Tutorials

The tutorials in this section show you how to perform common tasks when working with maintenance windows.

Complete prerequisites

Before trying these tutorials, complete the following prerequisites.

• Configure the AWS CLI on your local machine – Before you can run AWS CLI commands, you must install and configure the CLI on your local machine. For information, see Installing or updating the latest version of the AWS CLI and Installing the AWS Tools for PowerShell.

• Verify maintenance window roles and permissions – An AWS administrator in your account must grant you the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions you need to manage maintenance windows using the CLI. For information, see Setting up Maintenance Windows.

• Create or configure an instance that is compatible with Systems Manager – You need at least one Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instance that is configured for use with Systems Manager to complete the tutorials. This means that SSM Agent is installed on the instance, and an IAM instance profile for Systems Manager is attached to the instance.

  We recommend launching an instance from one AWS managed Amazon Machine Image (AMI) with the agent preinstalled. For more information, see Find AMIs with the SSM Agent preinstalled.

  For information about installing SSM Agent on an instance, see the following topics:

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

  • Manually installing and uninstalling SSM Agent on EC2 instances for Linux

  For information about configuring IAM permissions for Systems Manager to your instance, see Configure instance permissions required for Systems Manager.

• Create additional resources as needed – Run Command, a capability of Systems Manager, includes many tasks that don't require you to create resources other than those listed in this prerequisites topic. For that reason, we provide a simple Run Command task for you to use your first time through the tutorials. You also need an EC2 instance that is configured to use with Systems Manager, as described earlier in this topic. After you configure that instance, you can register a simple Run Command task.

  The Systems Manager Maintenance Windows capability supports running the following four types of tasks:

  • Run Command commands

  • Systems Manager Automation workflows

  • AWS Lambda functions

  • AWS Step Functions tasks

  In general, if a maintenance window task that you want to run requires additional resources, you should create them first. For example, if you want a maintenance window that runs an AWS Lambda function, create the Lambda function before you begin; for a Run Command task, create the S3 bucket that you can save command output to (if you plan to do so); and so on.

Tutorials

• Tutorials: Create and manage maintenance windows using the AWS CLI
• Tutorial: Create a maintenance window for patching using the console