aws ec2 describe-instances --filters

Question

Hi, am wondering if applying filters on aws cli "ec2 describe-instances --filters  [] " would filter the result set before fetching it over the network or at the client? E.g., I have 10 instances in my account, of which only 5 are 'Running' and I want to see the details of only those. My understanding after reading the docs in this case is that, backend API would simply fetch everything and filters would be applied at the client before displaying results. This means bringing over unnecessary data over the network. Is this the right understanding? If so, is there any way to "run filter at source itself"?

Accepted Answer

The `--filter(s)` parameter uses server-side filtering, returning only the data with matching results.

In contrast, the `--query` parameter utilises client-side filtering, returning all data to the client prior to matching.

For more info, take a look at https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/userguide/cli-usage-filter.html

aws ec2 describe-instances --filters

Thanks, it helps. I'm pasting a sample code from boto3 docs,

instances = ec2.instances.filter( Filters=[{'Name': 'instance-state-name', 'Values': ['running']}])

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