Is there a way to create or destroy virtual machines with aws api? I could not find a very comprehensive resource on it. I am trying to use this for being a dynamic web host.
Yes, this is possible using the EC2 API ('RunInstances' docs here). Alternatively if you're dealing with an expanding and contracting pool of instances you might want to look into Auto Scaling Groups (docs here).
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I am trying to build a project(in java) in which given a EC2 instance type, I should be able to find what is the configured memory, vCPU's etc for that service. Basically information as present in this website: https://www.ec2instances.info/
I have tried a lot of public AWS APIs for this but unable to find something exactly suiting my use case. Ps, AWS CLI is not an option since I have to do it automatically from code.
Any help would be highly appreciated.
You can use the DescribeInstanceTypes API to retrieve the details of the instance types that are offered in a location. More info about the API, how you can filter, and the details of its response can be found in the documentation.
I am familiar with AWS SDKs (Python/Java) and the need for the same for a lot of services like S3, DDB, KMS etc.
Are there any valid use cases for using the AWS Java SDK e.g. to programmatically spin off an EC2 instance or an EMR cluster or Redshift cluster or RDS instance or for that matter any resource that requires setting up of an infrastructure/cluster?
If AWS console is not an option, and programmatic access is all we have then, don't we always end up using AWS CLI for corresponding services or CloudFormation or Terraform for that matter?
Generally its best practice to manage any infrastructure/service deployments by using an infrastructure as code solutions such as CloudFormation, CDK (which generates CloudFormation stacks under the hood) or Terraform.
Whilst you could use the SDK to create this services (and create a solution that is similar to the solutions above) you will be building a lot of functionality that other services have already created which would put more ownership on you to fix it if you want to support another service etc.
The SDKs simply provide every AWS API interaction in a programmatic way, even under the hood CloudFormation and Terraform will likely be using the SDKs to programmatically create the resources (although I am speculating) but would then add additional functionality such as state management and drift detection on top of this.
I only have seen services being created via the SDKs when that service is not available in the selected tool, and even then it would generally be wrapped within that tool (such as custom resources for CloudFormation).
In summary, yes you could use the SDK to generate these but unless there is a specific usecase to use the SDK I would advise using a tool that already manages this so you can focus more on your infrastructure/applications.
The AWS CLI is built using the AWS SDK for Python. Terraform is built using the AWS SDK for GoLang. You may want to stick with higher level infrastructure-as-code tools, but those tools wouldn't exist without the SDKs, and if you wanted to build a tool like that you would most likely build it on top of one of the SDKs.
There are also quite a few use-cases I've seen discussed here on StackOverflow for performing infrastructure automation through AWS Lambda, for example periodically stopping and starting RDS instances, where using one of the AWS SDKs in the Lambda code would likely be much easier than trying to get Terraform to run inside a Lambda function.
I am a newbie in amazon web services and have got some questions related to amazon RDS:
1.How can we use AWS API to define an RDS and send the parameter 'publicly accessible' to it? I know that the CLI has a -pub flag (CLI-RDS) which can be used, but what about when we are not using CLI and gonna use some programming language like Node.js?
2.Is it possible to change the state of publicly-accessible parameter of an RDS? I mean If we have already defined an RDS in private state, can we change it later? If yes How? I also read the discussion here (RDS to public), and they offered to Delete the current RDS & create final snapshot and then Restore the Snapshot with the the public availability zone. It's not possible in my case. Is there any other way? we want to change the state of publicly accessible parameter dynamically because of some security issues.
This API call is available on all clients (Console, SDK, CLI, ...) here is the documentation for node.js, check the PubliclyAccessible parameter:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSJavaScriptSDK/latest/AWS/RDS.html#modifyDBInstance-property
It is surely possible. However, as the cloudformation documentation mentions, that requires substitution and so expect and plan for some downtime:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSCloudFormation/latest/UserGuide/aws-properties-rds-database-instance.html#cfn-rds-dbinstance-publiclyaccessible
Is there a way list/view(graphically?) all created resources on amazon? All the db's users, pools etc.
The best way I can think of is to run each of the cli aws <resource> ls commands in a bash file.
What would be great would be to have a graphical tool that showed all the relationships. Is anyone aware of such a tool?
UPDATE
I decided to make my own start on this, currently its just on the cli, but might move to graphical output. Help needed!
https://github.com/QuantumInformation/aws-x-ray
No, it is not possible to easily list all services created on AWS.
Each service has a set of API calls and will typically have Describe* calls that can list resources. However, these commands would need to be issued to each service individually and they typically have different syntax.
There are third-party services (eg Kumolus) that offer functionality to list and visualize services but they are typically focussed on Amazon EC2 and Amazon VPC-based services. They definitely would not go 'into' a database to list DB users, but they would show Amazon RDS instances.
I have a web site hosted in AWS that makes use of a number of AWS services. The environment was created manually using a combination of the web console and the AWS CLI. I'd like to start managing it using CloudFormation. I've used the CouldFormer tool to create a template of the stack but I can't find a way to use it to manage the existing environment. It will allow me to create a duplicate environment without too many problems but I don't really want to delete the entire production environment so I can recreate it using CloudFormation.
Is there a way to create a template of an existing environment and start updating it with CloudFormation?
#Sailor is right... unfortunately, I can't quote a credible source either - it's just a combination of working with Cloud Formation for an extended period of time and knowing enough about it. (Maybe I'm the credible source)
But what you could do is use your Cloud Former stack, and roll your existing production infrastructure into it.
For example, if you've got some EC2 images and a scaling group - roll that out, and then start terminating the others. How you'd do it would depend on your environment, but if it's architected for the cloud, it shouldn't be too difficult.
Currently there is not way to do that.