AWS CLI version 2

Are you new to AWS Cloud or tired of managing your AWS Cloud infrastructure using manual steps back and forth? If yes, you should consider installing AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI ) and managing infrastructure using it?

In this tutorial, you will learn how to install AWS CLI Version 2 and set up AWS credentials in the AWS CLI tool.

Let’s dive into it.

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Table of Content

What is AWS CLI?
Installing AWS CLI Version 2 on windows machine
Creating an IAM user in AWS account with programmatic access
Configure AWS credentials using aws configure
Verify aws configure from AWS CLI by running a simple commands
Configuring AWS credentials using Named profile.
Verify Named profile from AWS CLI by running a simple commands.
Configuring AWS credentials using environment variable
Conclusion

What is AWS CLI?

AWS CLI enables you to interact and provides direct access to the public APIs of AWS services of various AWS accounts using the command-line shells from your local environment or remotely.

You can control multiple AWS services from the AWS CLI and automate them through scripts. You can run AWS CLI commands from a Linux shell such as bash, zsh, tcsh, and from a Windows machine, you can use command prompt or PowerShell to execute AWS CLI commands.

The AWS CLI is available in two versions, and the installation is exactly the same for both versions but in this tutorial, let’s learn how to install AWS CLI version 2.

Installing AWS CLI Version 2 on windows machine

Now that you have a basic idea about AWS CLI and connecting to AWS services using various command prompt and shells. Further in this section, let’s learn how to install AWS CLI Version 2 on a windows machine.

First open your favorite browser and download the AWS CLI on windows machine from here

Next, select the I accept the terms and Licence Agreement and then click on the next button.

Further, on Custom setup page provide the location of installation path and then click on Next button.

Setting the download location of AWS CLI

Now, click on the Install button to install AWS CLI version 2.

Installing the AWS CLI on Windows machine — Installing the AWS CLI on a Windows machine

Finally click on Finish button as shown below.

Finishing the Installation of the AWS CLI on Windows machine

Verify the AWS version by going to command prompt and run the below command.

aws --version

As you can see below, the AWS CLI version 2 is successfully installed on a windows machine.

Creating an IAM user in AWS account with programmatic access

There are two ways to connect to an AWS account, the first is providing a username and password on the AWS login page and another is configuring the Access key ID and secret keys of IAM users in AWS CLI to connect programmatically.

Earlier, you installed AWS CLI successfully on a Windows machine, but you will need an IAM user with programmatic access to run commands from it.

Let’s learn how to create an IAM user in an AWS account with programmatic access, Access key ID, and secret keys.

Open your favorite web browser and navigate to the AWS Management Console and log in.
While in the Console, click on the search bar at the top, search for ‘IAM’, and click on the IAM menu item.

To Create a user click on Users→ Add user and provide the name of the user myuser and make sure to tick the Programmatic access checkbox in Access type which enables an access key ID and secret access key and then hit the Permissions button.

Now select the “Attach existing policies directly” option in the set permissions and look for the “Administrator” policy using filter policies in the search box. This policy will allow myuser to have full access to AWS services.

Attaching the admin rights to IAM user in AWS CLoud — Attaching the admin rights to IAM users in AWS CLoud

Finally click on Create user.
Now, the user is created successfully and you will see an option to download a .csv file. Download this file which contains IAM users i.e. myuser Access key ID and Secret access key which you will use later in the tutorial to connect to AWS service from your local machine.

Downloading the AWS credentials of IAM user

Configure AWS credentials using aws configure in AWS CLI

You are an IAM user with Access key ID and secret keys, but AWS CLI cannot perform anything unless you configure AWS credentials. Once you configure the credentials, AWS CLI allows you to connect to the AWS account and execute commands.

Configure AWS Credentials by running the aws configure command on command prompt.

aws configure

Enter the details such as AWS Access key ID, Secret Access Key, region. You can skip the output format as default or text or json .

Configure AWS CLI using aws configure command

Once AWS is configured successfully , verify by navigating to C:\Users\YOUR_USER\.aws and see if two file credentials and config are present.

