DescribeInstances

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud: 2009-03-01

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DescribeInstances

The DescribeInstances operation returns information about instances that you own.

If you specify one or more instance IDs, Amazon EC2 returns information for those instances. If you do not specify instance IDs, Amazon EC2 returns information for all relevant instances. If you specify an invalid instance ID, a fault is returned. If you specify an instance that you do not own, it will not be included in the returned results.

Recently terminated instances might appear in the returned results. This interval is usually less than one hour.

Request Parameters

The following table describes the request parameters for DescribeInstances. Parameter names are case sensitive.

Name Description Required

instancesSet

Set of instances IDs to get the status of.

Type: xsd:string[]

Default: none

Valid Values: Can be empty

Constraints: none

Yes

Response Elements

The following table describes the default response tags included in DescribeInstances responses.

Name Description

reservationSet

A list of structures describing the status of all requested instances.

Type: ReservationInfoType[]

Sample Request

<DescribeInstances xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2009-03-01/">
  <instancesSet>
    <item>
      <instanceId>i-28a64341</instanceId>
    </item>
  </instancesSet>
</DescribeInstances>

Sample Response

<DescribeInstancesResponse xmlns="http://ec2.amazonaws.com/doc/2009-03-01/">
  <reservationSet>
    <item>
      <reservationId>r-44a5402d</reservationId>
      <ownerId>UYY3TLBUXIEON5NQVUUX6OMPWBZIQNFM</ownerId>
      <groupSet>
        <item>
          <groupId>default</groupId>
        </item>
      </groupSet>
      <instancesSet>
        <item>
          <instanceId>i-28a64341</instanceId>
          <imageId>ami-6ea54007</imageId>
          <instanceState>
            <code>0</code>
            <name>running</name>
          </instanceState>
          <privateDnsName>10-251-50-132.ec2.internal</privateDnsName>
          <dnsName>ec2-72-44-33-4.compute-1.amazonaws.com</dnsName>
          <keyName>example-key-name</keyName>
          <amiLaunchIndex>23</amiLaunchIndex>
          <productCodesSet>
            <item><productCode>774F4FF8</productCode></item>
          </productCodesSet>
          <instanceType>m1.large</instanceType>
          <launchTime>2007-08-07T11:54:42.000Z</launchTime>
          <placement>
            <availabilityZone>us-east-1b</availabilityZone>
	  </placement>
	  <kernelId>aki-ba3adfd3</kernelId>
	  <ramdiskId>ari-badbad00</ramdiskId>
        </item>
      </instancesSet>
    </item>
  </reservationSet>
</DescribeInstancesResponse>

Related Operations

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