AWS Documentation » AWS Systems Manager » User Guide » Setting Up AWS Systems Manager » Installing and Configuring SSM Agent » Installing and Configuring SSM Agent on Windows Instances » Install and Configure SSM Agent on Amazon EC2 Windows Instances

Install and Configure SSM Agent on Amazon EC2 Windows Instances

SSM Agent is installed by default on Amazon EC2 Windows Server 2016 instances. It is also installed by default on instances created from Windows Server 2003-2012 R2 AMIs published in November 2016 or later. You don't need to install SSM Agent on these instances. If you need to update SSM Agent, we recommend that you use State Manager to automatically update SSM Agent on your instances when new versions become available. For more information, see Automatically Update SSM Agent (CLI).

If your instance is a Windows Server 2003-2012 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 AMIs and enables you to use SSM features published after November 2016. For information about how to install the latest version of the EC2Config service, see Installing the Latest Version of EC2Config in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Windows Instances.

Note

SSM Agent is updated whenever changes are made to Systems Manager and when new capabilities are added. To ensure that your instances are always running the newest version of SSM Agent, we recommend that you update the agent automatically whenever a new version is available using either of the following methods.

• Use a State Manager association. For information, see the State Manager topic Automatically Update SSM Agent (CLI).

• Use a Maintenance Window. For information, see the Maintenance Window topics Automatically Update SSM Agent (AWS CLI) and Automatically Update SSM Agent (Console).

If you prefer to update SSM Agent on your instances manually, you can subscribe to notifications that AWS publishes when a new version of the agent is released. For information, see Subscribing to SSM Agent Notifications. For information about using Run Command to manually update one or more instances with the latest version, see Update SSM Agent by using Run Command.

If necessary, you can manually download and install the latest version of SSM Agent on your Amazon EC2 Windows instance by using the following procedure.

Important

This procedure applies to installing or reinstalling SSM Agent on an Amazon EC2 Windows instance. If you need to install the agent on an on-premises instance or a virtual machine (VM) so it can be used with Systems Manager, see Installing SSM Agent on Servers and Virtual Machines in a Windows Hybrid Environment.

To manually download and install the latest version of SSM Agent

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

2. Download the latest version of SSM Agent to your instance:

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

   This URL lets 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.amazonaws.com/latest/windows_amd64/AmazonSSMAgentSetup.exe

   region represents the Region 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 the AWS Systems Manager Table of Regions and Endpoints topic in the AWS General Reference.

3. Start or restart SSM Agent (AmazonSSMAgent.exe) using the Windows Services Control Panel or by sending the following command in PowerShell:

   Restart-Service AmazonSSMAgent

Important

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