awslimitchecker ships with a command line script for use outside of Python environments. awslimitchecker
is installed as a setuptools entry point, and will be available wherever you install the package (if you install in a virtual environment as recommended, it will be in the venv's bin/
directory).
The command line script provides simple access to the most common features, though not full access to all configuration possibilities. In addition, when checking usage, the script will exit 0 of everything is OK, 1 if there are warnings, and 2 if there are critical thresholds exceeded (though the output is not currently suitable for direct use as a Nagios-compatible plugin).
(venv)$ awslimitchecker --help
usage: awslimitchecker [-h] [-S SERVICE] [-s] [-l] [--list-defaults]
[-L LIMIT] [-u] [--iam-policy] [-W WARNING_THRESHOLD]
[-C CRITICAL_THRESHOLD] [-A STS_ACCOUNT_ID]
[-R STS_ACCOUNT_ROLE] [-E EXTERNAL_ID]
[-M MFA_SERIAL_NUMBER] [-T MFA_TOKEN] [-r REGION]
[--skip-ta] [--no-color] [-v] [-V]
Report on AWS service limits and usage via boto3, optionally warn about any
services with usage nearing or exceeding their limits. For further help, see
<http://awslimitchecker.readthedocs.org/>
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
-S SERVICE, --service SERVICE
perform action for only the specified service name;
see -s|--list-services for valid names
-s, --list-services print a list of all AWS service types that
awslimitchecker knows how to check
-l, --list-limits print all AWS effective limits in
"service_name/limit_name" format
--list-defaults print all AWS default limits in
"service_name/limit_name" format
-L LIMIT, --limit LIMIT
override a single AWS limit, specified in
"service_name/limit_name=value" format; can be
specified multiple times.
-u, --show-usage find and print the current usage of all AWS services
with known limits
--iam-policy output a JSON serialized IAM Policy listing the
required permissions for awslimitchecker to run
correctly.
-W WARNING_THRESHOLD, --warning-threshold WARNING_THRESHOLD
default warning threshold (percentage of limit);
default: 80
-C CRITICAL_THRESHOLD, --critical-threshold CRITICAL_THRESHOLD
default critical threshold (percentage of limit);
default: 99
-A STS_ACCOUNT_ID, --sts-account-id STS_ACCOUNT_ID
for use with STS, the Account ID of the destination
account (account to assume a role in)
-R STS_ACCOUNT_ROLE, --sts-account-role STS_ACCOUNT_ROLE
for use with STS, the name of the IAM role to assume
-E EXTERNAL_ID, --external-id EXTERNAL_ID
External ID to use when assuming a role via STS
-M MFA_SERIAL_NUMBER, --mfa-serial-number MFA_SERIAL_NUMBER
MFA Serial Number to use when assuming a role via STS
-T MFA_TOKEN, --mfa-token MFA_TOKEN
MFA Token to use when assuming a role via STS
-r REGION, --region REGION
AWS region name to connect to; required for STS
--skip-ta do not attempt to pull *any* information on limits
from Trusted Advisor
--no-color do not colorize output
-v, --verbose verbose output. specify twice for debug-level output.
-V, --version print version number and exit.
awslimitchecker is AGPLv3-licensed Free Software. Anyone using this program,
even remotely over a network, is entitled to a copy of the source code. Use
`--version` for information on the source code location.
In the following examples, output has been truncated to simplify documentation. When running with all services enabled, awslimitchecker
will provide many lines of output. (...)
has been inserted in the output below to denote removed or truncated lines.
View the AWS services currently supported by awslimitchecker
with the -s
or --list-services
option.
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -s
AutoScaling
CloudFormation
EBS
EC2
ELB
(...)
RDS
S3
SES
VPC
To show the hard-coded default limits, ignoring any limit overrides or Trusted Advisor data, run with --list-defaults
:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker --list-defaults
AutoScaling/Auto Scaling groups 20
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 100
CloudFormation/Stacks 200
EBS/Active snapshots 10000
EBS/Active volumes 5000
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL 20
VPC/Subnets per VPC 200
VPC/VPCs 5
View the limits that awslimitchecker
currently knows how to check, and what the limit value is set as (if you specify limit overrides, they will be used instead of the default limit) by specifying the -l
or --list-limits
option. Limits followed by (TA)
have been obtained from Trusted Advisor and limits followed by (API)
have been obtained from the service's API.
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -l
AutoScaling/Auto Scaling groups 200 (API)
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 200 (API)
CloudFormation/Stacks 200 (API)
EBS/Active snapshots 10000 (TA)
EBS/Active volumes 5000 (TA)
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL 20
VPC/Subnets per VPC 200
VPC/VPCs 5 (TA)
Using the --skip-ta
option will disable attempting to query limit information from Trusted Advisor for all commands.
