Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Reviews

AWS Systems Manager gives me visibility and control of your infrastructure on AWS. Systems Manager provides a unified user interface so I can view operational data from multiple AWS services and allows me to automate operational tasks across your AWS resources.

We could make updates to running instances via chef solo by invoking it using SSM, but we like the instances to be as immutable as possible - makes for very easy rollbacks and reduces the amount of unintentional change in the environment. If we need to make an update we build and test a completely new image and then deploy new instances based on it rather than updating running instances.

IMO the biggest limitations with AWS features of this type are usually a lack of 3rd-party extensions or support.

e.g. with Chef you have a massive resource of 3rd-party cookbooks freely available.

SHORTEN THE TIME TO DETECT PROBLEMS

EASY TO USE AUTOMATION

IMPROVE VISIBILITY AND CONTROL

MANAGE HYBRID ENVIRONMENTS

I like Amazon Web Services because is an excelent tool both for people and for companies, because a system or an application can be deployed in an very fast enviroment like EC2, and using any of their existing tools, such as S3. AWS is more reliable and also secure as most of the business data information would be passed and so it should be properly encrypted and follow other security measures to prevent any data from getting leaked while communicating between the applications. AWS is more flexible and scalable with more bandwidth and storage capabilities. AWS is highly customizable and is easy to use, the learning curve for its main functions is relatively easy and well documented, application programming interfaces (APIs) are accessible and also is available in many regions. It has variety of tools at your disposal and the S3 interface is being well laid out and easy to organize. It constantly innovates and iterates, announcing new features several times per year and the price is very competitive in the market.

If you manage many accounts AWS, management can become somewhat disorganized bacause it does not offer many tools for internal control, also it has many tools at your disposal, but you may not know them all. They could see how to promote and introduce the tools that you use less to display its advantages. While the documentation is robust it is sometimes difficult to get access to an actual person who might be able to help with the design of your application and what Amazon service is most applicable.

I am a consultant, as such, I provide software solutions and consulting services to customers with different needs. AWS gives me the tools to cover much of their needs, so it is for me a key tool in the performance of my activities, I really like how clean is the S3 interface, it's simple and effective and allows me to do my post-weekend tasks easily and quickly and also AWS peremptorily lowers costs a couple of times per year.

Protera Technologies, specailizes in managed hosting services for SAP,. AWS EC2 allows our team to provision and right size compute resources on-demand. AWS EC2 gives access with no delay to the compute resourecs needed, and we only pay for what we use. This is a landslide change when compared to traditional hosting that required weeks of planning and deployment activities for even simple HW changes.

In some cases upgrading or transitioning from from EC2 familly of instances to another has some adveser cost impact

Amazon EC2 Systems Manager will give you the power of "yes", like in "Yes, I undersatnd what is going on with my systems and I feel I am in control"

EC2 Systems manager allows our team to effectively ajust compute requirements and consumption

It does require some experience with the cloud and coding to really get the most out of it. But there is plenty of resources to learn on the go and some services like WordPress can be installed with the click of a button.

It is not made for novices. So there is a lot of trial by fire for beginners. However, it is easy to master when you know what you are doing.

It is a short and steep start but then pretty easy.

We use it to host our website and dynamic web content.

EC2 instances can range from free to expensive depending on what you want to do. I enjoyed the range and ease of deployment. Free tier is awesome for what you get access to.

The range. For new folks, the amount of choices is overwhelming. But if you like lots of options, it's not really a problem. There has to be some familiarity with the console to get started. THerea re so many choices, it can be hard to decide what you want to do.

Freedom to spin up and tear down machines for various purposes ranging from research to a simple web server and only pay for what I use.

I like that I can remote access machines from the AWS console directly.

I dislike that it is VERY hard to find the machine that I want to remotely access.

If you are using linux, the value still feels limited to me. It is hard to see the value just by using the console. I've been able to find that value in other products, but not this one. The online training may help to find that value.

We just started exploring the features and became disenchanted. It felt more like a windows machine management system and we don't have any windows machines.

We can now automatically run powershell scripts across our entire fleet of instances at the same time! Additionally it can support automatically running tasks in "maintenance windows" replacing the need for hours of manual effort spent after hours on the weekend!

Parameter store is a little difficult to navigate through. Believe improvements may be coming to that.

Before we had to manually remote into each machine and run commands, where now we can select the instances we want the run command to go against and it will simultaneously execute against all of them and bring back the results.

SSM allows us to manage servers and jobs at massive scale.

It is difficult to re-run a failed job. It requires that the job be re-instantiated, which is difficult when iterating rapidly in sandbox-type scenarios. Also, I wish there was a way to run a job on a set number or percentage of servers that match a set of tags. The use case is running a job that needs to run only once and with auto-scaling there may be many servers running at one time.

Go for it!

batch jobs, manual processes, save time

EC2 lets us scale to use and pay for just he compute power we need. We saved over 60% compared to hosting our own equipment in a data center.

