HITS

Balancing agility, while maximizing uptime, ensuring compliance and driving organizational efficiency, is a complex task, according to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Now, throw in on-premises and other cloud resources and that complexity is only multiplied.

Centralized operations management using AWS, however, is “where you can automate operations anywhere,” reducing a lot of the complexity, Bryan Henderson, senior solutions architect at AWS, said Oct. 26 during the webinar “Automate Operations on AWS.”

During the webinar, the company demonstrated how AWS Cloud Operations can help an organization reduce the complexity of managing and operating large numbers of applications and resources in cloud and hybrid environments.

“Customers use AWS to host their workloads and look to us for a modern way to manage operations of those workloads in the cloud,” according to Henderson.

Noting that automation is a “key feature” of AWS Systems Manager, he said it helps organizations “scale consistently and easily.” Automation also “works across Systems Manager’s capabilities, letting you eliminate manual errors in your environment by authoring repeatable runbooks, triggered by EventBridge rules, Maintenance Windows, State Manager Associations, Change Manager and more,” he pointed out.

Customers can also “build automation workflows to configure and manage instances and AWS resources,”  as well as “create custom workflows or use predefined workflows maintained by AWS,” he said. Additionally, “you can receive notifications about automation tasks and workflows by using Amazon CloudWatch Events,” he noted, adding: “Customers monitor automation progress and execution details by using the AWS Systems Manager console.”

Automation, meanwhile, “can simplify common IT tasks, such as changing the state of one or more instances using an approval work and managing instance states according to a schedule,” he told attendees and those viewing online. Customers can also “safely perform disruptive tasks in bulk,” he said.

Systems Manager includes features that he said “help you target large groups of instances by using Amazon EC2 tags and velocity controls that help you roll out changes according to the limits you define.”

“You can simplify complex tasks,” he pointed out, adding: “Automation offers one click automation for simplifying complex tasks such as creating golden Amazon Machine Images, otherwise known as AMIs, and recovering unreachable E2 instances. Customers can enhance operation security by using a delegated administrator, you can restrict or elevate user permissions for various types of tasks. And, finally, customers can share best practices using automation. Automation lets you share best practices with the rest of your organization.”

Pal Patel, solutions architect at AWS, went on to provide an extensive demonstration.

Three Takeaways

Concluding the webinar, Henderson said: “There are three takeaways that we want you to know from this webinar. One, instead of data siloed in disparate places for your application workloads, AWS provides a centralized place for operational data. It aggregates data in a single console to gain actionable insights.”

Also, “with Systems Manager, customers can automatically resolve application issues, shorten the time to detect and resolve operational issues and implement best practices proactively,” he said.

Third, he said: “AWS can help with solutions. Systems Manager helps you establish operational control over your cloud resources. Systems Manager enables you to protect existing organizational investments with service requests, incident management, problem management and change management capabilities.”