Steampipe - Alibaba Cloud

Introduction

Alibaba Cloud is a popular cloud computing platform that provides a wide range of services to its users. It is known for its high availability, scalability, and reliability. If you are someone who uses Alibaba Cloud for your business or personal projects, you may need to manage your resources from time to time.

This can be a daunting task, especially when you have a large number of resources to manage. Fortunately, there is a tool that can help you manage your resources on Alibaba Cloud with ease, and that tool is Steampipe.

Steampipe is an open-source CLI tool that allows you to query your cloud resources as if they were SQL tables. With Steampipe, you can easily manage your cloud resources by running SQL queries on them.

In this blog post, we will walk you through the process of installing Steampipe and the Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe. We will also show you how to list your resources in Alibaba Cloud using Steampipe.

Section 1: Installing Steampipe

The first step in using Steampipe with Alibaba Cloud is to install Steampipe. The installation process is straightforward and can be done in a few simple steps. Here is how you can install Steampipe:

Step 1: Go to the Steampipe website and download the appropriate version of Steampipe for your operating system. Steampipe is available for Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Step 2: Once you have downloaded the Steampipe binary, unzip it and move it to a directory that is in your system's PATH.

Step 3: Test your Steampipe installation by running the following command in your terminal: steampipe --version

If the installation was successful, you should see the version number of Steampipe printed in your terminal. Congratulations, you have successfully installed Steampipe!

Section 2: Installing Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe

Now that you have installed Steampipe, the next step is to install the Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe. The Alibaba Cloud plugin provides Steampipe with the necessary information to connect to your Alibaba Cloud account and query your resources. Here is how you can install the Alibaba Cloud plugin:

Step 1: Open your terminal and run the following command to install the Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe: steampipe plugin install alibabacloud

Step 2: Once the installation is complete, run the following command to verify that the plugin is installed: steampipe plugin list

You should see the Alibaba Cloud plugin listed in the output of the command. Congratulations, you have successfully installed the Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe!

Section 3: Listing resources in Alibaba Cloud

Now that you have installed Steampipe and the Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe, you are ready to list your resources in Alibaba Cloud. Here is how you can do it:

Step 1: Create a file on the path ```~/.steampipe/config/alicloud.spc``` with Alibaba Cloud credentials

connection "alicloud" {
  plugin = "alicloud"

  # You may connect to one or more regions. If `regions` is not specified,
  # Steampipe will use a single default region using the below resolution
  # order:
  # The `ALIBABACLOUD_REGION_ID`, `ALICLOUD_REGION_ID` or `ALICLOUD_REGION` environment variable
  # regions = ["us-east-1", "ap-south-1"]

  # If no credentials are specified, the plugin will use the environment variables
  # resolver to get the current credentials.
  # Alternatively, you may set static credentials with the `access_key` and `secret_key` arguments.
  # access_key      = "LTAI4GBVFakeKey09Kxezv66"
  # secret_key      = "6iNPvThisIsNotARealSecretk1sZF"

  # List of additional Alicloud error codes to ignore for all queries.
  # By default, common not found error codes are ignored and will still be ignored even if this argument is not set.
  # ignore_error_codes = ["AccessDenied", "Forbidden.Access", "Forbidden.NoPermission"]
}

Step 2: Once you have successfully logged in, you can run the following command to list your resources in Alibaba Cloud: steampipe query "select region from alicloud_ecs_region;"

This command will list all the instances in your Alibaba Cloud account. You can modify the SQL query to list other types of resources, such as ECS images, RDS instances, and more. Steampipe provides a comprehensive list of tables that you can query to manage your Alibaba Cloud resources.

Conclusion

Steampipe is a powerful tool that can help you manage your resources in Alibaba Cloud with ease. By installing Steampipe and the Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe, you can query your cloud resources as if they were SQL tables.

This makes it easy to manage your resources, especially when you have a large number of resources to manage. We hope that this blog post has helped you understand how to install Steampipe and the Alibaba Cloud plugin for Steampipe, and how to list your resources in Alibaba Cloud using Steampipe.