Alibaba Cloud + Steampipe

Steampipe is an open source CLI to instantly query cloud APIs using SQL.

Alibaba Cloud provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to authenticated customers on a metered pay-as-you-go basis.

For example:

select
  name,
  display_name,
  mfa_enabled
from
  alicloud_ram_user;
+ ---------+----------------+-------------+
| name | display_name | mfa_enabled | + ---------+----------------+-------------+
| pam | pam_beesly | false | | creed | creed_bratton | true | | stanley | stanley_hudson | false | | michael | michael_scott | false | | dwight | dwight_schrute | true | + ---------+----------------+-------------+

Documentation

• Table definitions & examples →

Get started

Install

Download and install the latest Alibaba Cloud plugin:

steampipe plugin install alicloud

Credentials

Configuration

Installing the latest alicloud plugin will create a config file (~/.steampipe/config/alicloud.spc) with a single connection named alicloud:

connection "alicloud" {
  plugin      = "alicloud"
  secret_key  = "gMCYsoGqjfThisISNotARealKeyVVhh"
  access_key  = "ASIA42DZSWFYSN2PFHPJ"
  regions     = ["us-east-1" , "ap-south-1"]
}

Multi-Account Connections

You may create multiple alicloud connections:

connection "alicloud_dev" {
  plugin      = "alicloud"
  secret_key  = "gMCYsoGqjfThisISNotARealKeyVVhh"
  access_key  = "ASIA42DZSWFYSN2PFHPJ"
  regions     = ["eu-central-1" , "cn-hangzhou"]
}

connection "alicloud_qa" {
  plugin      = "alicloud"
  secret_key  = "gMCYsoGqjfThisAintARealKeyVVhh"
  access_key  = "ASIA42DZSWFYS42PFJHP"
  regions     = ["cn-hangzhou"]
}

connection "alicloud_prod" {
  plugin      = "alicloud"
  secret_key  = "gMCYsoGqjfThisAintARealKeyVVhh"
  access_key  = "ASIA42DZSWFYS42PFJHP"
  regions     = ["cn-hangzhou"]
}

Each connection is implemented as a distinct Postgres schema. As such, you can use qualified table names to query a specific connection:

select
  *
from
  alicloud_qa.alicloud_account;

You can multi-account connections by using an aggregator connection. Aggregators allow you to query data from multiple connections for a plugin as if they are a single connection.

connection "alicloud_all" {
  plugin      = "alicloud"
  type        = "aggregator"
  connections = ["alicloud_dev", "alicloud_qa", "alicloud_prod"]
}

Querying tables from this connection will return results from the alicloud_dev, alicloud_qa, and alicloud_prod connections:

select
  *
from
  alicloud_all.alicloud_account;

Alternatively, you can use an unqualified name and it will be resolved according to the Search Path. It's a good idea to name your aggregator first alphabetically, so that it is the first connection in the search path (i.e. alicloud_all comes before alicloud_dev):

select
  *
from
  alicloud_account;

Steampipe supports the * wildcard in the connection names. For example, to aggregate all the Alicloud plugin connections whose names begin with alicloud_:

connection "alicloud_all" {
  type        = "aggregator"
  plugin      = "alicloud"
  connections = ["alicloud_*"]
}

Aggregators are powerful, but they are not infinitely scalable. Like any other Steampipe connection, they query APIs and are subject to API limits and throttling. Consider as an example and aggregator that includes 3 Alicloud connections, where each connection queries 33 regions (28 for Alibaba Cloud public cloud, 4 for Alibaba Finance Cloud and 1 for Alibaba Gov Cloud). This means you essentially run the same list API calls 99 times! When using aggregators, it is especially important to:

• Query only what you need! select * from alicloud_oss_bucket must make a list API call in each connection, and then 5 API calls for each bucket, where select name, versioning from alicloud_oss_bucket would only require a single API call per bucket.
• Consider extending the cache TTL. The default is currently 300 seconds (5 minutes). Obviously, anytime Steampipe can pull from the cache, its is faster and less impactful to the APIs. If you don't need the most up-to-date results, increase the cache TTL!

Specify static credentials using environment variables

Steampipe supports three different naming conventions for Alicloud authentication environment variables, checking for existence in the following order:

Aliyun CLI format

export ALIBABACLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID=ASIA42DZSWFYS42PFJHP  
export ALIBABACLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET=gMCYsoGqjfThisAintARealKeyVVhh
export ALIBABACLOUD_REGION_ID=cn-east-1

Terraform format

export ALICLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_ID=ASIA42DZSWFYS42PFJHP  
export ALICLOUD_ACCESS_KEY_SECRET=gMCYsoGqjfThisAintARealKeyVVhh
export ALICLOUD_REGION_ID=cn-east-1

Steampipe format

export ALICLOUD_ACCESS_KEY=ASIA42DZSWFYS42PFJHP  
export ALICLOUD_SECRET_KEY=gMCYsoGqjfThisAintARealKeyVVhh
export ALICLOUD_REGION=cn-east-1

If regions is not specified, Steampipe will use the single default region.

Get involved

• Open source: https://github.com/turbot/steampipe-plugin-alicloud
• Community: Slack Channel