Amazon EC2 Systems Manager Adds a New Amazon CloudWatch Events Target, Association Versioning for State Manager, and Approve Action for Automation

Amazon EC2 Systems Manager State Manager can now be used to trigger Amazon CloudWatch Events, Automation can be used as a CloudWatch Events target, you can now keep track of State Manager association changes, and you can use the new approve action type in Automation.

Previously, Systems Manager State Manager could not trigger Amazon CloudWatch Events. Now, you can use CloudWatch Events to receive notifications when the status of a Systems Manager State Manager association or instance changes. For example, you can be notified if an association is in a failed state and use an AWS Lambda function to stop that instance and start a new one. You can also trigger a Systems Manager Automation workflow, helping you to quickly respond to system events. Automation workflows can be triggered on a fixed schedule or by a change in your AWS environment.

Changes to associations in Systems Manager State Manager can now be recorded. Previously, when you edited associations, you could not go back and review older association settings. Now, associations are versioned, and can be named using human-readable strings, allowing you to see a trail of association changes. You can also perform rate-based scheduling, which allows you to schedule associations more granularly.

Approve is a new Systems Manager Automation action type. Previously, you could not pause an automation workflow and request a manager or stakeholder approval. Now, you can use the Approve action to request one or more principals for approval or rejection of a step. The principal can be an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) user or a role. Once the required number of approvals are reached, Automation will continue to the next step.

Systems Manager is available in all commercial regions and GovCloud.

For more information about Amazon EC2 Systems Manager, visit our Product Page and Documentation.