Bootstrapping EC2 - VMs (AWS)

by Thomas Bründl

This article has not been completed yet. However, it may already contain helpful information and therefore it has been published at this stage.

The metadata (IPv4: 169.254.169.254 / IPv6: [fd00:ec2::254]) service is only accessible from the respective instance.
This is very useful if you want to script somethingand you need some data of the instance itself.

Annotation: The address listed here is a loopback address of the VM within the APIPA (Automatic Private IP Addressing) range.

curl http://169.254.169.254
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/
curl http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id
PS> Get-Alias -Definition Invoke-WebRequest | Format-Table -AutoSize

CommandType Name                      Version Source
----------- ----                      ------- ------
Alias       curl -> Invoke-WebRequest
Alias       iwr -> Invoke-WebRequest
Alias       wget -> Invoke-WebRequest

Annotation: This service also exists in Azure and is even accessible under the same IP.

Sources:

Retrieve instance metadata - Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud
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