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- 01Getting Started
- 02What Is AWS?
- 03Checking the Version with aws --version
- 04Setting Credentials with aws configure
- 05Confirming Who You Are with aws sts get-caller-identity
- 06What Is a Region?
- 07Reviewing Settings with aws configure list
- 08What Is IAM?
- 09Listing Users with aws iam list-users
- 10Creating a User with aws iam create-user
- 11Listing Roles with aws iam list-roles
- 12What Is an IAM Policy?
- 13Attaching a Policy with aws iam attach-role-policy
- 14Checking Attached Policies with aws iam list-attached-role-policies
- 15What Is S3?
- 16Creating a Bucket with aws s3 mb
- 17Listing Buckets with aws s3 ls
- 18Uploading a File with aws s3 cp
- 19Listing Objects with aws s3 ls
- 20Syncing a Folder with aws s3 sync
- 21Deleting an Object with aws s3 rm
- 22Deleting a Bucket with aws s3 rb
- 23What Is EC2?
- 24Launching an Instance with aws ec2 run-instances
- 25Listing Instances with aws ec2 describe-instances
- 26Stopping an Instance with aws ec2 stop-instances
- 27Restarting an Instance with aws ec2 start-instances
- 28Terminating an Instance with aws ec2 terminate-instances
- 29What Is a Security Group?
- 30Creating a Security Group with aws ec2 create-security-group
- 31Listing Security Groups with aws ec2 describe-security-groups
- 32What Is Tagging?
- 33Adding Tags with aws ec2 create-tags
- 34What Is Lambda?
- 35Creating a Function with aws lambda create-function
- 36Listing Functions with aws lambda list-functions
- 37Invoking a Function with aws lambda invoke
- 38Deleting a Function with aws lambda delete-function
- 39What Is CloudWatch?
- 40Listing Log Groups with aws logs describe-log-groups
- 41Hands-On: Building a Three-Tier Web Architecture on AWS
Listing Instances with aws ec2 describe-instances
When you want to see your servers, use aws ec2 describe-instances. It reports every instance in the region and its details.
The syntax is aws ec2 describe-instances. Filters narrow the results when you have many.
Running it returns JSON with each instance's ID, type, state, IP addresses and tags.
A common stumble is being overwhelmed by the output. In practice you use --query to pull out just the fields you care about.
In real work, it is how you inventory what is running — and find the instances someone forgot to stop.
🧑💻 You can type this command into the AWS pseudo terminal to try it yourself (this page itself has no interactive terminal).