AWS CLI Recipes

View Commands

Manage AWS cloud resources from the terminal. EC2, S3, Lambda, IAM, and infrastructure automation with the AWS CLI.

10 recipes

Cross-Account IAM Role Assumption with MFA

Intermediate

Securely assume IAM roles across AWS accounts using MFA-protected temporary credentials for least-privilege access.

6 steps|10 min|iam, sts, cross-account

$ aws iam list-mfa-devices --user-name your-username

View Recipe

Query and Filter CloudWatch Logs with Insights

Intermediate

Use CloudWatch Logs Insights to search, filter, and analyze log data across log groups with powerful query syntax for rapid debugging.

5 steps|10 min|cloudwatch, logs, monitoring

$ aws logs describe-log-groups --query 'logGroups[].logGroupName' --output table

View Recipe

CLI-Based Cost Explorer and Budget Alerts

Beginner

Analyze AWS spending from the command line using Cost Explorer APIs and configure budget alerts to catch unexpected cost spikes early.

5 steps|8 min|cost-explorer, budgets, finops

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

View Recipe

Launch, Connect, and Manage EC2 Instances

Beginner

Provision EC2 instances from the CLI, configure security groups, connect via SSH, and manage instance lifecycle operations.

6 steps|12 min|ec2, compute, ssh

$ aws ssm get-parameters --names /aws/service/ami-amazon-linux-latest/al2023-ami-kernel-6.1-x86_64 --query 'Parameters[0].Value' --output text

View Recipe

ECS Service Rolling Deployment and Troubleshooting

Advanced

Perform zero-downtime rolling deployments of ECS Fargate services, monitor task health, and troubleshoot failed deployments with circuit breaker rollbacks.

6 steps|20 min|ecs, fargate, deploy

$ aws ecs describe-task-definition --task-definition my-app --query taskDefinition > task-def.json && jq '.containerDefinitions[0].image = "111111111111.dkr.ecr.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/my-app:v2.1.0"' task-def.json > updated-task-def.json && aws ecs register-task-definition --cli-input-json file://updated-task-def.json

View Recipe

Deploy Lambda Functions from CLI with Layers

Intermediate

Package and deploy AWS Lambda functions using the CLI, including dependency management through Lambda layers for smaller deployment bundles.

6 steps|15 min|lambda, serverless, deploy

$ zip -r function.zip index.mjs lib/ -x '*.test.*' -x 'node_modules/*'

View Recipe

Database Backup and Point-in-Time Recovery with RDS

Intermediate

Create manual RDS snapshots, configure automated backups, and perform point-in-time recovery to restore databases to any second within the retention window.

6 steps|15 min|rds, backup, snapshot

$ aws rds create-db-snapshot --db-instance-identifier my-production-db --db-snapshot-identifier my-production-db-pre-migration-$(date +%Y%m%d)

View Recipe