Manually installing and uninstalling SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Windows Server - AWS Systems Manager

Manually installing and uninstalling SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Windows Server

AWS Systems Manager Agent (SSM Agent) is preinstalled, by default, on the following Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for Windows Server provided by Amazon:

  • Windows Server 2008-2012 R2 AMIs published in November 2016 or later

  • Windows Server 2016, 2019, and 2022

Install SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Windows Server

If necessary, you can manually download and install the latest version of SSM Agent on your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance for Windows Server by using the following procedure. The commands provided in this procedure can also be passed to Amazon EC2 instances as scripts through user data.

SSM Agent requires Windows PowerShell 3.0 or later to run certain AWS Systems Manager documents (SSM documents) on Windows Server instances (for example, the legacy AWS-ApplyPatchBaseline document). Verify that your Windows Server instances are running Windows Management Framework 3.0 or later. This framework includes Windows PowerShell. For more information, see Windows Management Framework 3.0.

Note

This procedure applies to installing or reinstalling SSM Agent on an EC2 instance for Windows Server. If you need to install the agent on an on-premises server or a virtual machine (VM) so it can be used with Systems Manager, see Install SSM Agent for a hybrid environment (Windows).

To manually install the latest version of SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Windows Server
  1. Connect to your instance by using Remote Desktop or Windows PowerShell. For more information, see Connect to your instance in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances.

  2. Download the latest version of SSM Agent to your instance. You can download using either PowerShell commands or a direct download link.

    Note

    The URLs in this step let you download SSM Agent from any AWS Region. If you want to download the agent from a specific Region, use a Region-specific URL instead:

    https://amazon-ssm-region.s3.region.amazonaws.com/latest/windows_amd64/AmazonSSMAgentSetup.exe

    region represents the identifier for an AWS Region supported by AWS Systems Manager, such as us-east-2 for the US East (Ohio) Region. For a list of supported region values, see the Region column in Systems Manager service endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.

    PowerShell

    Run the following three PowerShell commands in order. These commands allow you to download SSM Agent without adjusting Internet Explorer (IE) Enhanced Security settings, and then install the agent and remove the installation file.

    64-bit
    [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 'TLS12' $progressPreference = 'silentlyContinue' Invoke-WebRequest ` https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/windows_amd64/AmazonSSMAgentSetup.exe ` -OutFile $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\SSMAgent_latest.exe
    32-bit
    [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = 'TLS12' $progressPreference = 'silentlyContinue' Invoke-WebRequest ` https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/windows_386/AmazonSSMAgentSetup.exe ` -OutFile $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\SSMAgent_latest.exe
    Start-Process ` -FilePath $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\SSMAgent_latest.exe ` -ArgumentList "/S"
    rm -Force $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\SSMAgent_latest.exe
    Direct download

    Download the latest version of SSM Agent to your instance by using the following link. If you want, update this URL with an AWS Region-specific URL.

    https://s3.amazonaws.com/ec2-downloads-windows/SSMAgent/latest/windows_amd64/AmazonSSMAgentSetup.exe

    Run the downloaded AmazonSSMAgentSetup.exe file to install SSM Agent.

  3. Start or restart SSM Agent by sending the following command in PowerShell:

    Restart-Service AmazonSSMAgent

Uninstall SSM Agent from EC2 instances for Windows Server

To uninstall the SSM Agent from a Windows Server instance, open Control Panel, Programs. Choose the Uninstall a program option. Open the context (right-click) menu for Amazon SSM Agent and choose Uninstall.