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AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

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Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#11
post #7

Are they basically trying to emulate GCP’s OS Login ( https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/managing-ins... ) feature here? We’ve been using that for a while, and it’s been a big relief.

Yeah, this is the same deal. Session Manager will log your sessions which is pretty cool.

Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#12
post #9

This is awesome! How can I install the the agent if I'm not using Amazon Linux?

Amazon installs it on some other AMIs (notably, Ubuntu 16.04 and 18.04), but for other OSes, install instructions are here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide...

Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#14
post #13

IAM is easy to mess up. Would be interesting to lock down the session manager agent (if possible) so that the only way to privileged access is through sudo-like priv esc that uses 2fa.

You can do this but it depends on your setup as to how. If you have AWS IAM users (not federated), then you can use MFA conditions in your policies as documented here: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/id_credenti...

For federation you need to rely on the config in whatever your identity provider is, like Okta.

Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#15
post #7

Are they basically trying to emulate GCP’s OS Login ( https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/managing-ins... ) feature here? We’ve been using that for a while, and it’s been a big relief.

os login is probably a little closer to ec2 instance connect because you still need ssh inbound access right? whereas aws provides a bastion here

Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#16
post #4
post #2

I'd love to learn how you're using Session Manager or what other features/integrations you'd like to see us explore. Also if the terraform module packaging is useful. There are additional Session Manager features like port forwarding that I plan to write about soon.

Can you write one about port forwarding? Specifically, I would like to understand how various web interfaces on EMR cluster can be accessed through Sessions Manager. (Ganglia, Spark history server, etc.)

We'd love to use Session Manager, but we're running into the same issue mentioned here:

"Tunnel created using SSM only allows single connection to destination port" - https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=314882&ts...

This has been sitting open in the support forums unanswered for over two months :/

Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#17
post #7

Are they basically trying to emulate GCP’s OS Login ( https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/managing-ins... ) feature here? We’ve been using that for a while, and it’s been a big relief.

os login is probably a little closer to ec2 instance connect because you still need ssh inbound access right? whereas aws provides a bastion here

There is a proxy called IAP [1] which is used to create SSH tunnel over HTTPS to instances without public IP.

[1] https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/connecting-a...

Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#18
post #7

Are they basically trying to emulate GCP’s OS Login ( https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/managing-ins... ) feature here? We’ve been using that for a while, and it’s been a big relief.

os login is probably a little closer to ec2 instance connect because you still need ssh inbound access right? whereas aws provides a bastion here

You're right in a sense, but there's no aws-managed bastion. Session manager communicates with your instance via an outbound-created websocket connection. Inputs and outputs are piped through it.

Re: AWS Session Manager: less infrastructure, more features

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

os login is probably a little closer to ec2 instance connect because you still need ssh inbound access right? whereas aws provides a bastion here

You're right in a sense, but there's no aws-managed bastion. Session manager communicates with your instance via an outbound-created websocket connection. Inputs and outputs are piped through it.

yea, i was trying to keep things simplified, but it has to proxy through something behind the vpc endpoint. could also say its not technically ssh
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