AWS Systems Manager Reviews

Our primary use case for AWS Systems Manager is to dynamically export values from one service to ARN and share them across multiple AWS accounts. We have operational, security, and other accounts like sandbox and depth. Systems Manager facilitates secure deployment of roles or policies and passing them to other AWS services.

AWS Systems Manager's most valuable feature is its ability to dynamically export and import values in various AWS accounts. When you update the value, it's directly reflected across the system without needing manual editing. This is particularly effective for setting policies securely. The parameter store features are among the best aspects.

I use AWS Systems Manager in my AWS account. I mainly use it to control and mitigate unauthorized access. I also use it to track my cloud activity with CloudTrail and manage configurations with AWS Config. 

The solution's most valuable feature is the change management option. It tracks every action on my AWS accounts in a centralized way, acting like a control tool for me. This is especially useful when working with Kubernetes and AWS ECS services. Additionally, my colleagues and clients often use the application management tools for configuration, parameters, and installations.

AWS Systems Manager is crucial for automation tasks such as patch management and compliance enforcement across our AWS resources. It also facilitates secure instance access without SSH keys through Session Manager. 

The product's most valuable feature is automation. It streamlines infrastructure management tasks like patching and configuration management, integrating well with other AWS services like CloudWatch and S3.

I use AWS Systems Manager primarily for infrastructure management and automation. One of its key benefits is managing patches and updates for our EC2 instances, including both Windows and Linux workloads. It can perform compliance checks on all managed workloads, identifying which systems aren't compliant or haven't been patched.

Runbooks are a significant feature, enabling the automation of various tasks. For example, I can use a runbook to automate this process if I need to configure DNS on a hundred servers.

Parameter Store is crucial for securely storing sensitive data like database credentials. It provides an extra layer of isolation and encryption for information we don't want visible in clear text.

The inventory feature is useful because it records all applications installed on workloads managed by the AWS Systems Manager.

What I like the most about the tool is the Session Manager. It's easy to log in, connect to your instance, and start working on them. You don't have to go through the legacy SSH on port 22, which is also a security improvement.

The tool isn't a standard product. When I say it's not a standard product or suite, it's more like a value-added service. Without AWS Systems Manager, your infrastructure would still survive, but you'd have to manage your systems manually. For example, if you want to work on a hundred virtual machines without AWS Systems Manager, you'd have to perform the same task on those hundred machines a hundred times. But using Runbook, you can write one script, use predefined scripts, configure once, and push to a hundred systems.

If you ask me if you need experience to work with the solution, I'd say yes. You need to understand what you want to do with it, and you also need to understand the systems you're working on. For instance, if you want to work on a Linux machine using AWS Systems Manager, there are two parts to it. You have to understand what you want to do with it, which is relatively easy as it's a user-friendly system. Then, the bigger and more important part is understanding the Linux machine. So there are two pieces: understanding what you want to do in Linux and understanding AWS Systems Manager. If that's the right word, it's a sort of coexistence or cross-pollination.

I utilize AWS Systems Manager for managing and handling interviews, resources, security, and configurations like database connections, API keys, and passwords. With AWS, I can execute commands on-premises servers. I also use AWS as a patch manager to automate instance patching for data security and overall automation. For automated resource setup, I use AWS CloudFormation to deploy applications based on specific configurations stored in AWS Systems Manager. This includes managing security, version control, and deploying scripts through automation documents. AWS Systems Manager's automation capabilities, along with tools like AWS Lambda, allow for streamlined execution and integration into continuous integration or pipeline processes via the AWS Management Console.

The Parameter Store feature in AWS Systems Manager has greatly improved my configuration management. It offers centralized and secure storage for configuration data and secrets, including sensitive information like database connections, API keys, and passwords. 

I manage the company's large SAP workloads that run on AWS. We use it for things like automation. We are service providers. I'm an SAP Service Delivery Manager.

We are currently exploring patching automation. Overall, there are a variety of automation options that can be achieved using Systems Manager. In general, the remote execution of commands on this is something we've used for a long time to automate starting and stopping of EC2 instances.

You can use it for Duo Inventory and to do page management. You can use it to do automation.

We are testing with a couple of machines that are using SSM for patching.

When we do the automation in the cloud, we use the SSM agent. This helps us to test our automation and documents, and monitor the cloud.

I use the solution based on our company’s requirements.

Elastic Kubernetes Service is valuable. AWS provides Auto Scaling groups.