• An interface for managing AWS resources
  • Used for patch management for EC2s
  • Used to categorize AWS resources
  • view operational data from multiple AWS services
  • automate operational tasks across AWS resources
  • scans managed instances and reports any policy violations
  • associate AWS resources by resource tag
  • comprised of individual capabilities
  • capabilities are grouped into categories
    • Operations Management –  manage AWS resources by CloudWatch Dashboards, OpsCenter, Resource Groups, Trusted Advisor and Personal Health Dashboard (PHD)
    • Actions and Change category – It is used for activities related to Maintenance  and Automation
    • Instances and Nodes – for EC2, provides Configuration, Compliance, Inventory Management, State Management, Patch Management
    • Shared Resources – involves Systems Manager Documents (SSM), Parameter Store (for configuration data)

Working

  1. Configure Systems Manager: Use the Systems Manager console, SDK, AWS CLI, or AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell to configure, schedule, automate, and run actions that you want to perform on AWS resources.
  2. Verification and processing: Systems Manager verifies the configurations, including permissions, and sends requests to the SSM Agent running on instances or servers in hybrid environment. SSM Agent performs the specified configuration changes.
  3. Reporting: status reporting of configuration changes and any actions being taken in Systems Manager. Reports are sent to user but should be configured.

SSM Agent

  • is Amazon software
  • installed and configured on
  • Amazon EC2 instance
  • on-premises server
  • a virtual machine (VM).
  • The agent also provides facility to
    • Updation of resources
    • Management of resources
    • Configuration of resources
  • The agent processes requests from Systems Manager service in AWS, and runs them as specified in request.
  • Agent also dispatches the information about execution and status  if any, to Systems Manager service
  • Agent need to be installed on each instance for providing its services
  • is preinstalled, by default, on instances created from following AMIs
    • Windows Server 2003-2012 R2
    • Windows Server 2016/2019
    • Amazon Linux
    • Amazon Linux 2
    • Ubuntu Server 16.04
    • Ubuntu Server 18.04
  • Work with Systems Manager by
    • Systems Manager Console – browser-based interface
    • AWS Command Line Tools
    • AWS SDKs
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