Oversee nodes in multicloud and hybrid settings, as well as at scale on AWS.
What is AWS Systems Manager?
AWS Systems Manager is a solution that facilitates the management, viewing, and control of your infrastructure in multicloud, on-premises, and AWS settings.
AWS Systems Manager’s advantages
Boost visibility throughout your whole node infrastructure
A consolidated view of all the nodes across the accounts and regions of your company is offered by AWS Systems Manager. Get node information quickly, including its name, ID, installed agents, operating system information, and tags. You may find problems and act more quickly by using Amazon Q Developer to query node metadata in natural language.
Use automation to increase operational efficiency
Reduce the time and effort needed to maintain your systems by automating routine operational chores. Systems Manager eliminates the need for remote PowerShell, SSH, or bastion hosts by enabling you to safely and securely manage your nodes at scale without logging into your servers. It offers a straightforward method for automating routine operational tasks, like software and patch installations, registry modifications, and user administration, across groups of nodes.
Make node management easier at scale in any setting
Any AWS, on-premises, or multicloud environment can run the Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent), enabling Systems Manager to offer out-of-the-box visibility and simplifying managed node maintenance. Set up diagnostics to run automatically in order to find problems with the SSM Agent. Issues with pre-defined runbooks can then be fixed. Once under control, nodes can efficiently carry out vital operational functions including remotely executing commands, starting logged sessions, and patching nodes with security updates.
Tools
You can use the entire suite of AWS Systems Manager tools to securely connect to nodes without managing bastion hosts or SSH keys, patch nodes with security updates, automate operational commands at scale, and obtain thorough fleet visibility once your nodes are managed by Systems Manager.
Use cases
Control every node you have
Gain thorough insight into your hybrid and multicloud systems, as well as your node infrastructure across Amazon Web Services accounts and regions. Rapidly detect and resolve agent problems to restore unmanaged nodes and efficiently carry out crucial operational duties, such applying security updates to nodes, starting and recording sessions, or executing operational commands.
Automate your processes
Make your computational resources available, configure them, and deploy them automatically. To address common problems like misconfigured agents, keep infrastructure up to date with SSM Agent diagnosis and remediation. Execute essential operational activities, like automatically applying fixes for applications and operating systems on a regular basis.
Increase the effectiveness of operations
Prioritize increasing operational effectiveness, cutting expenses, and growing your company. Across your hybrid and multicloud setups, AWS Systems Manager is your enterprise-grade solution for managing nodes at scale with cross-account and cross-region visibility.
Presenting a fresh AWS Systems Manager experience
AWS is presenting an enhanced version of AWS Systems Manager today, which offers the much-desired cross-account and cross-region experience for large-scale node management.
All of your managed nodes, including different kinds of infrastructure like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances, containers, virtual machines on other cloud providers, on-premise servers, and edge Internet of Things (IoT) devices, can be seen centrally with the new System Manager experience. When they are linked to Systems Manager and have the Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) installed, they are called “managed nodes.”
A node is referred to be a “unmanaged node” if an SSM Agent ceases operating on it for any reason, at which point Systems Manager no longer has access to it. The latest version of Systems Manager also makes it easier to find and troubleshoot unmanaged nodes. To resolve any problems and restore connectivity so they can once more be managed nodes, you may run and even schedule an automated diagnosis that gives you suggested runbooks to follow.
Amazon Q Developer, the most powerful generative AI-powered software development helper, has also been integrated with Systems Manager. Using natural language, you may ask Amazon Q Developer questions about the nodes you’ve handled. You’ll receive quick answers and links to the Systems Manager where you can take action or carry out more research.
With the new interface with Systems Manager in this edition, you can also leverage AWS Organizations to enable a delegated administrator to centrally manage nodes throughout the business.
AWS Systems Manager pricing
You can monitor and fix operational problems with all of your AWS applications and resources, including Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Amazon Elastic Container Service (ECS), and Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) instances, as well as in multicloud and hybrid environments, using the unified user interface that AWS Systems Manager offers. With AWS Systems Manager, you may begin using the benefits of the AWS Free Tier without paying a dime. No upfront obligations or minimum costs apply. There may be restrictions.
AWS Free Tier
The following functionalities of AWS Systems Manager are available to you for free as part of the AWS Free Tier. There may be restrictions.
Explorer
Enabling Explorer does not incur any further fees. There may be restrictions.
The dashboard of Explorer is populated by paid OpsCenter APIs (GetOpsSummary). These API queries will incur fees. The Export to CSV option uses an aws:executeScript action step to run an Automation document. The cost of these actions may be determined by Automation pricing.
For more details please visit the AWS systems manager pricing page.
In conclusion
Gaining visibility and control over your computing infrastructure and carrying out operational tasks at scale need the use of Systems Manager. Through a centralized dashboard, the new experience provides a centralized view of all your nodes across AWS accounts, on-premises, and multicloud environments. It also integrates Amazon Q Developer for natural language queries and allows one-click SSM Agent troubleshooting. By going to the Systems Manager panel and following the simple steps, you may activate the new experience without paying more.