Not much to dislike. Some extra steps are needed for on-the-road remote access unless you have a VPN solution. Still, better than the alternatives!

Once you learn the basics of managing EC2 systems you'll never look back.

Server and fleet management, the ability to spin up instances for testing and then take them down. Scaling server usage without major capital costs.

I like the integration found between run command, automations, maintenance windows, and parameter store. I have found these components work well together.

User interface in the aws console is awful servers cannot be sorted by name when servers are sorted only 1 server's information can then be viewed logs do not sort easily 10 items per page limit adds unneeded frustration. Please redesign the UI to reduce the number of clicks to get information.

It is a cost effective solution for managing servers at scale, but there is a learning curve to the product as well as limitations to understand and consider before committing to production environment

We patch monthly windies updates, manage AMIs, and upgrade our software product line via automations

We used to have in house scripts used to run short CLI commands across a large number of instances. RunCommand gives us the capability to manage, throttle, and audit exactly how that particular script runs which makes it very powerful and useful. The sessions manager also gives us the ability to remove SSH access to our instances and use sesions manager instead

I know that new features are still being added but I wish I could more seamlessly use the AWS SSM to reconnect to existing sessions.

Remove the need for SSH accessbut keep the flexibilty governed by IAM!

Management of large number of EC2 instances, both operationally and security

EC2 allows us to not have to worry about the datacenter side of our infrastructure. It makes things much easier to scale and allows us to provide better support to our developers.

EC2 definitely takes some time to get used to after having had physical access to the equipment itself.. The dashboard is easy to use but has many options that sometimes can confuse.

It's definitely worth trying. The low cost of entry allows you to try it out and if it doesn't work for your business then you can give it up.

EC2 allows us to reduce our datacenter footprint. It also allows us to scale more easily.

The tool is pretty handy with the ability to manage everything in one place. I am able to get all information I need and pin the important one vs good to have ones. Able to setup thing in no time. Very helpful

Nothing so far. I am fairly new to the platform and was able to get things done in no time.

Single point to manage my instance with the ability to go for granular details if needed.

The ease of deploying servers and being able to back them up. There is minimal latency and it really helps us to stand up new services and test applications on the fly.

There isnt anything in particular that I can think of that I dislike.

We no longer need to host our own server stacks if neccesary it helps us reduce costs overall ,

scalability and ability to spin up easily is aplus and abolity to use only when needed is a huige infrastructiure help. The fact that we don't have tp purchase servers is aplus to company.

cost increses and adds up before you realize. Warning and heads up will help, abilituy to see what the useage is and then able to scale wil lhelp

infrastructure

Convenience of tools for imaging, spectrum of sizes to choose from, ease of changing hardware spec on the fly

The console interface is very restrictive. It is difficult to switch between regions for easily managing multiple environments. There is no way to recover from hardware "faults" that may occur on start-up, requiring a very expensive process to recover machines that may only need to do a quick fsck scan, for example.

Automate your own management of EC2's and expect to spend time with developing custom tools. Do not rely on AWS console management

Rapid deployment and network management

The ability to manage EC2 through API, but also the capabilities in the UI to deploy.

Lack of configuring options in the UI when displaying Instances. For example, being able to display and sort on IP address (public and private) when dealing with a large list of Instances.

Deploying services where full access to the OS level is required.

Works like Puppet/Chef -remote control of system by allowing tasks to be done for on-premise and hosted servers

Learning curve, not all system types supported, some templated wizards for common tasks would be good

One place to go to send config changes to many systems. Like updating a hosts file or pushing a new software package

It works, for moving at a fast pace that works with your customers needs and time line.

Missing Tags from OS metadata in OS, would be ideal for adding automation and vlidation.

Do not dissmise it yet.

Migration of Legacy datacenter systems, In a rapped flexiable model tha requires low learning curve for Dev and admins.

There are tons of tools for any imaginable feature who wish to expand. The elasticity feature is also very useful. It gives us the ability to save money on resources not we don't need

Can't think of anything right now. It is working just as we had envisioned it.

We our redundancy and disaster recovery problem

EC2 System manager simplifies it all without the need to invest more. We tried several tools in our cloud adoption process, but assessing EC2 manager was definitively the smartest choice to start.

Once you start growing you'll find your own needs, you'll outgrow the tool really quickly. But the product is evolving, so you can go back to it really easily.

Start with it at once. You MUST have something for EC2 management. Then discover if you need something else.

Our EC2 instances management wouldn't be possible without the tool

Everything is centralized. The EC2 manager is one spot to manage and compare performance of different EC2 instances

The product is a little price., Would like to see EC2 be more of a service like lambda where everything is managed on it'w own

Managing a large group of EC2 systems

the ease to launch up the instances in minutes and reserve instances as needed

there isn't much to disklike as the product is bulletproof

ec2 has helped us a lot in terms of managing 1000's of servers and automating most of the daily tasks with the api

Systems Manager is a very under used product at AWS and it is quintinessential to using this service to manage of fleet of instances as cattle, verses Pet care (SSH/RDP care, etc.).

