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You can use tags to differentiate resources from one another. Adding tags enables you to provide contextual metadata for your resources and organize them efficiently.

This topic provides best practices to make the most of tags and metadata.

Adding Tags to VMs

With the 3DS OUTSCALE Cloud, you can use property tags on different resources for effective organization. Adding tags to different resources will allow you to identify and categorize resources. For more information, see Ajouter ou retirer des tags.

We recommend creating groups of tags to organize your resources. Companies that are the most efficient in their use of tags usually create tag groupings that enable them to organize their resources along technical, business, and security dimensions. You can also create automation-specific tags to support your automation efforts.

Tag Examples

Technical Tags Description

Name

Tag to identify resources.

Environment

Tag to identify the environment, as there are usually multiple environments (production, integration, test, and so on).

Version

Tag to identify the version of the resources.
Business Tags Description

Owner

Tag to identify the person responsible for the resource.

Customer

Tag to identify a specific customer that a particular group of resources serves.

Project

Tag to identify the project the resource supports.
Security Tags Description

Confidentiality

Tag to identify the level of data confidentiality of the resource.

Compliance

Tag to identify compliance requirements.
Automation Tags Description

Date/Time

Tag to identify the date or time a resource should be started, stopped, deleted, or rotated.

Security

Tag to determine security requirements, such as encryption.

Using Metadata to Configure Your VM

Required Tools

You can get information about your virtual machines (VMs). For more information, see Accéder aux metadata et user data d’une VM.

This information is very useful when writing scripts which are executed within the VM. ##This works for any 3DS OUTSCALE Linux VM, and the IP always stays the same.

When creating a VM for the first time, you need to run scripts that initialize and install all the tools you need. These scripts will require information about your VM, and this information can be found in the metadata.

Example
User $ curl 169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-id
i-be1dcf1a

Using User Data to Get Your Tags

In order to automate configuration deployment, you can use user data to store and run scripts at every boot and get all the tags of your VM. For more information, see Creating an Autonomous VM.

Below is an example of how you can get all the tags related to your VM:

Getting All Tags of VM with instanceId
User $ aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-id <INSTANCE-ID> --endpoint <ENDPOINT> | jq .Reservations[].Instances[].Tags[].Value
"First VM 2 With Perso Snap"
"servitude"
"VmFromPersoOmi"

Thanks to the tags you get in the response, you will be able to customize your deployment. Thus, you can use tags to manage your local system and your infrastructure.

Using Tags of a VM to Apply a Specific Configuration

Before you begin: Configure the tags when you create the VM, and get the ID of the VM.

  1. Get the tags of the VM:

    User $aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-id i-819fbfd7 | jq '.Reservations[].Instances[].Tags[] | select(.Key=="APT") | .Value' --raw-output
nginx htop tree wget vim

  2. Depending on your distribution, perform one of the following actions:

    # For Debian Or Ubuntu Distribution
User $sudo apt-get -y install nginx htop tree wget vim
# For CentOS Distribution
User $sudo yum install -y nginx htop tree wget vim

  3. Check the installation and the returned status.

Below is an example of a simple script to automate the installation of packages with APT tags:

Automating the installation of packages with APT tags
#/bin/sh
ip_new_vm=$(aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-id i-d7d895d8 | jq '.Reservations[].Instances[].PublicDnsName' --raw-output)
list_pkg=$(aws ec2 describe-instances --instance-id i-d7d895d8 | jq '.Reservations[].Instances[].Tags[] | select(.Key=="APT") | .Value ' --raw-output)
ssh user@${ip_new_vm} sudo apt-get install ${list_pkg}
ssh user@${ip_new_vm} dpkg -l | egrep -i 'nginx|htop|tree|wget|vim' | wc -l

Customer Use Cases

In the following use cases, you can see how you can use tags in automated scripts.

Starting/Stopping a VM

You can run automated start/stop scripts that turn off development environments during non-business hours in order to reduce costs. Using tags enables you to easily identify VMs specifically used for development.

If you manage your resources well, you can plan when to start and stop your items directly in your crontab.

  • To get a list of specific VMs, for example, VMs tagged with Development, and stop them at 7 p.m.:

    Stopping VMs
    User $ aws ec2 describe-instances --filter "Name=tag:Type,Values=DEV" | jq '.Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId' --raw-output > /tmp/lst.vm.Dev
i-aff8855f
i-819fbfd7
User $ for vm in `cat lst.vm.Dev` ; do echo $vm ; aws ec2 stop-instances --instance-ids $vm ; done

  • To start the VMs in the morning, at 7 a.m.:

    Starting VMs
    User $ for vm in `cat lst.vm.Dev` ; do echo $vm ; aws ec2 start-instances --instance-ids $vm ; done
User $ rm /tmp/lst.vm.Dev

  • To finalize the automation, you need to add scripts (StopInstanceDev.sh and StartInstanceDev.sh) in Crontab. Here is an example of a simple cron job:

    Cron Job
    # Running Script Every Day at 19h
00 19 0 0 0 . /home/user/.profile ; sh /home/tools/StopInstanceDev.sh
# Running Script Every Day at 07h
00 07 0 0 0 . /home/user/.profile ; sh /home/tools/StartInstanceDev.sh

Deleting Old Snapshots

If you use snapshots to back up VMs, you can easily forget to delete old snapshots that have become useless. In order to avoid this, you can automate the deletion of useless snapshots thanks to tagging.

  • To get all snapshots older than 2017-10:

    Geting All Snapshots Older Than
    User $ aws ec2 describe-snapshots --query 'Snapshots[?StartTime>=`2017-10-01`].SnapshotId' --output text > /tmp/lst.snap.older.10.2017

  • To delete useless snapshots:

    Deleting Snapshots
    User $ snapshots_to_delete=`cat lst.snap.older.10.2017` ; for snap in $snapshots_to_delete ; do aws ec2 delete-snapshot --snapshot-id $snap ; done
User $ rm /tmp/lst.snap.older.10.2017

As a good practice, we recommend putting version tags on all your resources. You can also tag VMs with Development, Integration, and Production. With this type of tag, you can apply SALT recipe automatically for VMs with the Development profile.

Conclusion

We strongly recommend adding tags to your resources, especially the most expensive ones of your account. Ultimately, tagging is the best way to follow your consumption. It will make your resources easier to navigate, and improperly configured resources easier to spot. Tagging is a critical tool in your management toolkit and the best way to keep a clear view of your Cloud resources.

Related Pages

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