances in the current region
aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids <instance_id_1> <instance_id_2> # Describe specific instances by their IDs
aws ec2 describe-instances --filters Name=<instance_name> # Filter and describe instances by name
aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids <instance_id_1> <instance_id_2> # Start previously stopped instances by their IDs
aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids <instance_id_1> <instance_id_2> # Stop running instances by their IDs
aws ec2 terminate-instances --instance-ids <instance_id_1> <instance_id_2> # Shutdown the specific instances by their IDs
S3 Bucket and Object Operations
Learn how to list, create, remove, move, and synchronize files and objects within your S3 buckets.
# S3
## To specify the root directory of a S3 bucket, use this syntax: s3://<bucket_name>
aws s3 ls # List S3 objects and common prefixes under a prefix or all S3 buckets
aws s3 ls s3://<bucket_name> # List objects and common prefixes under a specified bucket and prefix
aws s3 mb s3://<bucket_name> # Create a specific S3 bucket
aws s3 rb s3://<bucket_name> # Remove an empty specific S3 bucket by name
aws s3 mv <local_file_path> s3://<bucket_name>/<destination_file_path> # Move a file in local_file_path to a specific bucket in destination_file_path
## Example: aws s3 mv text.txt s3://mybucket/text.txt
aws s3 mv s3://<bucket_name_1> s3://<bucket_name_2> --recursive # Move all objects from bucket_name_1 to bucket_name_2
aws s3 sync <source> <target> # Sync all contents from source to a target directory. This will copy and update all missing or outdated files or objects between source and target
## Examples: aws s3 sync . s3://mybucket
## aws s3 sync s3://bucket_1 s3://bucket_2
aws s3 sync <source> <target> --delete # Sync all contents from source to target, but this will remove all missing files and objects from the target that are not present in source
Further Learning Resources
For more in-depth information and advanced commands, refer to the official AWS CLI documentation: