Tag your Auto Scaling groups - Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling
Add or modify tags (console)Add or modify tags (AWS CLI)

Tag your Auto Scaling groups

When you add a tag to your Auto Scaling group, you can specify whether it should be added to instances launched in the Auto Scaling group. If you modify a tag, the updated version of the tag is added to instances launched in the Auto Scaling group after the change. If you create or modify a tag for an Auto Scaling group, these changes are not made to instances that are already running in the Auto Scaling group.

Add or modify tags (console)

To tag an Auto Scaling group on creation

When you use the Amazon EC2 console to create an Auto Scaling group, you can specify tag keys and values on the Add tags page of the Create Auto Scaling group wizard. To propagate a tag to the instances launched in the Auto Scaling group, make sure that you keep the Tag new instances option for that tag selected. Otherwise, you can deselect it.

To add or modify tags for an existing Auto Scaling group

  1. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/, and choose Auto Scaling Groups from the navigation pane.

  2. Select the check box next to the Auto Scaling group.

    A split pane opens up in the bottom of the Auto Scaling groups page.

  3. On the Details tab, choose Tags, Edit.

  4. To modify existing tags, edit Key and Value.

  5. To add a new tag, choose Add tag and edit Key and Value. You can keep Tag new instances selected to add the tag to the instances launched in the Auto Scaling group automatically, and deselect it otherwise.

  6. When you have finished adding tags, choose Update.

Add or modify tags (AWS CLI)

The following examples show how to use the AWS CLI to add tags when you create Auto Scaling groups, and to add or modify tags for existing Auto Scaling groups.

To tag an Auto Scaling group on creation

Use the create-auto-scaling-group command to create a new Auto Scaling group and add a tag, for example, environment=production, to the Auto Scaling group. The tag is also added to any instances launched in the Auto Scaling group.

aws autoscaling create-auto-scaling-group --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg \
  --launch-configuration-name my-launch-config --min-size 1 --max-size 3 \
  --vpc-zone-identifier "subnet-5ea0c127,subnet-6194ea3b,subnet-c934b782" \
  --tags Key=environment,Value=production,PropagateAtLaunch=true
To create or modify tags for an existing Auto Scaling group

Use the create-or-update-tags command to create or modify a tag. For example, the following command adds the Name=my-asg and costcenter=cc123 tags. The tags are also added to any instances launched in the Auto Scaling group after this change. If a tag with either key already exists, the existing tag is replaced. The Amazon EC2 console associates the display name for each instance with the name that is specified for the Name key (case-sensitive).

aws autoscaling create-or-update-tags \
  --tags ResourceId=my-asg,ResourceType=auto-scaling-group,Key=Name,Value=my-asg,PropagateAtLaunch=true \
  ResourceId=my-asg,ResourceType=auto-scaling-group,Key=costcenter,Value=cc123,PropagateAtLaunch=true

Describe the tags for an Auto Scaling group (AWS CLI)

If you want to view the tags that are applied to a specific Auto Scaling group, you can use either of the following commands:

  • describe-tags – You supply your Auto Scaling group name to view a list of the tags for the specified group.

    aws autoscaling describe-tags --filters Name=auto-scaling-group,Values=my-asg

    The following is an example response.

    {
    "Tags": [
        {
            "ResourceType": "auto-scaling-group",
            "ResourceId": "my-asg",
            "PropagateAtLaunch": true,
            "Value": "production",
            "Key": "environment"
        }
    ]
}

  • describe-auto-scaling-groups – You supply your Auto Scaling group name to view the attributes of the specified group, including any tags.

    aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups --auto-scaling-group-name my-asg

    The following is an example response.

    {
    "AutoScalingGroups": [
        {
            "AutoScalingGroupName": "my-asg",
            "AutoScalingGroupARN": "arn",
            "LaunchTemplate": {
                "LaunchTemplateId": "lt-0b97f1e282EXAMPLE",
                "LaunchTemplateName": "my-launch-template",
                "Version": "$Latest"
            },
            "MinSize": 1,
            "MaxSize": 5,
            "DesiredCapacity": 1,
            ...
            "Tags": [
                {
                    "ResourceType": "auto-scaling-group",
                    "ResourceId": "my-asg",
                    "PropagateAtLaunch": true,
                    "Value": "production",
                    "Key": "environment"
                }
            ],
            ...
        }
    ]
}