Powershell script to retrieve all EC2 instances across all accounts

Question

Hi Everone,

I'm trying to get all EC2 instances across all accounts using powershell. I would appreciate your assistance in resolving this issue.

It may be that I am not familiar with the use of powershell.

Set-AWSCredential  -AccessKey  AAAAAAAAAAAAAA -SecretKey BBBBBBBBBBBBBB  -StoreAs MyNewProfile
Initialize-AWSDefaults -ProfileName MyNewProfile

Set-AWSCredential -ProfileName MyNewProfile

Set-DefaultAWSRegion -Region ap-southeast-1

Get-EC2Instance

In the event that something has to be aggregated, I would like your assistance in determining how to use aggregate in PowerShell

Answer

Hi there,

I understand that you are trying to get all EC2 instances across accounts using PowerShell.

Kindly find example PowerShell script below which retrieves all instances for all regions in an account:

```
# Get all regions
$regions = Get-AWSRegion | Select-Object Region -ExpandProperty Region

# Loop through each region to get instances
foreach ($region in $regions)
{
    try
        {   
            (Get-EC2Instance -region $region).Instances
        }
    catch
        {
            continue
        }
}
```

The above example script will have to be adjusted to list instances from all accounts. In addition as you mention configuring credentials to grant permissions to run the script, recommend looking into configuring an IAM Role which can be used across accounts. 
Kindly find guidance on this linked below:

[+] Cross-Account IAM Roles in Windows PowerShell (example script included here as well):- https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/developer/cross-account-iam-roles-in-windows-powershell/

[+] How to Use a Single IAM User to Easily Access All Your Accounts by Using the AWS CLI (AWS CLI example, however can adjust for PowerShell too):- https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/security/how-to-use-a-single-iam-user-to-easily-access-all-your-accounts-by-using-the-aws-cli/

Lastly, I would like to highlight that you may wish to look into AWS Config Service or EC2 Global view. 
Kindly find guidance on this below:

a) AWS Config Service:

[+] https://aws.amazon.com/config/
- Enable AWS Config across member accounts/regions and then use Aggregator + Advance query feature. 
- AWS Config is a monitoring service which records resources and presents you with a resources inventory. 
- If you do decided to go down this route, please ensure all your member accounts/regions have Config enabled and are recording EC2 instances.
- To enable AWS Config across Organizations, visit: 
[+] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/managing-aws-organizations-accounts-using-aws-config-and-aws-cloudformation-stacksets/
- To set up an organization-wide aggregator in AWS Config: 
[+] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/config/latest/developerguide/setup-aggregator-console.html#add-an-aggregator-console 
- To query all instances using Advanced query with Aggregator as scope: 
[+] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/mt/introducing-aws-config-multi-account-multi-region-support-for-advanced-query/
- Kindly note - AWS Config does come at an additional cost therefore I would like to also link the pricing page: 
[+] https://aws.amazon.com/config/pricing/

b) EC2 Global View: You can get a list of some types of resources using the Amazon EC2 console.

[+] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/Using_Filtering.html#global-view

I hope you find the information above helpful.

Have a wonderful day further!

Powershell script to retrieve all EC2 instances across all accounts

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