Switching AWS Profiles for Serverless CLI

The AWS CLI

You'll first need to use the AWS CLI to set up a new profile with an existing AWS IAM access keys into ~/.aws/credentials.

(You can also manually add new profiles and access keys directly into ~/.aws/credentials).

The Serverless CLI (and other AWS CLIs, like the Amplify CLI) uses the AWS IAM access keys in ~/.aws/credentials to perform deploys.

I. Set up the Python Environment: Version Manager, Virtual Env Manager, Package Manager

AWS CLI is written in Python so you'll need to install Python 3 to get this set up.

It is recommended to install Python via a Version Manager (See: Why Not Use System Python?.)

I wrote another post about setting up a Python dev environment.

II. Installing AWS CLI

Follow the docs to install the AWS CLI.

Verify the AWS CLI is available:

$ which aws

Note: If you run which aws and it returns aws not found - try reloading your bash environment.

III. Create an AWS IAM Access Key in your AWS Console

1. Go to your AWS > My Security Credentials. (For future reference, this is under your AWS Console > Account Menu Dropdown)

2. Click: Create access key

3. You will be shown your Access Key ID and Secret Access Key. Keep this window open. You will need this in the next steps.

IV. Add your AWS IAM Access Keys as a new profile in .aws/credentials

You will need the Access Key ID and Secret Access Key here.

$ aws configure --profile devProfile

Example:

AWS Access Key ID [None]: YOUR_ACCESS_KEY_ID
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: YOUR_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
Default region name [None]: us-west-2
Default output format [None]: json

Successfully running aws configure will set up the .aws/ folder in your root directory:

(root)
└── .aws/
     ├── config      // Your AWS Profiles
     └── credentials // Your access key pairs

Let's verify that your creds have been added correctly...

# This will print your creds to the console.
$ cat ~/.aws/credentials

# If your console print-out includes the below, you're good-to-go!
[devProfile]
aws_access_key_id = XXXXX
aws_secret_access_key = XXXXX

⚠️ The entry [profile devProfile] must also exist in ~/.aws/config. These are also used in other AWS CLIs like Amplify CLI.

$ cat config

# Output:
[profile devProfile]
region=us-west-2
output = json

Using an AWS Profile for Serverless CLI

There are several different ways to choose which AWS profile you want to use with Serverless CLI:

A. Specifying the AWS profile in serverless.yml

Add profile setting to provider configuration in serverless.yml.

provider:
  name: aws
  runtime: nodejs12.x
  stage: dev
  profile: devProfile # Specify the profile here

B. Set the AWS profile as an environment variable

You can switch the AWS profile per project executing once when you start your project:

Run an npm script for:

export AWS_PROFILE="devProfile" && export AWS_REGION=us-west-1

C. Specifying the AWS profile as a Serverless CLI flag with --aws-profile

Or manually pass the AWS profile as an option to the Serverless CLI command with the --aws-profile flag.