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -l --skip-ta
AutoScaling/Auto Scaling groups 200 (API)
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 200 (API)
CloudFormation/Stacks 200 (API)
EBS/Active snapshots 10000
EBS/Active volumes 5000
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL 20
VPC/Subnets per VPC 200
VPC/VPCs 5
The -u
or --show-usage
options to awslimitchecker
show the current usage for each limit that awslimitchecker
knows about. It will connect to the AWS API and determine the current usage for each limit. In cases where limits are per-resource instead of account-wide (i.e. "Rules per VPC security group" or "Security groups per VPC"), the usage will be reported for each possible resource in resource_id=value
format (i.e. for each VPC security group and each VPC, respectively, using their IDs).
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -u
AutoScaling/Auto Scaling groups 0
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 2
CloudFormation/Stacks 7
EBS/Active snapshots 0
EBS/Active volumes 3
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL max: acl-43a80626=4 (acl-43a80626=4, acl-4da8 (...)
VPC/Subnets per VPC vpc-54f65931=6
VPC/VPCs 1
In cases where you've been given a limit increase by AWS Support, you can override the default limits with custom ones. Currently, to do this from the command line, you must specify each limit that you want to override separately (the :py~.AwsLimitChecker.set_limit_overrides
Python method accepts a dict for easy bulk overrides of limits) using the -L
or --limit
options. Limits are specified in a service_name/limit_name=value
format, and must be quoted if the limit name contains spaces.
For example, to override the limits of EC2's "EC2-Classic Elastic IPs" and "EC2-VPC Elastic IPs" from their defaults of 5, to 10 and 20, respestively:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -L "AutoScaling/Auto Scaling groups"=321 --limit="AutoScaling/Launch configurations"=456 -l
AutoScaling/Auto Scaling groups 321
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 456
CloudFormation/Stacks 200 (API)
EBS/Active snapshots 10000 (TA)
EBS/Active volumes 5000 (TA)
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL 20
VPC/Subnets per VPC 200
VPC/VPCs 5 (TA)
This example simply sets the overrides, and then prints the limits for confirmation.
The default mode of operation for awslimitchecker
(when no other action-specific options are specified) is to check the usage of all known limits, compare them against the configured limit values, and then output a message and set an exit code depending on thresholds. The limit values used will be (in order of precedence) explicitly-set overrides, Trusted Advisor data, and hard-coded defaults.
Currently, the awslimitchecker
command line script only supports global warning and critical thresholds, which default to 80% and 99% respectively. If any limit's usage is greater than or equal to 80% of its limit value, this will be included in the output and the program will exit with return code 1. If any limit's usage is greater than or equal to 99%, it will include that in the output and exit 2. When determining exit codes, critical takes priority over warning. The output will include the specifics of which limits exceeded the threshold, and for limits that are per-resource, the resource IDs.
The Python class allows setting thresholds per-limit as either a percentage, or an integer usage value, or both; this functionality is not currently present in the command line wrapper.
To check all limits against their thresholds (in this example, one limit has crossed the warning threshold only, and another has crossed the critical threshold):
(venv)$ awslimitchecker --no-color
S3/Buckets (limit 100) CRITICAL: 104
To set the warning threshold of 50% and a critical threshold of 75% when checking limits:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -W 97 --critical=98 --no-color
S3/Buckets (limit 100) CRITICAL: 104
awslimitchecker
can also provide the user with an IAM Policy listing the minimum permissions for it to perform all limit checks. This can be viewed with the --iam-policy
option:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker --iam-policy
{
"Statement": [
{
"Action": [
"autoscaling:DescribeAccountLimits",
(...)
}
],
"Version": "2012-10-17"
}
For the current IAM Policy required by this version of awslimitchecker, see IAM Policy <iam_policy>
.
To connect to a specific region (i.e. us-west-2
), simply specify the region name with the -r
or --region
options:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -r us-west-2
To assume the "foobar" role in account 123456789012 in region us-west-1, specify the -r
/ --region
option as well as the -A
/ --sts-account-id
and -R
/ --sts-account-role
options:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -r us-west-1 -A 123456789012 -R foobar
If you also need to specify an external_id
of "myid", you can do that with the -E
/ --external-id
options:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -r us-west-1 -A 123456789012 -R foobar -E myid
Please note that this assumes that you already have STS configured and working between your account and the 123456789012 destination account; see the documentation for further information.