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

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:

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

  • 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 page on GitHub to get notifications about SSM Agent updates.

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.

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

  1. Log in to your instance by using Remote Desktop or Windows PowerShell.

  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
    $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
    $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
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.