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

Awsrun is both a CLI and Python package used 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 Boto3 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 tool, 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 Boto3 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.

These examples demonstrate the wide-range of possibilities when building your own awsrun commands. While these commands are included in awsrun, they use the same command API that you would if building your own. Nothing is special about these commands other than they are included in the base install of awsrun. You could have built these yourself.

This screencast illustrates the power of awsrun once it has been configured to your environment using appropriate credential and account loader plug-ins. In this demo, we use awsrun to gather VPC information. While we could do the same using only AWS's native CLI, we would be limited 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.

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

This screenshot demonstrates the use of the last command to interactively explore CloudTrail events. Don't have a simple means to view CloudTrail logs? Tired of using the AWS Console? The last command provides a simple way of viewing events in one or more accounts.

If you manage AWS Direct Connects to provide connectivity to your on-premise corporate networks, you might find the dx_status command helpful. It provides an overview of Direct Connects contained within an account. This includes pulling CloudWatch metrics and generating terminal-based graphs using sparklines and ASCII-based charts.

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

$ git clone https://github.com/fidelity/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 operating system's PATH. In prior versions of awsrun, the AWS CLI tool was installed automatically as part of the installation. It is no longer installed 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 variable on Windows, so it may be easier to install the AWS CLI via the MSIs provided by AWS.

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.

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, 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.

awsrun includes extensive documentation, which includes the following:

• The CLI User Guide includes basic usage, configuration of awsrun, and how to use the account loader and credential loader plug-ins to enhance the user experience on the CLI.

• The Library 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 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 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.

• Add a decorator awsrun.runner.max_thread_limit that can be used by command authors to limit the number of concurrent executions. There are some scenarios where a command author may never want their command run concurrently across multiple accounts. By default, awsrun uses a thread pool of ten workers, and users can override, so this gives command authors ability to limit if needed.

• Reorganized the documentation. The CLI user guide and reference are now part of the awsrun.cli module documentation. The user guide on writing commands has been moved to the awsrun.commands module. Lots of other minor edits were made as part of this reorganization. Hopefully, things are easier to find with the new layout.

• 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 opposed to being owned by the account, as generally that is the behavior one is expecting.

• 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 Fira Mono.

• 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).

• 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.