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AWS Documentation » AWS Systems Manager » User Guide » AWS Systems Manager Actions » AWS Systems Manager State Manager » Systems Manager State Manager Walkthroughs » Automatically Update SSM Agent (CLI)

Automatically Update SSM Agent (CLI)

The following procedure walks you through the process of creating a State Manager association using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI). The association automatically updates the SSM Agent according to a schedule that you specify. For more information about the SSM Agent, see Installing and Configuring SSM Agent.

To view details about the different versions of SSM Agent, see the release notes.

Before You Begin

Before you complete the following procedure, verify that you have at least one running Amazon EC2 instance (Linux or Windows) that is configured for Systems Manager. For more information, see Systems Manager Prerequisites.

To create an association for automatically updating SSM Agent

  1. Download the latest version of the AWS CLI to your local machine.

  2. Open the AWS CLI and run the following command to specify your credentials and a Region. You must either have administrator privileges in Amazon EC2, or you must have been granted the appropriate permission in AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). 

    aws configure

    The system prompts you to specify the following.

    AWS Access Key ID [None]: key_name
AWS Secret Access Key [None]: key_name
Default region name [None]: region
Default output format [None]: ENTER

  3. Execute the following command to create an association by targeting instances using Amazon EC2 tags. The Schedule parameter sets a schedule to run the association every Sunday morning at 2:00 a.m. (UTC). 

    aws ssm create-association --targets Key=tag:TagKey,Values=TagValue --name AWS-UpdateSSMAgent --schedule-expression "cron(0 0 2 ? * SUN *)"

    Note

    State Manager associations do not support all cron and rate expressions. For more information about creating cron and rate expressions for associations, see Reference: Cron and Rate Expressions for Systems Manager.

    If you want, you can also target multiple instances by specifying instances IDs in a comma-separated list. 

    aws ssm create-association --targets Key=instanceids,Values=InstanceID,InstanceID,InstanceID --name your document name --schedule-expression "cron(0 0 2 ? * SUN *)"

    The system returns information like the following.

    {
    "AssociationDescription": {
        "ScheduleExpression": "cron(0 0 2 ? * SUN *)",
        "Name": "AWS-UpdateSSMAgent",
        "Overview": {
            "Status": "Pending",
            "DetailedStatus": "Creating"
        },
        "AssociationId": "123..............",
        "DocumentVersion": "$DEFAULT",
        "LastUpdateAssociationDate": 1504034257.98,
        "Date": 1504034257.98,
        "AssociationVersion": "1",
        "Targets": [
            {
                "Values": [
                    "TagValue"
                ],
                "Key": "tag:TagKey"
            }
        ]
    }
}

    The system attempts to create the association on the instance(s) and immediately apply the state. The association status shows Pending.

  4. Run the following command to view an updated status of the association you just created. 

    aws ssm  list-associations

    Note

    If your instances are currently running the most recent version of the SSM Agent, the status shows Failed. This is expected behavior. When a new version of SSM Agent is published, the association automatically installs the new agent, and the status shows Success.