AWS Systems Manager Automation - AWS Systems Manager (original) (raw)

Automation, a tool in AWS Systems Manager, simplifies common maintenance, deployment, and remediation tasks for AWS services like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon Redshift, Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), and many more. To get started with Automation, open the Systems Manager console. In the navigation pane, choose Automation.

Automation helps you to build automated solutions to deploy, configure, and manage AWS resources at scale. With Automation, you have granular control over the concurrency of your automations. This means you can specify how many resources to target concurrently, and how many errors can occur before an automation is stopped.

To help you get started with Automation, AWS develops and maintains several pre-defined runbooks. Depending on your use case, you can use these pre-defined runbooks that perform a variety of tasks, or create your own custom runbooks that might better suit your needs. To monitor the progress and status of your automations, you can use the Systems Manager Automation console, or your preferred command line tool. Automation also integrates with Amazon EventBridge to help you build event-driven architecture at scale.

How can Automation benefit my organization?

Automation offers these benefits:

• Scripting support in runbook content
  Using the aws:executeScript action, you can run custom Python and PowerShell functions directly from your runbooks. This provides you greater flexibility in creating your custom runbooks because you can complete various tasks that other Automation actions don't support. You also have greater control over the logic of the runbook. For an example of how this action can be used and how it can help to improve an existing automated solution, see Authoring Automation runbooks.
• Run automations across multiple AWS accounts and AWS Regions from a centralized location
  Administrators can run automations on resources across multiple accounts and Regions from the Systems Manager console.
• Enhanced operations security
  Administrators have a centralized place to grant and revoke access to runbooks. Using only AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies, you can control which individual users or groups in your organization can use Automation and which runbooks they can access.
• Automate common IT tasks
  Automating common tasks can help improve operational efficiency, enforce organizational standards, and reduce operator errors. For example, you can use the AWS-UpdateCloudFormationStackWithApproval runbook to update resources that were deployed by using an AWS CloudFormation template. The update applies a new template. You can configure the Automation to request approval by one or more users before the update begins.
• Safely perform disruptive tasks in bulk
  Automation includes features, like rate controls, that allow you to control the deployment of an automation across your fleet by specifying a concurrency value and an error threshold. For more information about working with rate controls, see Run automated operations at scale.
• Streamline complex tasks
  Automation provides pre-defined runbooks that streamline complex and time-consuming tasks such as creating golden Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). For example, you can use the AWS-UpdateLinuxAmi andAWS-UpdateWindowsAmi runbooks to create golden AMIs from a source AMI. Using these runbooks, you can run custom scripts before and after updates are applied. You can also include or exclude specific software packages from being installed. For examples of how to use these runbooks, see Tutorials.
• Define constraints for inputs
  You can define constraints in custom runbooks to limit the values that Automation will accept for a particular input parameter. For example,allowedPattern will only accept values for an input parameter that match the regular expression you define. If you specifyallowedValues for an input parameter, only the values you've specified in the runbook are accepted.
• Log automation action output to Amazon CloudWatch Logs
  To meet operational or security requirements in your organization, you might need to provide a record of the scripts run during a runbook. With CloudWatch Logs, you can monitor, store, and access log files from various AWS services. You can send output from the aws:executeScript action to a CloudWatch Logs log group for debugging and troubleshooting purposes. Log data can be sent to your log group with or without AWS KMS encryption using your KMS key. For more information, see Logging Automation action output with CloudWatch Logs.
• Amazon EventBridge integration
  Automation is supported as a target type in Amazon EventBridge rules. This means you can trigger runbooks by using events. For more information, see Monitoring Systems Manager events with Amazon EventBridge and Reference: Amazon EventBridge event patterns and types for Systems Manager.
• Share organizational best practices
  You can define best practices for resource management, operations tasks, and more in runbooks that you share across accounts and Regions.

Who should use Automation?

• Any AWS customer who wants to improve their operational efficiency at scale, reduce errors associated with manual intervention, and reduce time to resolution of common issues.
• Infrastructure experts who want to automate deployment and configuration tasks.
• Administrators who want to reliably resolve common issues, improve troubleshooting efficiency, and reduce repetitive operations.
• Users who want to automate a task they normally perform manually.

What is an automation?

An automation consists of all of the tasks that are defined in a runbook, and are performed by the Automation service. Automation uses the following components to run automations.

Topics

• Setting up Automation
• Run an automated operation powered by Systems Manager Automation
• Run an automation that requires approvals
• Run automated operations at scale
• Running automations in multiple AWS Regions and accounts
• Run automations based on EventBridge events
• Run an automation step by step
• Scheduling automations with State Manager associations
• Schedule automations with maintenance windows
• Systems Manager Automation actions reference
• Creating your own runbooks
• Systems Manager Automation runbook reference
• Tutorials
• Learn about statuses returned by Systems Manager Automation
• Troubleshooting Systems Manager Automation