Tag: AWS Systems Manager

AWS Systems Manager Automation simplifies common administrative and maintenance tasks of AWS resources. Using Systems Manager Automation, you can execute predefined tasks/workflows in the form of AWS Systems Manager documents (SSM documents) that you can write yourself or use community published documents. A SSM document defines the actions that Systems Manager performs on your AWS […]

Patching Windows instances in private subnets could be challenging since those Amazon EC2 instances have no internet connectivity. In this blog post we explain how to use AWS Systems Manager and Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) to keep those instances updated. We’ll create a new VPC with the proper endpoints, security groups, and network access […]

One of the primary features of AWS Systems Manager is Run Command. Run Command lets you remotely and securely manage the configuration of your managed instances. A managed instance is any Amazon EC2 instance that has been configured for Systems Manager. Now that the service has released the ec2-instance-managed-by-ssm, this is a good time to […]

Point-and-click management randomizes servers with every single change made. It’s great to configure your servers with code. In addition, having automation to manage server configuration and compliance helps companies save time, improve availability, and lower the risks associated with up-time and security. However, the learning experience and administrative effort required to maintain such an environment […]

AWS Systems Manager Automation now supports multi-account and multi-Region actions enabling you to centrally manage your AWS resources. This feature reduces the time and overhead needed for enterprise-wide configuration, operational actions, and compliance remediation. In this blog post, I show you how to use AWS Systems Manager Automation to patch your managed instances across multiple […]

During mandatory maintenance, AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate performs Chef Server and Chef Automate version, security, and operating system patching. Version updates for Chef go through extensive testing to verify they are production ready and don’t disrupt existing environments. When an instance is replaced, customers often ask how they can restore their custom settings in […]

Introduction For enhanced security, it’s often preferable to place resources in AWS within a subnet with no internet access. Recently, AWS expanded the number of services supported by interface VPC endpoints within the AWS ecosystem, so it’s now easier than ever to run AWS OpsWorks for Chef Automate or AWS OpsWorks for Puppet Enterprise within […]

When using AWS CloudFormation templates to code your infrastructure, you should consider applying best practices to improve the maintainability of your code. Further, these best practices should be augmented by guidelines like those outlined for twelve-factor apps, which are targeted at optimizing applications for continuous deployment. Of these factors, you should note that you should […]

AWS Resource Groups recently announced its support for additional resource types, including Amazon DynamoDB tables, AWS CloudTrail trails, Amazon SageMaker models, and many more. This blog post will walk you through some examples of how you could use AWS Resource Groups, and its new resource type support to drive some of your day-to-day operations. AWS […]

Here in AWS Support, I often help customers regain RDP or SSH access to their instances. It’s a common problem, but the identification of a correct solution could take some time, even hours or days if the right information isn’t available. Even with the most up-to-date playbook, it is easy to miss simple checks that […]