Manually installing 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:
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Windows Server 2008-2012 R2 AMIs published in November 2016 or later
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Windows Server 2016, 2019, and 2022
If your managed instance is a Windows Server 2008-2012 R2 instance created before November 2016, then EC2Config processes Systems Manager requests on your instance. We recommend that you upgrade your existing instances to use the latest version of EC2Config. By using the latest EC2Config installer, you install SSM Agent side-by-side with EC2Config. This side-by-side version of SSM Agent is compatible with your instances created from earlier Windows Server AMIs and allows you to use SSM features published after November 2016. For information about how to install the latest version of the EC2Config service, see Install the latest version of EC2Config in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances.
Important
An updated version of SSM Agent is released whenever new capabilities are added to Systems Manager or
updates are made to existing capabilities. Failing to use the latest version of the agent can prevent your managed node
from using various Systems Manager capabilities and features. For that reason, we recommend that you automate
the process of keeping SSM Agent up to date on your machines. For information, see Automating updates to SSM Agent. Subscribe to the SSM Agent
Release Notes
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.
Important
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
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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.
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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.exeregion
represents the identifier for an AWS Region supported by AWS Systems Manager, such asus-east-2
for the US East (Ohio) Region. For a list of supportedregion
values, see the Region column in Systems Manager service endpoints in the Amazon Web Services General Reference.- PowerShell
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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.
Start-Process ` -FilePath $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\SSMAgent_latest.exe ` -ArgumentList "/S"
rm -Force $env:USERPROFILE\Desktop\SSMAgent_latest.exe
- Direct download
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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.
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Start or restart SSM Agent by sending the following command in PowerShell:
Restart-Service AmazonSSMAgent
Important
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
To uninstall the SSM Agent from a Windows instance, open Control Panel, Programs. Choose the Uninstall a program option. Open the context (right-click) menu for Amazon SSM Agent and choose Uninstall.