Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Adds Cross-Platform and Multi-Step Document Support

Amazon EC2 Systems Manager now supports cross-platform documents, and now you can use multiple steps of the same type in the same document.

Previously, you had to maintain separate platform specific documents in order to run the same steps, or plugins, on Windows and Linux instances. Now, by adding a precondition that specifies the platform type, you can run steps for both Windows and Linux instances in the same document. For example, you can now update all Windows and Linux instances using one document, such as AWS-RunPatchBaseline, by identifying the appropriate platform for each step in the precondition. This improvement allows you to maintain all of your Windows and Linux instances with fewer documents to manage.

Additionally, you can now use multiple steps of the same type in the same document. This allows you to use Windows and Linux specific steps, for example when you want to join a Windows instance to a domain and collect metrics for your Linux web server, all in the same document. With multiple steps of the same type, you can create before and after actions. For example, before patching you can remove an instance from an auto scaling group, patch, then add the instance back.

To use cross-platform and multi-step documents, you first need to update to the latest agent. You can see how to do this in our documentation. Learn more about Systems Manager Documents here.

Systems Manager is available in all regions.

For more information about Systems Manager, visit our Product Page.