3 ways to get AWS EC2 Instance ID

If you’re running a business on Amazon Web Services (AWS), then you know that instances are an important part of your infrastructure. It’s crucial to be able to identify your instances easily, so that you can manage them effectively.

In this blog post, we will discuss three different ways to check your EC2 instance ID. We’ll also provide instructions for how to do it!

Get AWS EC2 Instance ID Using the AWS CLI

The “aws ec2 describe-instances” command can be used to get the instance ID for EC2 in AWS. Install and configure the AWS CLI on your machine. Run the following command:

aws ec2 describe-instances --filters Name=private-ip-address,Values=10.1.0.235 --region us-west-2|grep -i InstanceId.

The instance ID will be returned in the output.

Replace the values with the IP address of your EC2 instance.

The AWS CLI (Command Line Interface) command “aws ec2 describe-instances” is used to retrieve information about EC2 instances in your AWS account.

When you execute this command, it sends a request to the AWS EC2 service to retrieve details about one or more instances. The response will include a JSON-formatted output containing various information about the instances, such as their instance IDs, instance types, state, launch time, network details, attached volumes, security groups, and much more.

Here’s an example of the output you might receive:

{
    "Reservations": [
        {
            "Instances": [
                {
                    "InstanceId": "i-1234567890abcdef0",
                    "InstanceType": "t2.micro",
                    "State": {
                        "Code": 16,
                        "Name": "running"
                    },
                    "LaunchTime": "2023-06-01T12:34:56.000Z",
                    ...
                },
                ...
            ]
        }
    ]
}

The output is organized into reservations, which represent a group of instances launched together. Each reservation can contain one or more instances. In the example above, there is one reservation with one instance.

The “InstanceId” field represents the unique identifier for each instance. Other fields, such as “InstanceType,” “State,” and “LaunchTime,” provide additional information about the instance’s configuration, current state, and launch time.

You can use various options and filters with the “describe-instances” command to narrow down the results and retrieve specific information based on your requirements.

For example, you can filter instances by their IDs, tags, or other attributes to retrieve only the instances that match your criteria.

The following command is a combination of AWS CLI commands and the Linux command “grep.”

aws ec2 describe-instances --filters Name=private-ip-address,Values=10.1.0.235 --region us-west-2 | grep -i InstanceId

Let’s break down the command step by step:

1. “aws ec2 describe-instances“: This is the AWS CLI command to retrieve information about EC2 instances.

2. “–filters Name=private-ip-address,Values=10.1.0.235“: This option is used to specify filters for the describe-instances command. In this case, it filters instances based on the private IP address. The filter is set to match instances that have a private IP address of “10.1.0.235”.

3. “–region us-west-2“: This option specifies the AWS region (in this case, “us-west-2”) in which the EC2 instances are located. You can change the region based on your requirements.

4. “| grep -i InstanceId“: This part of the command uses the Linux command “grep” to search for the line that contains the text “InstanceId” in the output of the describe-instances command. The “-i” option is used to perform a case-insensitive search.

Putting it all together, the command retrieves information about EC2 instances in the specified region with a private IP address of “10.1.0.235” and then filters the output to only display the line that contains the “InstanceId” information.

The output of this command will be the line that includes the “InstanceId” field and its corresponding value. For example:

"InstanceId": "i-1234567890abcdef0"

This allows you to easily extract the instance ID for further use or analysis.

The following command can be used to shows a list of all instances and their IDs

aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-ids 

Check AWS EC2 Instance ID with curl command

If you’re logged into your EC instance, then you can also check the instance ID from the instance metadata. To do this, simply follow these steps:

Run the following command:

curl 169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id

The instance ID will be returned in the output.

In this case, the IP address “169.254.169.254” is a link-local address that is automatically assigned to every EC2 instance by AWS. It allows the instance to access its metadata service.

The “/latest/meta-data/instance-id” part of the command is the specific path within the metadata service that retrieves the instance ID.

The instance ID is a unique identifier assigned to each EC2 instance when it is launched in AWS. It is a string of characters that uniquely identifies the instance within AWS.

When you execute the curl command, it sends an HTTP request to the metadata service at the specified IP address and path. The metadata service then returns the instance ID as the response.

Let me introduce curl command further.

The curl command is a Linux/Unix command line tool that can be used to transfer data between a server and a client. It can be used to download files, or to send data to a server.

To use the curl command, simply run the following command, followed by the URL of the file or server that you want to connect to:

curl https://www.google.com

This will send a request to Google’s server, and return the HTML of the Google home page.

You can also use curl to send data to a server. To do this, you need to use the -d flag, followed by the data that you want to send.

For example:

curl -d "name=John&age=20" localhost:8080/process

This will send the data “name=John&age=20” to the server at localhost:8080, which is assumed to be running a program that can process this data.

The curl command is a very powerful tool, and can be used for many different purposes. For more information on how to use it, consult the curl documentation.

If you get curl error 60: ssl certificate problem, you can refer to this article to fix it: 4 ways to fix curl error 60: SSL certificate problem

Check AWS EC2 Instance ID from the AWS Console

Another way to check your EC instance ID is from the AWS console. To do this, simply follow these steps:Login to your AWS account and go to the EC dashboard. Select the “Instances” option from the left-hand menu. Find the instance that you want to check in the list of instances. The instance ID will be displayed in the “ID” column.

That’s it! These are three different ways that you can check your EC instance ID. We hope that this blog post has been helpful. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us on our support forums. Thanks for reading!`;