**To get a description of an Auto Scaling group** This example describes the specified Auto Scaling group:: aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups --auto-scaling-group-name my-auto-scaling-group This example describes the specified Auto Scaling groups. It allows you to specify up to 100 group names:: aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups --max-items 100 --auto-scaling-group-name "group1" "group2" "group3" "group4" This example describes the Auto Scaling groups in the specified region, up to a maximum of 75 groups:: aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups --max-items 75 --region us-east-1 The following is example output:: { "AutoScalingGroups": [ { "AutoScalingGroupARN": "arn:aws:autoscaling:us-west-2:123456789012:autoScalingGroup:930d940e-891e-4781-a11a-7b0acd480f03:autoScalingGroupName/my-auto-scaling-group", "HealthCheckGracePeriod": 300, "SuspendedProcesses": [], "DesiredCapacity": 1, "Tags": [], "EnabledMetrics": [], "LoadBalancerNames": [], "AutoScalingGroupName": "my-auto-scaling-group", "DefaultCooldown": 300, "MinSize": 0, "Instances": [ { "InstanceId": "i-4ba0837f", "AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2c", "HealthStatus": "Healthy", "LifecycleState": "InService", "LaunchConfigurationName": "my-launch-config" } ], "MaxSize": 1, "VPCZoneIdentifier": null, "TerminationPolicies": [ "Default" ], "LaunchConfigurationName": "my-launch-config", "CreatedTime": "2013-08-19T20:53:25.584Z", "AvailabilityZones": [ "us-west-2c" ], "HealthCheckType": "EC2", "NewInstancesProtectedFromScaleIn": false } ] } To return a specific number of Auto Scaling groups, use the ``max-items`` parameter:: aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups --max-items 1 If the output includes a ``NextToken`` field, there are more groups. To get the additional groups, use the value of this field with the ``starting-token`` parameter in a subsequent call as follows:: aws autoscaling describe-auto-scaling-groups --starting-token Z3M3LMPEXAMPLE