Amazon Web Services, or AWS, is the cloud service offering from Amazon.
Once you have an account, you can interact in several ways. There is of course the browser-based 'console' which is overwhelming and complicated. Then there is also the console-based commands when logged into an instance. That is referred to as the AWS CLI [1]. But thankfully, there are a couple of command-line toolsets for manipulating the API and also Amazon Machine Images (AMI) right from the comfort of your own home.
- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/set-up-ec2-cli-linux.html Getting setup
- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/Welcome.html
- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/command-reference.html
- Amazon EC2 API Tools The API tools serve as the client interface to the Amazon EC2 web service. Use these tools to register and launch instances, manipulate security groups, and more.
- Amazon EC2 AMI Tools are command-line utilities to bundle an Amazon Machine Image (AMI), create an AMI from an existing machine or installed volume, and upload a bundled AMI to Amazon S3.
Example ec2-cli commands
ec2-describe-instances
ec2-stop-instances i-ca51833a
ec2-terminate-instances -h