Exploring Efficient Ways to Use AWS Beyond the AWS Console

AWS Management Console is the most popular way to interact with AWS, but it’s not the only option. In many scenarios, programmatic solutions are needed for faster execution, automation, or efficient resource management. Let's explore different ways to connect and interact with AWS beyond the console.

1. AWS CLI

   • The AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) is a tool that can help to use AWS services using CLI.

   • Use cases:

     • Describe, start, or stop EC2 instances.

     • List, create, or remove S3 buckets,

     • Upload or download files from S3.

     • Perform many other AWS service operations programmatically.

   • How to Get Started:

     • Install AWS CLI from the official AWS documentation.

     • Configure it using aws configure , and provide your AWS Access Key and Secret Key.

2. AWS SDKs

   • The AWS SDKs are available in various programming languages to help integrate AWS services directly into your application. Some popular SDKs are available for Python (Boto3), and JavaScript (AWS SDK for JavaScript).

   • Use Cases:

     • We can create an AWS user and assign a policy inside our applications

     • We can fetch secrets from AWS Secrets Manager.

   • How to Get Started:

     • Find an SDK that suits your project's programming language and use it. Eg., boto3 for Python programming.

3. AWS CloudShell

   • AWS CloudShell provides a browser-based shell to execute AWS CLI commands directly from within the AWS Console without installing or configuring the AWS CLI locally.

   • Use Cases:

     • If we want to use the power of CLI without installing and configuring the required tools.

     • We can run scripts and commands at no extra cost, with up to 1 GB of persistent storage per AWS region.

   • How to Get Started:

     • We can quickly access the cloud shell by clicking its icon at the navigation bar or footer of the console.

       

4. AWS CloudFormation

   • AWS CloudFormation is infrastructure as code tool. We need to create a template that defines resources and deploys them consistently across your environments.

   • When we create an EKS cluster internally, it uses CloudFormation to create a structure.

   • Use Cases:

     • Automate, test, and deploy infrastructure templates with continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD) automation.

     • Run anything from a single Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance to a complex multi-region application.

   • How to Get Started:

     • We need to learn to create a stack using a template and that template is a collection of AWS resources you want to deploy together as a group

5. Terraform

   • Terraform is an open-source tool developed by HashiCorp. It allows you to define and provision infrastructure using code. It not only supports AWS but also cloud providers.

   • It uses a declarative approach. You define the desired state of your infrastructure, and Terraform takes care of the provisioning.

   • Use Cases:

     • when we need multi-cloud support

     • to quickly create a dev, stage, and production environment by using slight changes in terraform configuration

   • How to Get Started:

     • Install Terraform from the official website.

     • Write infrastructure configurations using .tffiles.

       Use the terraform init, terraform plan, and terraform apply commands to provision and manage resources.

Even though AWS Console is very user-friendly, we can unleash the real power of AWS by integrating with projects and automating the process through CLI and IaC. Everyone should use these ways and increase productivity.

Happy Learning 😊