A really REALLY basic look at the AWS SDK Ruby gem

gistfile1.md

Requirements

Ruby

I used Rubinius 1.9 for this but MRI and others that support the AWS gem will probably work.

Gem

You'll need to install the gem from here

gem install aws-sdk

Also can pick it up from the AWS SDK Ruby Repository over on GitHub.

Setup

I create a YAML file to store AWS creds. You can visit the AWS SDK for Ruby Getting Started page for information on how to create/access these credentials. I store them in a file called aws_config.yml which looks like this:

access_key_id: KEY
secret_access_key: SECRET

Then the basic code to setup is as follows:

require 'aws-sdk'

# Load the auth information 
config_file = File.join(File.dirname(__FILE__), "aws_config.yml")
AWS.config(YAML.load(File.read(config_file)))

# Create a new EC2 instance
ec2 = AWS::EC2.new()

# You can also create it with a specific availability zone
ec2 = AWS::EC2.new(:ec2_endpoint => 'ec2.us-west-1.amazonaws.com')

Basic Use

This creates an instance, polls it until it is out of pending status, shows all the instances available, then shuts down the recently started instance. I use a t1.micro so that people who copy and paste this code won't get charged some ridiculous amount.

instance = ec2.instances.create( :image_id => 'ami-id-goes-here', :instance_type => 't1.micro', :count => 1, :security_groups => 'YourGroup', :key_name => 'YourKey')

sleep 1 until instance.status != :pending

ec2.instances.each do | i |
  puts "#{i.id} #{i.status}"
end

instance.terminate

Additional Resources

You'll want to take a look at the AWS::EC2 docs for a basic overview. Of particular interest to most will be the AWS::EC2::Instance class which holds various properties of an instance and methods you can run on them.