{"id":5500,"date":"2022-08-15T09:30:00","date_gmt":"2022-08-15T13:30:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.redline13.com\/blog\/?p=5500"},"modified":"2022-08-22T09:28:45","modified_gmt":"2022-08-22T13:28:45","slug":"aws-usage-and-cost-control-with-instance-tagging","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.redline13.com\/blog\/2022\/08\/aws-usage-and-cost-control-with-instance-tagging\/","title":{"rendered":"AWS Usage and Cost Control with Instance Tagging – Including by API"},"content":{"rendered":"

Amazon AWS tagging capability is powerful and yet little used in load testing. Redline13 has supported AWS instance tagging for years.\u00a0 These tags can be set globally for all load tests under the account settings page, and also individually for each server though our API<\/a>.\u00a0 RedLine13 has now increased the number of tags to give you more control and better load testing with AWS instance Tagging. At the end we’ve included how two customers are using AWS Instance Tagging.<\/p>\n

We previously wrote about RedLine13 support for AWS Instance Tagging<\/a> where you can create your own tags. But first, let\u2019s talk about what tags are and how they can be used.<\/p>\n

Using Tags<\/h3>\n

AWS has a User\u2019s Guide: Tagging Your Amazon EC2 Resources<\/a>. This explains how it helps you \u201cmanage your instances, images, and other Amazon EC2 resources”. It also says that you can \u201coptionally assign your own metadata to each resource in the form of tags. This topic describes tags and shows you how to create them.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"AWS
An example of how EC2 tags might be used.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

RedLine13 supports the ability to create your own custom tags. The tag limit for free accounts has increased from one to two. And now RedLine13 has increased the tag limit to 10 for all paid accounts (Basic, Pro and Enterprise).<\/p>\n

You can use EC2 tags for many things. They can help you group instances in the AWS console, run cost reports based on tags, set up AWS permissions based on the tags, and\u00a0much more<\/a>. Some users use them to tag resources by environment and type and then use that to run appropriate server updates on the right instances.<\/p>\n

Defining Global Tags Using in Settings<\/h3>\n

You define tags that will be assigned to all servers for every test that you run through the settings page.\u00a0 You can access this page from the “Your Settings<\/em>” option under the “Account<\/em>” menu on the main navigation bar:<\/p>\n

\"Accessing
“Your Settings” can be accessed from the “Account” menu from the main navigation bar.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On that page, if you scroll down to the “Instance Tagging<\/em>” section you will be able to define multiple “Key<\/em>” and “Value<\/em>” pairs which correspond to EC2 tags:<\/p>\n

\"Defining<\/p>\n

Any tags that are defined here will be applied to every load generator server and for every test that you run.<\/p>\n

Defining Tags Using the RedLine13 API<\/h3>\n

Another way that you can define EC2 tags is though the RedLine13 API<\/a>.\u00a0 When using the \/POST<\/strong><\/a> endpoint you can attach tags as a “key<\/em>” and “value<\/em>” pair to each type of load generator server you add to your test.\u00a0 The syntax for adding these parameters would be as follows:<\/p>\n

  servers[x<\/em><\/span>][tags][y<\/em>][key]=\"key<\/span>\"<\/strong><\/span>\n  servers[x<\/em><\/span>][tags][y<\/em>][value]=\"value<\/span>\"\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/pre>\n
In the above, “x<\/em>” would correspond to the index of the EC2 server type that you want to add the tag to (e.g.<\/em>, m3.medium<\/em>).\u00a0 Server indices within API calls are zero-based, therefore the first server you define will have an index of “0”, the next server will have an index of “1”, and so-on.\u00a0 The value for “y<\/em>” would also be a zero-based index and correspond to the tag you are adding.\u00a0 For simplicity, if you only have one server type, and one key\/value pair to add as an EC2 tag, then both x<\/em> and y<\/em> would be “0”.<\/p>\n
  curl --location --request POST 'https:\/\/www.redline13.com\/Api\/LoadTest' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --header 'X-Redline-Auth: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --header 'Content-Type: application\/form-data' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --header 'Cookie: user=subscriber' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'testType=\"jmeter-test\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'file=@\"\/local_drive\/folder\/JMeter_Test_Plan.jmx\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'name=\"AWS Server Tag POC\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'numServers=\"1\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'storeOutput=\"T\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][location]=\"us-east-1\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][subnetId]=\"subnet-xxxxxxxx\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][size]=\"t3.micro\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][num]=\"1\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][onDemand]=\"T\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][usersPerServer]=\"1\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][tags][0][key]=\"Demo Tag\"' \\<\/strong><\/span>\n    --form 'servers[0][tags][0][value]=\"Tag Content\"'<\/strong><\/span><\/pre>\n
In the above example, a tag with the key “Demo Tag<\/em>” would be attached to the provisioned t3.micro<\/em> instance for this test, with a value of “Tag Content<\/em>“.\u00a0 You may modify the above example for your own needs by changing the parameters to suit your particular test case.<\/p>\n
How Users Are Using AWS Instance Tagging<\/h3>\n
Antonio Gomes Rodrigues of SeLoger,<\/a> and author of the new book Master Apache JMeter From load testing to DevOps,<\/em><\/a>\u00a0explains they benefit from using tags for load testing:<\/p>\n
It allows us to have a more precise control of the EC2 instance. For examples:<\/p>\n
To illustrate as a complete example (with sensitive information masked) the entire request as called from cURL<\/a> would be similar to:<\/p>\n