Install SSM agent on my EC2 instances in order to install Inspector agent without SSH or key pairs

Question

I have an AWS environment with a few instances that has no SSM agent preinstalled and no keypairs, is there a way to install the SSM agent without logging to my instance with SSH?.

Thanks in advance for your help!.

Answer 1

Nope. This is a tricky one. The SSM agent must be installed manually when it is not present in the AMI. That simply means that an administrator must run the SSM install commands on the EC2 instance as root. Or Admin when the EC2 instance runs Windows.

Two references: Installing and Configuring SSM Agent on Amazon EC2 Linux Instances

Manually Install SSM Agent on Amazon EC2 Linux Instances

Once you install the agent, managing the EC2 instance is beautiful. No key-pair needed, simply execute commands with AWS System Manager Run Command.

Think fast!