Managing Alibaba Cloud

Managing Alibaba Cloud

Manage Alibaba Cloud infrastructure using the aliyun CLI.

MANDATORY: Discovery-First Pattern

Always discover available resources before performing analysis.

Phase 1: Discovery

#!/bin/bash

echo "=== Account Info ==="
aliyun sts GetCallerIdentity 2>/dev/null | jq '{AccountId, Arn, UserId}'

echo ""
echo "=== ECS Instances ==="
aliyun ecs DescribeInstances --PageSize 50 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.Instances.Instance[] | "\(.InstanceId)\t\(.InstanceName)\t\(.RegionId)\t\(.InstanceType)\t\(.Status)\t\(.VpcAttributes.PrivateIpAddress.IpAddress[0] // "N/A")"' | head -30

echo ""
echo "=== RDS Instances ==="
aliyun rds DescribeDBInstances --PageSize 50 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.Items.DBInstance[] | "\(.DBInstanceId)\t\(.DBInstanceDescription)\t\(.Engine)\t\(.EngineVersion)\t\(.DBInstanceStatus)\t\(.DBInstanceClass)"' | head -20

echo ""
echo "=== VPCs ==="
aliyun vpc DescribeVpcs --PageSize 50 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.Vpcs.Vpc[] | "\(.VpcId)\t\(.VpcName)\t\(.RegionId)\t\(.CidrBlock)\t\(.Status)"' | head -10

echo ""
echo "=== SLB Load Balancers ==="
aliyun slb DescribeLoadBalancers --PageSize 50 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.LoadBalancers.LoadBalancer[] | "\(.LoadBalancerId)\t\(.LoadBalancerName)\t\(.Address)\t\(.LoadBalancerStatus)"' | head -10

echo ""
echo "=== OSS Buckets ==="
aliyun oss ls 2>/dev/null | head -20

Phase 2: Analysis

#!/bin/bash

INSTANCE_ID="${1:?ECS Instance ID required}"

echo "=== Instance Details ==="
aliyun ecs DescribeInstanceAttribute --InstanceId "$INSTANCE_ID" 2>/dev/null | jq '{
    InstanceId, InstanceName, Status, InstanceType,
    Cpu, Memory, RegionId, ZoneId,
    CreationTime, ExpiredTime,
    InternetMaxBandwidthIn, InternetMaxBandwidthOut
}'

echo ""
echo "=== Instance Monitoring (CPU, Network) ==="
aliyun cms DescribeMetricLast --Namespace acs_ecs_dashboard --MetricName CPUUtilization \
    --Dimensions "[{\"instanceId\":\"$INSTANCE_ID\"}]" 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.Datapoints | fromjson | .[] | "\(.timestamp)\tCPU: \(.Average)%"' | tail -10

echo ""
echo "=== Disks ==="
aliyun ecs DescribeDisks --InstanceId "$INSTANCE_ID" --PageSize 50 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.Disks.Disk[] | "\(.DiskId)\t\(.DiskName)\t\(.Size)GB\t\(.Category)\t\(.Status)"' | head -10

echo ""
echo "=== Security Groups ==="
aliyun ecs DescribeInstanceAttribute --InstanceId "$INSTANCE_ID" 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.SecurityGroupIds.SecurityGroupId[]' | while read sg; do
    aliyun ecs DescribeSecurityGroupAttribute --SecurityGroupId "$sg" 2>/dev/null | jq -r '.Permissions.Permission[] | "\(.IpProtocol)\t\(.PortRange)\t\(.SourceCidrIp)\t\(.Policy)\t\(.Direction)"' | head -10
done

Output Format

INSTANCE_ID          NAME     REGION        TYPE            STATUS
i-abc123def456       web-01   cn-hangzhou   ecs.c6.large    Running
i-abc123ghi789       db-01    cn-hangzhou   ecs.r6.xlarge   Running

Safety Rules

• Use read-only commands: Describe*, List*, Get*
• Never run Delete*, Stop*, Release* without explicit user confirmation
• Use jq for structured output parsing
• Limit output with | head -N to stay under 50 lines

Anti-Hallucination Rules

1. NEVER assume resource names — always discover via CLI/API in Phase 1 before referencing in Phase 2.
2. NEVER fabricate metric names or dimensions — verify against the service documentation or --help output.
3. NEVER mix CLI commands between service versions — confirm which version/API you are targeting.
4. ALWAYS use the discovery → verify → analyze chain — every resource referenced must have been discovered first.
5. ALWAYS handle empty results gracefully — an empty response is valid data, not an error to retry.

Counter-Rationalizations