EC2 Instance Naming Conventions

01 Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

02 Navigate to EC2 dashboard at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

03 In the navigation panel, under INSTANCES section, choose Instances.

04 Open the Show/Hide Columns dialog box by clicking the EC2 dashboard configuration icon: .

05 Inside the Show/Hide Columns dialog box, under Your Tag Keys column, select the Name checkbox then click Close to return to the dashboard.

06 Under Name column, check the name tag value e.g.

of each instance available in the current AWS region. If one or more provisioned EC2 instances are not using naming conventions based on the default Cloud Conformity pattern (i.e. ^ec2-(ue1|uw1|uw2|ew1|ec1|an1|an2|as1|as2|se1)-([1-2]{1})([a-c]{1})-(d|t|s|p)-([a-z0-9\\-]+)$) or based on a well-defined custom pattern, the naming structure of these resources does not adhere to AWS tagging best practices.

07 Change the AWS region from the navigation bar and repeat the entire audit process for other regions.

01 Run describe-instances command (OSX/Linux/UNIX) using custom query filters to list the name tags values of the EC2 instances provisioned within the selected AWS region:

aws ec2 describe-instances
	--region us-east-1
	--output table
	--query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].Tags'

02 The command output should return an empty table if the instances do not have name tags defined or a populated table if the instances have already defined name tags, as shown in the following example:

--------------------------------------
|          DescribeInstances         |
+------+-----------------------------+
|  Key |            Value            |
+------+-----------------------------+
| Name |  MyNginxWebServerInstance   |
| Name |  MyAppAPIServerInstance     |
+------+-----------------------------+

03 Change the AWS region by updating the --region command parameter value and repeat step no. 1 and 2 to perform the audit process for other regions.

01 Sign in to the AWS Management Console.

02 Navigate to EC2 dashboard at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

03 In the navigation panel, under INSTANCES section, choose Instances.

04 Select the EC2 instance that you want to rename/retag.

05 Select Tabs tab from the dashboard bottom panel and click the Add/Edit Tags button to add or change the resource Name tag.

06 In the Add/Edit Tags dialog box, perform the following actions:

1. If the selected instance does not have a Name tag defined, click Create Tag button and provide the following information:
   • In the Key box type Name as the key name.
   • In the Value box enter the value of the Name tag, value that must be defined based on Cloud Conformity pattern, e.g. ec2-us-west-1-2b-p-nginx.
2. If the selected instance does have a Name tag already defined, change the tag value available in the Value box with one that follows the Cloud Conformity default pattern, e.g. ec2-us-east-1-2a-p-nginx.
3. Click Save to apply the changes. The selected instance is now tagged using an appropriate naming convention.

07 Repeat steps 4 – 6 to retag other EC2 instances that require a valid naming convention, available in the current region.

08 Change the AWS region from the navigation bar and repeat the entire process for other regions.

01 Run describe-instances command (OSX/Linux/UNIX) using custom filters to list the IDs of the EC2 instances tagged without using an appropriate naming convention (see Audit section part II to identify the invalid Name tag values). The following command example expose the ID of an EC2 instance tagged with Name=MyNginxWebServerInstance, provisioned in the US East-1 region:

aws ec2 describe-instances
	--region us-east-1
	--filters "Name=tag:Name,Values=MyNginxWebServerInstance"
	--query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].InstanceId[]'

02 The command output should return the ID of the instance identified by the Name tag value:

[
    "i-073a0b71eb450844f"
]

03 Run create-tags command (OSX/Linux/UNIX) using the instance ID returned at the previous step as identifier to add or overwrite the Name tag value for the specified AWS EC2 instance. The following command example overwrites the Name tag value of an instance with the ID i-073a0b71eb450844f, provisioned in the US East-1 region. The tag value used, i.e. ec2-us-west-1-2b-p-nginx, follows a well-defined naming convention based on the Cloud Conformity recommended pattern (the command does not return an output):

aws ec2 create-tags
	--region us-east-1
	--resources i-073a0b71eb450844f
	--tags Key=Name,Value=ec2-us-west-1-2b-p-nginx

04 Repeat steps no. 1 - 3 to retag other EC2 instances that require a valid naming convention, available in the current region.

05 Repeat steps no. 1 - 4 to implement the entire process for other AWS regions.