How to get metadata of an AWS EC2 instance

Because your instance metadata is available from your running instance, you do not need to use the Amazon EC2 console or the AWS CLI. This can be helpful when you’re writing scripts to run from your instance.

Run this command on your AWS EC2 shell:

wget -q -O - http://169.254.169.254/latest/dynamic/instance-identity/document

This will get you the metadata in JSON format such as this:

{

    "devpayProductCodes" : null,
    "privateIp" : "10.1.2.3",
    "region" : "us-east-1",
    "kernelId" : "aki-12345678",
    "ramdiskId" : null,
    "availabilityZone" : "us-east-1a",
    "accountId" : "123456789abc",
    "version" : "2010-08-31",
    "instanceId" : "i-12345678",
    "billingProducts" : null,
    "architecture" : "x86_64",
    "imageId" : "ami-12345678",
    "pendingTime" : "2014-01-23T45:01:23Z",
    "instanceType" : "m1.small"

}

Useful links:

• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/instancedata-data-retrieval.html
• https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/ec2-instance-metadata.html#instancedata-data-categories