How to backup AWS Security Groups settings

#aws #securitygroups #cli

If, like me, you have to manage several Security Groups on your AWS account, you can make use of the describe-security-groups AWS CLI command for download them as a .json file for backup.

TL;DR

You can jump to the official AWS documentation for the describe-security-groups AWS CLI command on this link: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/ec2/describe-security-groups.html

Prerequisites

You will need to have the AWS CLI command line tool installed and configured on your system.

You can find the necessary information on this two links:

How to use

Open a terminal window on a local folder and run this command:
```
aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-ids sg-123abcd4
```
You will need the ID of the Security Group you want the backup (in this example 'sg-123abcd4').
Done! You can now backup the newly created .json file with GIT or in any other way you want.

About the .json file

As a quick reference here is how the .json file looks:

{
    "SecurityGroups": [
        {
            "IpPermissionsEgress": [],
            "Description": "My security group",
            "IpPermissions": [
                {
                    "PrefixListIds": [],
                    "FromPort": 22,
                    "IpRanges": [
                        {
                            "CidrIp": "203.0.113.0/24"
                        }
                    ],
                    "ToPort": 22,
                    "IpProtocol": "tcp",
                    "UserIdGroupPairs": []
                }
            ],
            "GroupName": "MySecurityGroup",
            "OwnerId": "123456789012",
            "GroupId": "sg-903004f8",
        }
    ]
}