Managing servers in hybrid and multicloud environments with Systems Manager
You can use AWS Systems Manager to manage both Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances and a number of non-EC2 machine types. This section describes the setup tasks that account and system administrators perform to manage non-EC2 machines using Systems Manager in a hybrid and multicloud environment. After these steps are complete, users who have been granted permissions by the AWS account administrator can use Systems Manager to configure and manage their organization's non-EC2 machines.
Any machine that has been configured for use with Systems Manager is called a managed node.
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You can register edge devices as managed nodes using the same hybrid-activation steps used for other non-EC2 machines. These types of edge devices include both AWS IoT devices and devices other than AWS IoT devices. Use the process described in this section to set up these types of edge devices.
Systems Manager also supports edge devices that use AWS IoT Greengrass Core software. The setup process and requirements for AWS IoT Greengrass core devices are different from those for AWS IoT and edge devices other than AWS edge devices. For information about registering AWS IoT Greengrass devices for use with Systems Manager, see Managing edge devices with Systems Manager.
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Non-EC2 macOS machines aren't supported for Systems Manager hybrid and multicloud environments.
If you plan to use Systems Manager to manage Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, or to use both Amazon EC2 instances and non-EC2 machines in hybrid and multicloud environment, follow the steps in Managing EC2 instances with Systems Manager first.
After configuring your hybrid and multicloud environment for Systems Manager, you can do the following:
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Create a consistent and secure way to remotely manage your hybrid and multicloud workloads from one location using the same tools or scripts.
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Centralize access control for actions that can be performed on your machines by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM).
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Centralize auditing of the operations performed on your machines by viewing the API activity recorded in AWS CloudTrail.
For information about using CloudTrail to monitor Systems Manager actions, see Logging AWS Systems Manager API calls with AWS CloudTrail.
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Centralize monitoring by configuring Amazon EventBridge and Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) to send notifications about service execution success.
For information about using EventBridge to monitor Systems Manager events, see Monitoring Systems Manager events with Amazon EventBridge.
About managed nodes
After you finish configuring your non-EC2 machines for Systems Manager as described in this section, your hybrid-activated machines are listed in the AWS Management Console and described as managed nodes. In the console, the IDs of your hybrid-activated managed nodes are distinguished from Amazon EC2 instances with the prefix "mi-". Amazon EC2 instance IDs use the prefix "i-".
A managed node is any machine configured for Systems Manager. Previously, managed nodes were all referred to as managed instances. The term instance now refers to EC2 instances only. The deregister-managed-instance command was named before this terminology change.
For more information, see Working with managed nodes.
About instance tiers
Systems Manager offers a standard-instances tier and an advanced-instances tier for non-EC2 managed nodes in your hybrid and multicloud environment. The standard-instances tier allows you to register a maximum of 1,000 hybrid-activated machines per AWS account per AWS Region. If you need to register more than 1,000 non-EC2 machines in a single account and Region, then use the advanced-instances tier. Advanced instances also allow you to connect to your non-EC2 machines by using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager. Session Manager provides interactive shell access to your managed nodes.
For more information, see Configuring instance tiers.
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