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Configuration

AWS Cloud Utilities v2 provides flexible configuration options through environment variables, configuration files, and command-line options.

Configuration Methods

Configuration is loaded in this order (later sources override earlier ones):

  1. Default values
  2. Configuration file (~/.aws-cloud-utilities.env)
  3. Environment variables
  4. Command-line options

Interactive Configuration

The easiest way to configure the tool:

aws-cloud-utilities configure

This will prompt you for: - AWS Profile - Default AWS Region - Output Format - Number of Workers

Configuration File

Create ~/.aws-cloud-utilities.env with your preferred settings:

# AWS Configuration
AWS_PROFILE=default
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
AWS_OUTPUT_FORMAT=table

# Performance Settings
WORKERS=4

# Logging
LOG_LEVEL=INFO
VERBOSE=false
DEBUG=false

# Output Settings
SHOW_PROGRESS=true
COLOR_OUTPUT=true

Environment Variables

Set environment variables for temporary overrides:

# AWS settings
export AWS_PROFILE=production
export AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=eu-west-1
export AWS_OUTPUT_FORMAT=json

# Performance
export WORKERS=8

# Logging
export LOG_LEVEL=DEBUG
export VERBOSE=true

Command-Line Options

Override any setting with command-line options:

aws-cloud-utilities --profile staging --region us-west-2 --output json account info

Configuration Options

AWS Settings

Option Environment Variable Default Description
--profile AWS_PROFILE default AWS profile to use
--region AWS_DEFAULT_REGION us-east-1 Default AWS region
--output AWS_OUTPUT_FORMAT table Output format

Performance Settings

Option Environment Variable Default Description
N/A WORKERS 4 Number of parallel workers
N/A TIMEOUT 30 Request timeout in seconds
N/A RETRY_ATTEMPTS 3 Number of retry attempts

Logging Settings

Option Environment Variable Default Description
--verbose VERBOSE false Enable verbose output
--debug DEBUG false Enable debug mode
N/A LOG_LEVEL INFO Logging level
N/A LOG_FILE None Log file path

Output Settings

Option Environment Variable Default Description
N/A SHOW_PROGRESS true Show progress bars
N/A COLOR_OUTPUT true Enable colored output
N/A TABLE_MAX_WIDTH 120 Maximum table width

AWS Profile Configuration

Using AWS CLI Profiles

Configure multiple profiles with AWS CLI:

# Configure default profile
aws configure

# Configure named profile
aws configure --profile production

Then use with the tool:

aws-cloud-utilities --profile production account info

Profile-Specific Settings

Create profile-specific configuration files:

# ~/.aws-cloud-utilities-production.env
AWS_PROFILE=production
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-east-1
WORKERS=8
LOG_LEVEL=WARNING

Load with:

aws-cloud-utilities --config ~/.aws-cloud-utilities-production.env account info

Region Configuration

Default Region

Set a default region for all operations:

AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-2

Multi-Region Operations

Some commands support multi-region operations:

# Inventory across all regions (the default when --regions is omitted)
aws-cloud-utilities inventory scan --output-dir ./inventory

# Specific regions
aws-cloud-utilities inventory scan --regions us-east-1,us-west-2,eu-west-1

Multi-region support is per-command and not uniform. Some commands take --all-regions as a flag (s3 list-buckets, logs list-groups, iam-adjacent commands), others take a comma-separated --regions list (inventory scan, cloudformation backup), and a few are single-region only (rds list-instances). Check the command's page or --help rather than assuming.

Output Format Configuration

Supported Formats

  • table - Rich formatted tables (default)
  • json - JSON output
  • yaml - YAML output
  • csv - CSV format (for tabular data)

Format-Specific Settings

# Table format settings
TABLE_MAX_WIDTH=120
TABLE_SHOW_LINES=true

# JSON format settings
JSON_INDENT=2
JSON_SORT_KEYS=true

# CSV format settings
CSV_DELIMITER=,
CSV_QUOTE_CHAR="

Performance Tuning

Worker Configuration

Adjust parallel processing:

# More workers for faster processing (uses more resources)
WORKERS=8

# Fewer workers for limited resources
WORKERS=2

Timeout Settings

Configure timeouts for different operations:

# General timeout
TIMEOUT=30

# Long-running operations
LONG_OPERATION_TIMEOUT=300

# Connection timeout
CONNECTION_TIMEOUT=10

Retry Configuration

Configure retry behavior:

RETRY_ATTEMPTS=3
RETRY_BACKOFF=2
RETRY_MAX_DELAY=60

Logging Configuration

Log Levels

Available log levels: - DEBUG - Detailed debugging information - INFO - General information - WARNING - Warning messages - ERROR - Error messages only

Log File Configuration

# Enable file logging
LOG_FILE=/var/log/aws-cloud-utilities.log

# Log rotation
LOG_MAX_SIZE=10MB
LOG_BACKUP_COUNT=5

Structured Logging

Enable structured JSON logging:

LOG_FORMAT=json
LOG_INCLUDE_TIMESTAMP=true
LOG_INCLUDE_LEVEL=true

Security Configuration

Credential Management

# Use IAM roles (recommended)
AWS_USE_IAM_ROLE=true

# Credential file location
AWS_SHARED_CREDENTIALS_FILE=~/.aws/credentials

# Config file location
AWS_CONFIG_FILE=~/.aws/config

Session Configuration

# Session duration
AWS_SESSION_DURATION=3600

# MFA settings
AWS_MFA_SERIAL=arn:aws:iam::123456789012:mfa/username

Validation

Validate your configuration:

# Check configuration
aws-cloud-utilities info

# Test AWS connectivity
aws-cloud-utilities account info

# Validate specific profile
aws-cloud-utilities --profile production account validate

Troubleshooting

Common Issues

  1. Profile not found 

    aws configure list-profiles
aws-cloud-utilities --profile correct-profile-name account info

  2. Region not available 

    aws-cloud-utilities account regions

  3. Permission errors 

    aws sts get-caller-identity
aws-cloud-utilities --debug account info

Debug Configuration

Enable debug mode to see configuration loading:

aws-cloud-utilities --debug --verbose account info

This will show: - Configuration file locations - Environment variables loaded - Final configuration values - AWS credential resolution

Best Practices

  1. Use profiles for different environments
  2. Set default region to avoid specifying it repeatedly
  3. Use configuration files for consistent settings
  4. Enable logging for troubleshooting
  5. Tune workers based on your system resources
  6. Use IAM roles instead of access keys when possible

Next Steps