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How to list attributes of an EC2 instance with Python and boto

Date: March 8, 2010 | Modified: April 13, 2010 | Tags: aws, python, webdev | 7 Comments

Here's how to find out information about your Amazon EC2 instances using the Python boto library.

Install boto

Install pip
Install boto
```
sudo pip install boto
```

Example

from pprint import pprint
from boto import ec2

AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY = 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'

ec2conn = ec2.connection.EC2Connection(AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID, AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY)
reservations = ec2conn.get_all_instances()
instances = [i for r in reservations for i in r.instances]
for i in instances:
    pprint(i.__dict__)
    break # remove this to list all instances

Results:

{'_in_monitoring_element': False,
 'ami_launch_index': u'0',
 'architecture': u'x86_64',
 'block_device_mapping': {},
 'connection': EC2Connection:ec2.amazonaws.com,
 'dns_name': u'ec2-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com',
 'id': u'i-xxxxxxxx',
 'image_id': u'ami-xxxxxxxx',
 'instanceState': u'\n                    ',
 'instance_class': None,
 'instance_type': u'm1.large',
 'ip_address': u'xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx',
 'item': u'\n                ',
 'kernel': None,
 'key_name': u'FARM-xxxx',
 'launch_time': u'2009-10-27T17:10:22.000Z',
 'monitored': False,
 'monitoring': u'\n                    ',
 'persistent': False,
 'placement': u'us-east-1d',
 'previous_state': None,
 'private_dns_name': u'ip-10-xxx-xxx-xxx.ec2.internal',
 'private_ip_address': u'10.xxx.xxx.xxx',
 'product_codes': [],
 'public_dns_name': u'ec2-xxx-xxx-xxx-xxx.compute-1.amazonaws.com',
 'ramdisk': None,
 'reason': '',
 'region': RegionInfo:us-east-1,
 'requester_id': None,
 'rootDeviceType': u'instance-store',
 'root_device_name': None,
 'shutdown_state': None,
 'spot_instance_request_id': None,
 'state': u'running',
 'state_code': 16,
 'subnet_id': None,
 'vpc_id': None}

For more information

7 Comments — Comments feed for this post

#1 Dirk Krause commented on 2010-04-13:

It took me some time to notice the 'break' statement :-), but thanks for the code! very useful.

#2 Eliot commented on 2010-04-13:

Dirk: sorry, I added a comment to better highlight the break statement. :) Glad it was useful for you!

#3 Mayank commented on 2010-05-07:

Thanks for the example. I was struggling for past 24 hrs to figure out how to get instance details from Reservation object returned by get_all_instances().

#4 Eliot commented on 2010-05-07:

Mayank: yeah this wasn't very clear to me either. I think I remember looking at the source code in order to figure it out. Glad this was helpful.

#5 shirlei commented on 2010-06-09:

thank you, just what I was looking for!

#6 Dirk Krause commented on 2010-11-13:

just for info: boto now support the EC2 tags, i.e. you can name your instances. The result looks like this these days:

...
'state': u'running',
'state_code': 16,
'state_reason': None,
'subnet_id': None,
'tags': {u'Name': u'opensimxyz'},
'virtualizationType': u'paravirtual',
'vpc_id': None}

which is great!

#7 Eliot commented on 2010-11-16:

Dirk: thanks for the update! yeah tags are a great feature. we are making use of them at work.

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