kcburge / awsrun

CLI and API to execute commands over one or more AWS accounts concurrently.

awsrun

CLI and API to concurrently execute user-defined commands across AWS accounts.

Overview

awsrun is both a CLI and API to execute commands over one or more AWS accounts concurrently. Commands are user-defined Python modules that implement a simple interface to abstract away the complications of obtaining credentials for Boto 3 sessions - especially when using SAML authentication and/or cross-account access. The key features of awsrun include the following:

Concurrent Account Processing: Run a command concurrently across subset or all of your accounts. A worker pool manages the execution to ensure accounts are processed quickly, so you don't have to wait for them to be processed one at a time. Process hundreds of accounts in a few minutes.

SAML and Cross-Account Access: Tired of dealing with temporary STS credentials with SAML and cross-account authentication? Use any of the included credential plug-ins based on your needs, or build your own plug-in to provide credentials for your command authors. Don't use SAML? Build profiles in your AWS credentials file instead.

Built-in Command for AWS CLI: Ever wish you could run the standard AWS CLI tool across multiple accounts? Now you can using the included aws command. This command is a simple wrapper for AWS's CLI, but with the added benefits of using metadata to select multiple accounts as well as simplified credential handling.

User-Defined Commands: Build your own commands using the powerful Boto 3 library without the hassle of obtaining sessions and credentials. Thanks to a simple interface, commands are easy to build and can be integrated directly into the CLI with custom arguments and help messages.

Metadata Enriched Accounts: Accounts can be enriched with metadata from external sources, such as a corporate CMBD, via the account loader plug-in mechanism. This enables you to use metadata to select accounts to process rather than explicitly listing each account on the command line. In addition, command authors have access to this metadata, so it can be accessed while processing an account if needed.

Demo and Screenshots

The following examples demonstrate the wide-range of possibilities when building your awsrun commands. Nothing is special about these commands other than the fact they are included in the base install. You could have built these yourself.

aws command

The following screencast illustrates the power of awsrun once it has been configured to your environment. In this demo, we use awsrun to gather VPC information. We could do the same using only AWS's native CLI, but that limits us to processing one account at a time. Instead, we'll use awsrun and the built-in aws command to execute an AWS CLI command across multiple accounts concurrently. We'll also make use of the awsrun's metadata explorer to select accounts for command execution. As you are about to observe, 58 accounts were selected by the metadata filter and then processed in 13 seconds.

Note: The output has been obfuscated with random account numbers and identifiers.

last command

The next screenshot shows how we can use the last command to interactively explore CloudTrail events.

dx_status command

The last screenshots show two variants of output from the dx_status command, which provides an overview of any Direct Connects in an account. This includes pulling CloudWatch metrics and generating terminal-based graphs using sparklines and ASCII-based charts.

Installation

To install from source, clone the repo and run pip install:

$ git clone https://github.com/fmr-llc/awsrun.git
$ cd awsrun
$ pip3 install .

Python 3.6 or higher is required.

In order to use the built-in awsrun aws command, the AWS CLI tool must be installed and available in your PATH. It is no longer installed as part of the awsrun installation to allow users the choice of installing v1 or v2 of the AWS CLI tool.

If installing AWS CLI v1 on Windows via pip, users must make sure that the AWS CLI tool is included in their PATH. When pip installs the AWS CLI, it does not set the appropriate PATH variables on Windows, so it may be easier to install the AWS CLI via the MSIs provided by AWS.

Quick Start

Out of the box, the utility of awsrun is limited as most of its power comes from the configuration of an account loader plug-in and a credential loader plug-in. With that said, however, you can still use it, as it will default to loading credentials from your $HOME/.aws/credentials file. While not convenient when managing hundreds of accounts, it will suffice to get you started.

Let's assume you wanted to list the EC2 instances in two accounts: 100200300400 and 200300400100. We can use the built-in aws command to execute any AWS CLI command across one or more accounts concurrently. Be sure you have followed the installation instructions in the previous section. Then, you'll need to create two profiles, [100200300400] and [200300400100], in your local AWS credentials file $HOME/.aws/credentials. If awsrun cannot find a profile for named for the specific account, it will fallback to the [default] profile.

Note: The AWS credentials file is not part of awsrun, but it is used as the default mechanism to obtain credentials if more advanced options have not been configured. For help on the configuration of the AWS credential file, refer to AWS CLI Named Profiles.

With the profiles defined, you can now run the following to list the EC2 instances in both accounts across multiple regions concurrently:

$ awsrun --account 100200300400 --account 200300400100 aws ec2 describe-instances --region us-east-1 --region us-west-2
2 accounts selected:

100200300400, 200300400100

Proceed (y/n)? y
...

If, instead, you want to list lambda functions in those accounts:

$ awsrun --account 100200300400 --account 200300400100 aws lambda list-functions --region us-east-1 --region us-west-2
2 accounts selected:

100200300400, 200300400100

Proceed (y/n)? y
...

There are several other built-in commands that have been included in awsrun. The more interesting ones include the last command to inspect CloudTrail events as well as the dx_status command to check the status of Direct Connect circuits. Remember, you are encouraged to build your own custom commands. These have been provided to show you how to do so.

Documentation

awsrun includes extensive documentation, which includes the following:

• The CLI User Guide includes basic usage, configuration, and how to use the account loader and credential loader plug-ins.

• The How-to Write Your Own Commands guide provides everything you need to write your own custom awsrun commands. This is where you'll spend a lot of time once you become familiar with the capabilities of awsrun.

• The API User Guide includes pointers to the key documentation required to use awsrun programmatically instead of via the CLI. All of the awsrun modules are also extensively documented.

• The How-to Write Your Own Plug-ins section includes pointers to the documentation required to build your own account loader plug-in and credential plug-in if the included ones are not suitable to your environment.

Change Log

v2.2.0

• Add three new built-in commands: console, dx_status, and last. Console generates sign-in URLs for the AWS Console using credentials from awsrun. Dx_status shows the status of Direct Connect circuits (terminal graphs too!). Last provides an easier way to review CloudTrail events in both an interactive and non-interactive manner.

• Add the cloudwatch module to simplify the retrieval of CloudWatch metrics using bulk retrieval for efficiency. This module is used be the new dx_status command.

• Update the included built-in commands that iterate over VPCs to filter out VPCs that have been shared with an account as generally that is the behavior one is expecting from these built-in commands.

• Remove AWS CLI as a python dependency in setup.py. AWS has released v2 of the AWS CLI, so we should not presume to install v1 via pip installation. In addition, AWS has stated that the only supported installation of the AWS CLI v2 is via their own bundled package installers. What does this mean for awsrun users? Install the AWS CLI on your own if you plan on using the built-in aws command.

• Fonts used in documentation have been updated to use Charter and Fire Mono.

v2.1.0

• Add a YAML account loader plug-in to complement the CSV and JSON account loader plug-ins.
• Minor clarification in user guide about the interaction between --accounts and metadata filters (--include/--exclude).

v2.0.0

• Initial open source release of awsrun from Fidelity's CloudX Network team. This version abstracts the Fidelity specific integrations into plug-ins, so others can take advantage of this tool, which has proven to be valuable for our teams.