To list all instances in the AWS CLI, you can use the aws ec2 describe-instances command. Here’s an example:
aws ec2 describe-instances
This will return a list of all instances in your default region, along with their details such as instance ID, instance type, status, and more.
If you want to filter the results based on certain criteria, you can use various filters with the --filters option. For example, if you only want to list instances with a specific tag, you can use the following command:aws ec2 describe-instances --filters "Name=tag:Name,Values=my-instance"
This will only return instances that have a tag named “Name” with a value of “my-instance”. You can modify the filter to suit your needs.
Note that you’ll need to have the appropriate permissions to run this command. If you encounter any issues, check your IAM user’s permissions or consult with your AWS administrator.
To only get the output of just instance IDs in the AWS CLI, you can use the --query parameter with a JMESPath expression. Here’s an example command:
aws ec2 describe-instances --query 'Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId' --output text
This command uses a JMESPath expression to query the InstanceId attribute of each instance and return only that value. The --output parameter is set to text to ensure that the output is in plain text format.
The result will be a list of instance IDs.
Remember that you can run was CLI commands at the bottom of the console by enabling CloudShell.