Creating an SSM IAM Role and Configuring an EC2 Instance with AWS Systems Manager via the CLI

1. Note down the ARN of the policy from the following command:

   aws iam list-policies --scope AWS --query "Policies[?PolicyName == 'AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore']"
   

2. Optionally, you may also use the following command, in addition to the value of DefaultVersionId from the above command, to look at the JSON document of the policy in question via the CLI:

   aws iam get-policy-version --policy-arn <ARN-OF-POLICY> --version-id <VERSION-ID-STRING-FROM-PREV-COMMAND>
   

1. Copy the following JSON and create a new JSON file in your current directory. Name it EC2Trust.json:

   {
     "Version": "2012-10-17",
     "Statement": {
       "Effect": "Allow",
       "Principal": {"Service": "ec2.amazonaws.com"},
       "Action": "sts:AssumeRole"
     }
   }
   

2. Create the role and attach the trust policy JSON file you created above to it. Make sure you execute the following command in the same directory where you created the EC2Trust.json file:

   aws iam create-role --role-name MyEC2SSMRole --assume-role-policy-document file://EC2Trust.json
   

3. Assign the policy from the previous step to the newly created role:

   aws iam attach-role-policy --role-name MyEC2SSMRole --policy-arn <SSM-POLICY-ARN>
   

1. Create an instance profile using the following command:

   aws iam create-instance-profile --instance-profile-name MyEC2InstanceProfile
   

2. Copy the instance profile name (MyEC2InstanceProfile) and ARN in the output for later use when creating an EC2 instance.

3. Add the role created in the second task to the instance profile created above:

   aws iam add-role-to-instance-profile --instance-profile-name MyEC2InstanceProfile --role-name MyEC2SSMRole
   

1. Get the subnet ID:

   aws ec2 describe-subnets --query "Subnets[?Tags[?Value == 'SubnetA'] ].SubnetId | [0]"
   

2. Get the security group ID:

   aws ec2 describe-security-groups --filters Name=group-name,Values=SG --query "SecurityGroups[?GroupName == 'SG'].GroupId | [0]"
   

3. Get the AMI ID (with SSM installed):

   aws ec2 describe-images --filters "Name=architecture,Values=x86_64" "Name=description,Values=*Amazon Linux 2023 AMI 2023.5.20240805.0 x86_64 HVM*" "Name=owner-id,Values=137112412989" "Name=image-type,Values=machine" --query "sort_by(Images, &CreationDate)[::-1].ImageId | [0]"
   

Plug in the subnet ID, security group ID, AMI 2 ID, and instance profile ARN in the following command:

aws ec2 run-instances --associate-public-ip-address --security-group-ids <SECURITY-GROUP-ID> --iam-instance-profile Arn=<INSTANCE-PROFILE-ARN> --instance-type t2.micro --image-id <AMI-ID> --subnet-id <SUBNET-ID> --tag-specifications "ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=MyEC2}]"

Note: We are giving our EC2 instance the name MyEC2 (basically we're tagging it with this name) so we can get its instance ID and later confirm that SSM sees it.
If you gave your IAM instance profile the same name as given in the lab task (i.e., MyEC2InstanceProfile ) , you can fetch the instance profile ARN with the following command:

aws iam get-instance-profile --instance-profile-name MyEC2InstanceProfile

1. Get the instance ID of the newly created instance (we named it MyEC2, so we'll use this name in the command to get its instance ID. If you tagged/named it differently, be sure to use that name):

   aws ec2 describe-instances --filters Name=tag:Name,Values=MyEC2 --query "Reservations[].Instances[].InstanceId"
   

2. Run the following SSM instance information API command to see if the same instance ID from the command above is showing up in the SSM API's output, replacing <INSTANCE-ID> with your instance's ID:

   aws ssm describe-instance-information --query "InstanceInformationList[?InstanceId == '<INSTANCE-ID>']"
   

   The command should return an object with information about the newly configured EC2 instance with Systems Manager.

   Note: It can take up to 5 minutes for the instance to show up in the SSM GUI or API command output.