Session Manager is a fully managed AWS Systems Manager tool.
With Session Manager, you can manage EC2 instances, edge devices, on-premises servers, and VMs. You can use either an interactive one-click browser-based shell or the AWS Command Line Interface. Session Manager provides secure node management without the need to open inbound ports, maintain bastion hosts, or manage SSH keys.
Session Manager also allows you to comply with corporate policies that require controlled access to managed nodes, strict security practices, and logs with node access details, while providing end users with simple one-click cross-platform access to your managed nodes.
Session Manager offers these benefits:
- Centralized access control to managed nodes using IAM policies
- No open inbound ports and no need to manage bastion hosts or SSH keys
- One-click access to managed nodes from the console and CLI
- Connect to both Amazon EC2 instances and non-EC2 managed nodes in hybrid and multicloud environments
- Port forwarding
- Cross-platform support for Windows, Linux, and macOS
- Logging session activity
- Logging capabilities are provided through integration with the following AWS services:
- AWS CloudTrail
- Amazon Simple Storage Service
- Amazon CloudWatch Logs
- Amazon EventBridge
- Amazon Simple Notification Service