Query EC2 tags from within instance

Question

Amazon recently added the wonderful feature of tagging EC2 instances with key-value pairs to make management of large numbers of VMs a bit easier.

Is there some way

Answer 1

For Python:

from boto import utils, ec2
from os import environ

# import keys from os.env or use default (not secure)
aws_access_key_id = environ.get('AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID', failobj='XXXXXXXXXXX')
aws_secret_access_key = environ.get('AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY', failobj='XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX')

#load metadata , if  = {} we are on localhost
# http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/AESDG-chapter-instancedata.html
instance_metadata = utils.get_instance_metadata(timeout=0.5, num_retries=1)
region = instance_metadata['placement']['availability-zone'][:-1]
instance_id = instance_metadata['instance-id']

conn = ec2.connect_to_region(region, aws_access_key_id=aws_access_key_id, aws_secret_access_key=aws_secret_access_key)
# get tag status for our  instance_id using filters
# http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/ApiReference-cmd-DescribeTags.html
tags = conn.get_all_tags(filters={'resource-id': instance_id, 'key': 'status'})
if tags:
    instance_status = tags[0].value
else:
    instance_status = None
    logging.error('no status tag for '+region+' '+instance_id)