Command Line Usage¶
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] [--skip-ta] [--no-color] [-v]
[-V]
Report on AWS service limits and usage via boto, 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
--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.
Examples¶
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.
Listing Supported Services¶
View the AWS services currently supported by awslimitchecker with the
-s or --list-services option.
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -s
AutoScaling
EBS
EC2
ELB
ElastiCache
RDS
VPC
Listing Default Limits¶
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
EBS/Active snapshots 10000
EBS/Active volumes 5000
EBS/General Purpose (SSD) volume storage (GiB) 20
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL 20
VPC/Subnets per VPC 200
VPC/VPCs 5
Viewing Limits¶
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.
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -l
AutoScaling/Auto Scaling groups 100 (TA)
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 200 (TA)
EBS/Active snapshots 10000 (TA)
EBS/Active volumes 5000 (TA)
EBS/General Purpose (SSD) volume storage (GiB) 30720 (TA)
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL 20
VPC/Subnets per VPC 200
VPC/VPCs 5 (TA)
Disabling Trusted Advisor Checks¶
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 20
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 100
EBS/Active snapshots 10000
EBS/Active volumes 5000
EBS/General Purpose (SSD) volume storage (GiB) 20
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL 20
VPC/Subnets per VPC 200
VPC/VPCs 5
Checking Usage¶
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 50
AutoScaling/Launch configurations 50
EBS/Active snapshots 1065
EBS/Active volumes 922
EBS/General Purpose (SSD) volume storage (GiB) 5582
(...)
VPC/Rules per network ACL max: acl-0c279569=4 (acl-0c279569=4, acl-c6d7 (...)
VPC/Subnets per VPC max: vpc-73ec9716=11 (vpc-a926c2cc=4, vpc-c30 (...)
VPC/VPCs 4
Overriding Limits¶
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
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
EBS/Active snapshots 10000 (TA)
EBS/Active volumes 5000 (TA)
EBS/General Purpose (SSD) volume storage (GiB) 30720 (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.
Check Limits Against Thresholds¶
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
EC2/Running On-Demand EC2 instances (limit 20) CRITICAL: 111
EC2/Running On-Demand m3.medium instances (limit 20) CRITICAL: 75
EC2/Security groups per VPC (limit 100) CRITICAL: vpc-c300b9a6=138
ElastiCache/Clusters (limit 50) CRITICAL: 61
ElastiCache/Nodes (limit 50) CRITICAL: 61
(...)
RDS/VPC Security Groups (limit 5) CRITICAL: 39
VPC/Internet gateways (limit 5) WARNING: 4
VPC/VPCs (limit 5) WARNING: 4
Set Custom Thresholds¶
To set the warning threshold of 50% and a critical threshold of 75% when checking limits:
(venv)$ awslimitchecker -W 97 --critical=98 --no-color
EC2/Running On-Demand EC2 instances (limit 20) CRITICAL: 111
EC2/Running On-Demand m3.medium instances (limit 20) CRITICAL: 75
EC2/Security groups per VPC (limit 100) CRITICAL: vpc-c300b9a6=138
ElastiCache/Clusters (limit 50) CRITICAL: 61
ElastiCache/Nodes (limit 50) CRITICAL: 61
ElastiCache/Subnet Groups (limit 50) CRITICAL: 62
RDS/DB snapshots per user (limit 50) CRITICAL: 69
RDS/Subnet Groups (limit 20) CRITICAL: 39
RDS/VPC Security Groups (limit 5) CRITICAL: 39
Required IAM Policy¶
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:DescribeAutoScalingGroups",
(...)
}
],
"Version": "2012-10-17"
}
For the current IAM Policy required by this version of awslimitchecker, see IAM Policy.