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6.2.2. Key Concepts Review: Operational Management & Automation

šŸ’” First Principle: Efficient operational management is achieved through extensive automation, standardized processes, and the programmatic control of infrastructure, reducing manual effort and improving consistency.

Scenario: You need to automate the patching of all your EC2 instances, ensure they maintain a consistent software configuration, and manage updates to your application with minimal downtime.

For SysOps Administrators, automating routine tasks and managing configurations consistently are central to operational excellence.

Core Concepts & AWS Services for Operational Management & Automation:
  • AWS Systems Manager: Unified management tool for hybrid environments.
    • SSM Agent: Local client on instances.
    • Run Command: Secure remote execution.
    • State Manager: Configuration management, prevents drift.
    • Patch Manager: Automated OS/application patching.
    • Session Manager: Secure shell access without SSH.
    • Automation: Orchestrates operational runbooks.
  • Infrastructure as Code (IaC): Define infrastructure as code.
    • AWS CloudFormation: Declarative IaC for AWS.
    • CloudFormation StackSets: Deploy IaC across multiple accounts/regions.
  • Application Deployment & Release Management:
    • AWS CodeDeploy: Automates application deployments.
    • Deployment Strategies: In-place, Rolling, Blue/Green, Canary.
    • Rollbacks: Critical for failed deployments.
    • AWS Elastic Beanstalk: Simplified application deployment.

āš ļø Common Pitfall: Making manual changes to resources deployed via IaC, leading to configuration drift and inconsistencies.

Key Trade-Offs: Manual operations (flexible for one-offs, but inconsistent and error-prone) versus automated operations (consistent, scalable, but requires upfront setup).

Reflection Question: How do AWS Systems Manager (Patch Manager, State Manager) and Infrastructure as Code (IaC) (CloudFormation) contribute to efficient operational management and automation by reducing manual effort, improving consistency, and enabling scalable management?