Session Manager now available directly from the Amazon EC2 console
You can now use AWS Systems Manager Session Manager to securely connect to your Amazon EC2 instances directly from the Amazon EC2 console. Session Manager provides a secure browser-based interactive shell to the selected EC2 Linux or Windows instance giving authorized users additional flexibility to quickly connect from either the Amazon EC2 or AWS Systems Manager consoles.
Session Manager provides secure and auditable access to your Amazon EC2 instances without the need for bastion hosts, open inbound ports, or managing SSH keys. Users authorized by your AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies can connect to and run specific commands on an EC2 instance, for example to view a log file on a production server or to execute an interactive script when troubleshooting events. Sessions are logged to AWS CloudTrail, and a record of session activity including commands and responses can be stored in Amazon S3 or Amazon CloudWatch logs.
Session Manager is a feature of AWS Systems Manager, which is available in all AWS Regions.
To learn more about Session Manager, see our User Guide documentation. For information about AWS Systems Manager, visit our product detail page.