Checking the credentials file and config on your machine

Now open both the files and verify and you can see below you’re AWS credentials are configured successfully using aws configure.

Checking the config file on your machine

Verify aws configure from AWS CLI by running a simple commands

Now, you can test if AWS Access key ID, Secret Access Key, region you configured in AWS CLI is working fine by going to command prompt and running the following commands.

aws ec2 describe-instances

Describing the AWS EC2 instances using AWS CLI

You can also verify the AWS CLI by listing the buckets in your acount by running the below command.

aws cli s3

Configuring AWS credentials using Named profile.

Another method to configure AWS credentials that are mostly used is configuring the Named profile. A named profile is a collection of settings and credentials that you can apply to an AWS CLI command. When you specify a profile to run a command, the settings and credentials are used to run that command. Let’s learn how to store named profiles.

Open credentials files which got created earlier using aws configure and if not then create a file named credentails in C:\Users\your_profile\.aws directory of your windows machine.
Add all the Access key ID and Secret access key into the credentials file in the below format and save. By defining the Named profile allows you to connect with different AWS account easily and avoiding confusion while connecting to specific AWS accounts.

Creating the Named Profile on your machine

Similarly, create another file config in the C:\Users\your_profile\.aws directory.
Next, add the “region” into the config file and make sure to add the name of the profile which you provided in the credentials file, and save the file. This file allows you to work with a specific region.

For Linux and mac machine the location of credential file is ~/.aws/credentials and ~/.aws/config.
For windows machine the location of config file is %USERPROFILE%\.aws\credentials and %USERPROFILE%\.aws\config rrespectively.

Creating the Named Profile config file on your machine

Verifying Named profile from AWS CLI

Previously you configured the Named profile on your machine, but let’s verify the Named profile from AWS CLI by running a simple command. Let’s open the command prompt and run the below command to verify the sandbox profile that you created earlier.

aws ec2 describe-instances --profile sandbox

As you can see below, the instance is described properly using the command with Named profile shows Named profile is configured successfully.

Verifying the Named profile in AWS CLI

Configuring AWS credentials using the environment variable

Finally, the last Configuring AWS credentials using the environment variables works well. Let’s check out quickly.

Open the command prompt and set the AWS secret key and access key using the environmental variable using set . The enviornment variables doesnt changes the value until the end of the current command prompt session, or until you set the variable to a different value

AWS CLI Error (ImportError: cannot import name ‘docevents’ from ‘botocore.docs.bcdoc’) and Solution

If you face any issues in AWS CLI related to python or any file then use the below command.

 pip3 install --upgrade awscli

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned What is AWS CLI, how to install AWS CLI version 2, and various methods that allow you to configure AWS credentials and then work with AWS CLI.

So which method are you going to use while using AWS CLI to connect and manage AWS infrastructure?

Are you storing the data securely, scalable, highly available, and fault-tolerant? If not, consider using Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) in the AWS cloud.

This tutorial will teach you how to launch an AWS S3 bucket in an Amazon account using bash or shell scripting.

Let’s dive into it quickly.

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Table of Content

What is Shell Script or Bash Script?
What is the Amazon AWS S3 bucket?
Prerequisites
Building a shell script to create AWS S3 bucket in Amazon account
Executing the Shell Script to Create AWS S3 bucket in Amazon Cloud
Verifying the AWS S3 bucket in AWS account
Conclusion

What is Shell Script or Bash Script?

Shell Script is a text file containing lists of commands executed on the terminal or shell in one go in sequential order. Shell Script performs various important tasks such as file manipulation, printing text, program execution.

Shell script includes various environmental variables, comments, conditions, pipe commands, functions, etc., to make it more dynamic.

When you execute a shell script or function, a command interpreter goes through the ASCII text line-by-line, loop-by-loop, test-by-test, and executes each statement as each line is reached from top to bottom.

What is the Amazon AWS S3 bucket?

