AWS Systems Manager Agent comes pre-installed in latest AMIs

Jul 16, 2018 18:34 GMT  ·  By

Amazon announced that the latest Ubuntu-based AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) come pre-installed with its AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) software for Amazon EC2 and hybrid instances.

As of July 2018, Amazon's Linux AMIs (Amazon Machine Images) that are based on either the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (Xenial Xerus) or Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (Bionic Beaver) operating systems now come pre-installed with the AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent), an Amazon software designed to run on hybrid or Amazon EC2 instances in public and private clouds on AWS (Amazon Web Services).

"With this new feature release, AWS Systems Manager Agent is installed by default on all instances launched or built from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (2018.07 and later) and 18.04 LTS (all versions) AMIs," said Amazon. "By having the agent pre-installed, you can quickly start using AWS Systems Manager features such as Run Command, State Manager, Inventory and Patch Manager."

Will help users save a lot of time

The integration of the AWS Systems Manager Agent in the latest Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS Amazon Linux AMIs promises to help users save a lot of time by removing the steps needed for logging into each Amazon EC2 or hybrid instance and then manually install the SSM Agent, which is an open-source software that's freely customizable to better suit your needs.

You can find the updated Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (2018.07 and later) and Ubuntu 18.04 LTS (all versions) AMIs in the AWS Marketplace, which gives you access to over 500 popular free and commercial pre-configured Amazon Machine Images. To get started with the AWS Systems Manager Agent, you'll have to attach the AWS Identity and Access Management policies to your instances. More details are available here.