Automate your operational playbooks with AWS Systems Manager
You can now use Systems Manager Automation to build and share standardized operational playbooks to ensure consistency across users, accounts, and AWS Regions. With the ability to now execute scripts and add wiki-style documentation, you can reduce errors and eliminate manual steps such as navigating written procedures in wikis and running terminal commands.
You can now add Python or PowerShell scripts in combination with existing Automation actions, such as getting approvals, calling AWS APIs, or running commands on your Amazon EC2 instances. For example, you can now filter for unencrypted EBS snapshots, generate a report, get approval, and encrypt them to enhance your security posture. You can also extend your script execution environment by attaching additional software packages. For example, you can use the newly published Amazon playbook, AWS-RunPacker, to run your Hashicorp Packer templates to build machine images.
Creating your own automation playbook is easy using the new playbook builder. The user interface guides you through the process of building a custom playbook without the need to be experienced in Automation’s JSON/Yaml format.
This feature is available in all GovCloud (US) and commercial Regions. You pay for only what you use. For pricing details, see the pricing page.
To learn more, visit the AWS Systems Manager documentation. To get started, see the following resources:
• Getting started tutorial
• Product detail page
• Blog post
• New playbook builder, an intuitive user interface to create your playbook
• New Amazon published playbooks to demo the new features.