2.2.3. Automating Operational Tasks

Every hour your operations team spends manually patching servers, rotating credentials, or running compliance checks is an hour they're not improving your platform. Without automation, operational tasks consume exponentially more time as your fleet grows — what takes 10 minutes for 5 servers takes all day for 500. Worse, manual processes introduce inconsistency: server 47 gets patched on Tuesday, server 48 gets forgotten until an auditor notices.

This section covers Systems Manager (Run Command, Patch Manager, State Manager), Lambda-based automation, and Step Functions orchestration. Unlike ad-hoc scripting, these services provide audit trails, rollback capabilities, and fleet-wide consistency. How do you ensure that every operational task is repeatable, auditable, and scalable?