Centralized Operations on AWS by using AWS System Manager - Part 1
Tags: devops, aws, beginners, tutorial
Published: 2022-10-26 15:01:28

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title: Centralized Operations on AWS by using AWS System Manager - Part 1
published: true
tags: 
---

# Introduction

![Arch_AWS-Systems-Manager_64@5x.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1666380789241/V6V7p6Mi7.png)

You can manage your applications and infrastructure in the cloud with the help of the `Systems Manager`. Systems Manager simplifies application and resource management, shortens the time to detect and resolve operational problems, and helps you manage your resources securely at scale.

# How Systems Manager works

![image.png](https://cdn.hashnode.com/res/hashnode/image/upload/v1666380716959/Vg2yJPAdA.png)

_[Image Source](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/what-is-systems-manager.html)_

- The Systems Manager will verify that your user, group, or role has permission to perform the action you specified. 
- If the target of your action is a managed node, the Systems Manager Agent will perform the action. 
- The systems Manager, SSM Agent, and other services performed an action on behalf of the Systems Manager report status. If configured, the Systems Manager can send status details to other services.
- If enabled, Systems Manager operations management capabilities such as Explorer, OpsCenter, and Incident Manager aggregate operations data or create artifacts in response to events or errors with your resources. 
- The artifacts include operational work items. Systems Manager operations management capabilities give operational insight into your applications and resources.

# Features of AWS System Manager

There are four core feature groups that make up the operations hub for your AWS applications and resources.

## Operations Management

### Explorer

- Explorer is a dashboard that shows information about your resources. 
- There is an aggregated view of operations data for your accounts in explorer.

### OpsCenter

- Operations engineers and IT professionals can view, investigate, and resolve operational work items in a central location. It is designed to reduce the mean time to resolve issues. 
- Systems Manager Automation runbooks can be used to resolve issues. 
- You can specify the data you want for each item. 
- You can see the reports by status and source.

### Incident Manager

- Users can mitigate and recover from incidents affecting their applications with the help of the Incident Manager. 
- Incident Manager increases incident resolution by notifying responders of impact, highlighting relevant data, and providing collaboration tools to get services back up and running. 
- The incident manager can automate response plans.

## Application Management

### Application Manager

Application Manager helps engineers investigate and fix issues with their resources in the context of their applications and clusters.

### AppConfig

AppConfig can help you create, manage, and deploy application configurations. AppConfig can be used to deploy applications of any size.

### Parameter Store

Parameter Store has storage for configuration data and secrets.

## Change Management

### Automation

Common maintenance and deployment tasks can be automated.

### Change Manager

Change Manager is an enterprise change management framework for requesting, approving, implementing, and reporting on operational changes to your application configuration and infrastructure.

### Maintenance Windows

The maintenance Window can be used to set up recurring schedules for managed instances to run administrative tasks.

## Node Management

### Fleet Manager

Fleet Manager is a UI experience that allows you to remotely manage your nodes.

### Session Manager

Session Manager can be used to manage edge devices and Amazon EC2 instances.

### Patch Manager

Patch Manager can be used to automate the patching process of your managed nodes.

# Use cases

1. Aggregate data in a single console and gain actionable insights across services.

2. It's possible to resolve application issues automatically.

3. Use operational data to easily manage applications and identify issues.

4. Proactive processes such as patching and resource changes can be automated to diagnose and fix operational issues before they affect users.





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