AWS Systems Manager
AWS Systems Manager is an administration hub provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) that allows us to automate, manage, and administrate various AWS resources. With AWS Systems Manager, a user can handle multiple tasks across multiple AWS accounts and regions. It provides users with a unified user interface to view operational data from multiple AWS services and helps optimize the performance and security of the AWS resources.
Features of the AWS Systems Manager
AWS Systems Manager has more than ten different features. Here are some of the primary ones:
Patch Manager
AWS Patch Manager is used for automating the deployment of operating systems and software patches across Amazon EC2 instances, VMware on-premises, or VMware Cloud on AWS instances. With Patch Manager, we can create patch baselines and set up rules for automatically accepting particular types of patches, such as high-severity or operating system patches. We can plan maintenance periods so that fixes are only applied at specific times to ensure that our software is up-to-date and compliant with our regulations.
State Manager
AWS State Manager facilitates configuration management, helping the automation of maintaining the consistent configuration of managed nodes and other AWS services. The AWS Management Console, pre-written scripts, PowerShell modules, or Ansible runbooks from GitHub or Amazon S3 buckets can all be used to create configuration policies. These configurations are automatically applied to all of our instances by the State Manager according to the frequency and schedule we choose.
Change Manager
AWS Systems Manager Change Manager is an enterprise-grade change management framework. It orchestrates the life cycle of operational changes to our application infrastructure and can detect schedule conflicts with critical business events, ensuring that changes are applied without disrupting important operations.
Other features of AWS Systems Manager include:
Feature name | Purpose |
Explorer | Allows us to create dashboards to visualize the insights of the performance of AWS environment |
OpsCenter | Consolidates operational issues where IT professionals can view analyze and solve them |
Incident Manager | Allows us to prepare for incidnets and add automated remediation techniques |
Application Manager | Offers a unified interface to view, manage and anlayze deployments and status of our resources |
AppConfig | Enables us to centrally manage features and configurations of our web and mobile applications |
Parameter Store | Allows us to manage the configuartion parameters of our application such as password or connection strings. |
Automation | Allows us to automate deploymets and maintainence of AWS resources through a script specifying instructions. |
Maintenance Windows | Allows us to scheduele adminsitrative and maintainece tasks on AWS resources |
Fleet Manager | Simplifies the management of remote devices and and servers on edge locations. |
Inventory | Aggregates the information about thr software and packages installed on managed Ec2 instances |
Working of the Systems Manager
Here is the visual presentation of how Systems Manager capabilities perform actions on AWS resources:
Access Systems Manager: The first step to using Systems Manager is accessing it. Users can gain access to Systems Manager through the AWS console.
Choosing Systems Manager capability: The second step is to determine which of the Systems Manager capabilities will help the user perform the task of their choice. There are more than ten different features in Systems Manager that can assist in performing various tasks, such as change, state, session, and inventory management.
Validation and processing: The Systems Manager validates that the role or user accessing resources has the required permissions to do so. This maintains safety and security and removes the chance of data compromise.
Reporting: Following the execution of the updates, the SSM Agent alerts the user, the Systems Manager in the AWS Cloud, the Systems Manager’s operations management capabilities, and any configured AWS services.
Operations management: When the changes are successfully updated, the Explore, OpsCenter, and Incident Manager respond to resource-related events or issues.
Test your knowledge
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Conclusion
AWS Systems Manager provides a comprehensive collection of tools and functionalities for effectively managing and maintaining AWS resources and infrastructure. From improving security and assuring compliance in hybrid settings to patching, automation, and operations management, AWS Systems Manager streamlines multiple administrative activities.
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