Amazon Web Services in Action, Second Edition

20 CHAPTER 1 What is Amazon Web Services?
Figure 1.13
The AWS Management Console offers a GUI to manage and access AWS services.
1.7.2 Command-line interface
The command-line interface (CLI) allows you to manage and access AWS services
within your terminal. Because you can use your terminal to automate or semi-automate
recurring tasks, CLI is a valuable tool. You can use the terminal to create new
cloud infrastructures based on blueprints, upload files to the object store, or get the
details of your infrastructure’s networking configuration regularly. Figure 1.14 shows
the CLI in action.
If you want to automate parts of your infrastructure with the help of a continuous
integration server, like Jenkins, the CLI is the right tool for the job. The CLI offers a
convenient way to access the API and combine multiple calls into a script.
You can even begin to automate your infrastructure with scripts by chaining multiple
CLI calls together. The CLI is available for Windows, Mac, and Linux, and there is
also a PowerShell version available.