AWS EC2: List Running Instances with Filters

Q: AWS EC2: List Running Instances with Filters

## Listing Running EC2 Instances The aws ec2 describe-instances command retrieves detailed information about your EC2 instances. Without filters, it returns everything — so using --filters and --query is essential for practical use. ### List All Running Instances bash aws ec2 describe-instances \ --filters "Name=instance-state-name,Values=running" \ --query "Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,InstanceType,State.Name,PublicIpAddress]" \ --output table ### Example Output ---------

Filter EC2 instances by state, tags, or instance type using aws ec2 describe-instances with --filters and --query for clean output.

EC2 Operations

Detailed Explanation

Listing Running EC2 Instances

The aws ec2 describe-instances command retrieves detailed information about your EC2 instances. Without filters, it returns everything — so using --filters and --query is essential for practical use.

List All Running Instances

aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --filters "Name=instance-state-name,Values=running" \
  --query "Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,InstanceType,State.Name,PublicIpAddress]" \
  --output table

Example Output

---------------------------------------------------------------
|                      DescribeInstances                       |
+---------------------+-----------+---------+-----------------+
|  i-0abc123def456789 |  t3.micro | running |  54.210.100.50  |
|  i-0def789abc123456 |  t3.small | running |  52.24.100.200  |
+---------------------+-----------+---------+-----------------+

Filter by Tag

aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --filters "Name=tag:Environment,Values=production" \
  --query "Reservations[].Instances[].[InstanceId,Tags[?Key=='Name']|[0].Value]" \
  --output table

Filter by Instance Type

aws ec2 describe-instances \
  --filters "Name=instance-type,Values=t3.micro,t3.small" \
  --query "Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId" \
  --output text

Common Filters

Filter Name	Example Values	Purpose
`instance-state-name`	running, stopped, terminated	Filter by state
`tag:Name`	MyServer	Filter by tag
`instance-type`	t3.micro	Filter by size
`vpc-id`	vpc-abc123	Filter by VPC
`availability-zone`	us-east-1a	Filter by AZ

JMESPath Tips

[].Instances[].InstanceId — extract just IDs
[?State.Name=='running'] — filter in query
sort_by(@, &LaunchTime) — sort results
[:5] — limit to first 5 results

Use Case

Monitoring running infrastructure, auditing instance types for cost optimization, finding instances by tag during incident response, or scripting automated inventory reports.

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