AWS S3, why it is S3? The name itself tells that it’s a 3 word whose alphabet starts with “S.” The Full form of AWS S3 is a simple storage service. AWS S3 service helps in storing unlimited data safely and efficiently. Everything in the AWS S3 service is an object such as pdf files, zip files, text files, war files, anything. Some of the features of the AWS S3 bucket are below:

To store the data in AWS S3 bucket you will need to upload the data.
To keep your AWS S3 bucket secure addthe necessary permissions to IAM role or IAM user.
AWS S3 buckets have unique name globally that means there will be only 1 bucket throughout different accounts or any regions.
100 buckets can be created in any AWS account, post that you need to raise a ticket to Amazon.
Owner of AWS S3 buckets is specific to AWS account only.
AWS S3 buckets are created region specific such as us-east-1 , us-east-2 , us-west-1 or us-west-2
AWS S3 bucket objects are created in AWS S3 in AWS console or using AWS S3 API service.
AWS S3 buckets can be publicly visible that means anybody on the internet can access it but is recommended to keep the public access blocked for all buckets unless very much required.

Prerequisites

AWS account to create ec2 instance. If you don’t have AWS account please create from AWS account or AWS Account
Windows 7 or plus edition where you will execute the shell script.
AWS CLI installed. To install AWS CLI click here.
Git bash. Yo install Git bash click here
Code editor for writing the shell script on windows machine such as visual studio code. To install visual studio click here.

Building a shell script to create AWS S3 bucket in Amazon account

Now that you have a good idea about the AWS S3 bucket and shell script let’s learn how to build a shell script to create an AWS S3 bucket in an Amazon account.

Create a folder of your windows machine at any location. Further under the same folder create a file named create-s3.sh and copy/paste the below code.

#! /usr/bin/bash
# This Script will create S3 bucket and tag the bucket with appropriate name.

# To check if access key is setup in your system 


if ! grep aws_access_key_id ~/.aws/config; then
   if ! grep aws_access_key_id ~/.aws/credentials; then
   echo "AWS config not found or you don't have AWS CLI installed"
   exit 1
   fi
fi

# read command will prompt you to enter the name of bucket name you wish to create 


read -r -p  "Enter the name of the bucket:" bucketname

# Creating first function to create a bucket 

function createbucket()
   {
    aws s3api  create-bucket --bucket $bucketname --region us-east-2
   }

# Creating Second function to tag a bucket 

function tagbucket()    {
    
   aws s3api  put-bucket-tagging --bucket $bucketname --tagging 'TagSet=[{Key=Name,Value="'$bucketname'"}]'
}

# echo command will print on the screen 

echo "Creating the AWS S3 bucket and Tagging it !! "
echo ""
createbucket    # Calling the createbucket function  
tagbucket       # calling our tagbucket function
echo "AWS S3 bucket $bucketname created successfully"
echo "AWS S3 bucket $bucketname tagged successfully "

Executing the Shell Script to Create AWS S3 bucket in Amazon Cloud

Previously you created the shell script to create an AWS S3 bucket in Amazon Cloud, which is great, but it is not doing much unless you run it. Let’s execute the shell script now.

Open the visual studio code and then open the location of file create-s3.sh.

Opening Shell script on visual studio code

Finally execute the shell script.

./create-s3.sh

Executing the shell script to create AWS S3 bucket

Verifying the AWS S3 bucket in AWS account

Earlier in the previous section, the shell script ran successfully; let’s verify the if AWS S3 bucket has been created in the AWS account.

Open your favorite web browser and navigate to the AWS Management Console and log in.
While in the Console, click on the search bar at the top, search for ‘S3’, and click on the S3 menu item and you should see the list of AWS S3 buckets and the bucket that you specified in shell script.

Also verify the tags that you applied in the AWS S3 bucket by navigating to proerties tab.

Viewing the AWS S3 bucket tags in AWS cloud — Viewing the AWS S3 bucket tags in the AWS cloud

Conclusion

In this tutorial, you learned how to set up Amazon AWS S3 using shell script on AWS step by step. Most of your phone and website data are stored on AWS S3.

Now that you have a newly created AWS S3 bucket, what do you plan to store in it?