AWS Systems Manager
- What it is
- Operations hub for managing EC2, on-premises, and multi-cloud servers at scale.
- The capabilities worth knowing
- Session Manager — browser or CLI shell into an instance with no SSH key, no bastion host, no open inbound port. Every session logged.
- Patch Manager — automated OS and application patching on a maintenance window schedule.
- Parameter Store — free hierarchical storage for configuration values and encrypted SecureStrings.
- Run Command — execute a command across a fleet without logging in.
- State Manager — keep instances in a defined configuration.
- Automation — runbooks for common operational tasks; used by AWS Config remediation.
- Fleet Manager / Inventory — see software and configuration across all managed nodes.
- Not to be confused with
- AWS Secrets Manager — Parameter Store stores config and secrets but has no automatic rotation; Secrets Manager does, at a per-secret cost.
- AWS Config — records configuration state; Systems Manager changes it.