The console is still immature. the SSM agent can be difficult to get rolling on existing servers don't have the agent installed (Red Hat). Session Manager is buggy/immature.

Cattle vs Sheep Arguement - remove SSH keys (close port 22!!). Forensic logging with S3 and CloudWatch. Running commands for updates at huge scale.

It was fast for me, a new user, to spin up new vms.

I find there's a lot of back and forth with the documentation. I wish the page would have something to help new users.

We are looking to build a quickstart for our customers.

fast deployment, easy to manage and integrate with.

mostly price related, however over all this is a great solution.

it may be the right fit for you. give a try.

heavily used for most key areas where traditional onprem hw is just too much work.

Flexibility in providing resources we need quickly.

I haven't run into any dislikes yet, it is still new to the enivronment so it is difficult to gauge at this point.

Initially just for testing environments to quickly be able to provision resources.

The fact I can stand up a server for as long as exactly as I need it for... on demand compute is amazing

Remotely accessing the servers has been painful

none

K8's is running there and some home grown applications

The simplicity to manage system and do comparisons between Prod and QA

N/A,,,,There is really nothing that I can syat that I diskile about the system

You will not regret it

reviews are much easier in the condensed fortmat

performs very well and we have used in for many of our clients. Thes services are cost effective

different instance size, spot instances , the instance lanuch time, and the AMI factory method to create custom instances

on prem

Love that I can do all of this with a UI instead of just on the command line. Thanks for making it easy!

Sometimes the filtering doesn't work very well.

Checking in on Instances and visualizing where things are

customizable compute capacity on the fly together with autoscaling

Instances get terminated abruptly for which though AWS do not charge but got to start over all again

big data refined layer by using the AWS EC2 instances to compute

EC2 is an easy way to start a VM and experiment quickly.

It becomes difficult to manage for production purpose.

In our organization, we have many online services that our customers need to send data and retrieve data.

I like the fact that ec2 is so flexible

I don't like how the screen refreshes as often as it does

The scalability of the ec2 instances allow us to have multiple production, QA and UAT environments

Easily manage instances, change instance types quickly

not much, it's pretty good and easy to use

Better than managing in my own data center

Easily spin up and down instances rather than run them in my datacenter

easy to build but had to manage. So we use software to do it.

too many AMIs confusing. N eeded only few so no confusion is there when you ready to choose them.

MAchine LEarning

Robust Techonology and cloud agnostic to help our COmpute requirement

It;s very lenghty though to setupo and as i heard from team collegue,.

To solve SIlos problems we were facing in our enviro ment.

Coming from a data center perspective... EC2 has simplified the building of Linux and Windows servers`

Tagging of resources has slowed down deployment

taggin instances after builds has slowed down the process of integrating

What we like about this product is the variety of instance types, flexibility to run different types of operating systems and software. It's useful as it's not totally managed. Spot instances are nice.

What we dislike about EC2 is that it takes a little long (about 5 minutes) to spin up a box.

Depolying our solution in the cloud. Ease of use and not having to manage our infistructure locally.

Flexible pricing, various instance types, good for development purposes

Not enough Windows instances; more per hour flexibke pricing

No need for full time server management staff, easy way to start a project

Availability, able to easily monitor the virtual servers

Learning curve on setting up and deploy. Needed to teach the team.

Moving off on premise hardware that is no longer vendor supported.

The ability to spin up boxes quickly to test, try new ideas, whatever and then throw them away is a huge game changer for my teams.

Hard to think of something since there are so many options and the ability to define my own.

Learn how this interacts with other parts of the AWS ecosystem

The ability to prototype in greenfield environments and show management and end users.

Fast, easy to spin up, highly configurable, secure and economic to run

Not straightforward to migrate. Security group concepts take a while to understand

Cost saving significantly. Staff cost reduction

provides us the ability to scale the instance to needs of different clients.

tiering of ec2 instence can be more finegrained

expensive compared to

scaling to client needs

the easy access, configuration and accessibility helps with faster deivery

this product is very reliable and there in not much to dislike here

management of huge data

The variety of choices with OS and capabilities

In inability to name the servers at the time of creation

Minimize time to spin-up systems for service deployments

EC2 System Manager is perfect for native cloud environment. Some learning curve with the hybrid environment but overall it's great to offload the workload of infra with the service. Also need a security review as this service do provide elevated permission.

elevated permission is some what tricky at first but can be a great tool when well designed.

mainly with compliance and man power

Ease of setup, deployment, administration

Would like to be able to size the instances based on neeeds, rather thabn pick from list

Eliminate local IT

Single pane of glass for managing both EC2 cloud based servers and local on-premise servers as well.

There really isn't a whole lot I disklike!

Not really

We need a way to manage and administer and audit a large number of disparate systems across multiple datacenters, both on premise and in the cloud - Amazon EC2 Systems Manager does this for us.

To have access to the instances directly via ssm and patch them

Agent upgrades is a pain and is noit managed

Patching, maintainence