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AWS Automation Documents
Automate AWS AMIs
AWS Systems Manager Automation documents let you customize your Amazon Machine Images to improve security and avoid config drift.
Special Thanks: This article was made possible by support from Linux Professional Institute
Automation is the long-standing, presiding champion in any DevOps arena, and even more so in cloud environments, where the emphasis is on short-lived, ephemeral resources that can be safely discarded when they’ve run their course and completed their predetermined task.
When you’re faced with running a multitude of Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances on Amazon Web Services (AWS), sometimes across multiple regions, upgrading packages and applying security patches on the operating systems (OSs) of your instances can be a daunting task. Once you’re content that your OSs are current and up to date and your installed packages are patched, you then have the task of customizing your Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) to suit in-house needs.
Tied in with how you customize your instances is config drift , a well-known phenomenon in DevOps circles. Whether you’re using a cloud or traditional data center infrastructure, servers all too easily become uniquely configured and somewhat “special.” By that, I mean they become beautiful Snowflakes , so called because snowflakes are apparently unique. Compared with other servers providing the same services, these special servers might have distinctly different scripts or applications, or they might have certain packages pinned to specific versions to keep everything else from breaking horribly. These unique characteristics cause issues on a number of levels, such as knowing what you’re allowed to update during patch runs or having to keep track of each snowflake’s idiosyncrasies in the event that an enterprise-wide issue (e.g., a new kernel) is urgently required because of a suddenly discovered nasty bug.
In this article, I walk you through the automation of much of the initial
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