Tagging AWS Direct Connect resources

A tag is a label that a resource owner assigns to their AWS Direct Connect resources. Each tag consists of a key and an optional value, both of which you define. Tags enable the resource owner to categorize your AWS Direct Connect resources in different ways, for example, by purpose, or environment. This is useful when you have many resources of the same type—you can quickly identify a specific resource based on the tags you've assigned to it.

For example, you have two AWS Direct Connect connections in a Region, each in different locations. Connection dxcon-11aa22bb is a connection serving production traffic, and is associated with virtual interface dxvif-33cc44dd. Connection dxcon-abcabcab is a redundant (backup) connection, and is associated with virtual interface dxvif-12312312. You might choose to tag your connections and virtual interfaces as follows, to help distinguish them:

Resource ID	Tag key	Tag value
dxcon-11aa22bb	Purpose	Production
	Location	Amsterdam
dxvif-33cc44dd	Purpose	Production
dxcon-abcabcab	Purpose	Backup
	Location	Frankfurt
dxvif-12312312	Purpose	Backup

We recommend that you devise a set of tag keys that meets your needs for each resource type. Using a consistent set of tag keys makes it easier for you to manage your resources. Tags don't have any semantic meaning to AWS Direct Connect and are interpreted strictly as a string of characters. Also, tags are not automatically assigned to your resources. You can edit tag keys and values, and you can remove tags from a resource at any time. You can set the value of a tag to an empty string, but you can't set the value of a tag to null. If you add a tag that has the same key as an existing tag on that resource, the new value overwrites the old value. If you delete a resource, any tags for the resource are also deleted.

You can tag the following AWS Direct Connect resources using the AWS Direct Connect console, the AWS Direct Connect API, the AWS CLI, the AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell, or an AWS SDK. When you use these tools to manage tags, you must specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) for the resource. For more information about ARNs, see Amazon Resource Names (ARNs) in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

Resource	Supports tags	Supports tags on creation	Supports tags controlling access and resource allocation	Supports cost allocation
Connections	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Virtual interfaces	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Link aggregation groups (LAG)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Interconnects	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Direct Connect gateways	No	No	No	No

Tag restrictions

The following rules and restrictions apply to tags:

• Maximum number of tags per resource: 50

• Maximum key length: 128 Unicode characters

• Maximum value length: 265 Unicode characters

• Tag keys and values are case-sensitive.

• The aws: prefix is reserved for AWS use. You can’t edit or delete a tag’s key or value when the tag has a tag key with the aws: prefix. Tags with a tag key with the aws: prefix do not count against your tags per resource limit.

• Allowed characters are letters, spaces, and numbers representable in UTF-8, plus the following special characters: + - = . _ : / @

• Only the resource owner can add or remove tags. For example, if there is a hosted connection, the partner will not be able to add, remove, or view the tags.

• Cost allocation tags are only supported for connections, interconnects, and LAGs. For information about how to use tags with cost management, see Using Cost Allocation Tags in the AWS Billing and Cost Management User Guide.

Working with tags using the CLI or API

Use the following to add, update, list, and delete the tags for your resources.

Task	API	CLI
Add or overwrite one or more tags.	TagResource	tag-resource
Delete one or more tags.	UntagResource	untag-resource
Describe one or more tags.	DescribeTags	describe-tags

Examples

Use the tag-resource command to tag the Connection dxcon-11aa22bb.

aws directconnect tag-resource --resource-arn arn:aws:directconnect:us-east-1:123456789012:dxcon/dxcon-11aa22bb --tags "key=Purpose,value=Production"

Use the describe-tags command to describe the Connection dxcon-11aa22bb tags.

aws directconnect describe-tags --resource-arn arn:aws:directconnect:us-east-1:123456789012:dxcon/dxcon-11aa22bb

Use the untag-resource command to remove a tag from Connection dxcon-11aa22bb.

aws directconnect untag-resource --resource-arn arn:aws:directconnect:us-east-1:123456789012:dxcon/dxcon-11aa22bb --tag-keys Purpose