Amazon AWS Releases System Center Plugin
Amazon AWS is most certainly starting to feel the competitive pressure from cloud rival Microsoft Azure. One advantage Microsoft has, which it hammers home consistently, is that combining Azure with System Center creates a centralized, single pane of glass management environment.
In response, AWS recently released AWS System Manager, a plugin for Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) that allows enterprises to centrally manage their AWS EC2 instances from within SCVMM. Amazon has done well by recognizing the threat and acting on it.
AWS System Manager extends SCVMM management capabilities to functions such as:
- Listing and viewing EC2 instances in any region
- Restarting instances
- Stopping instances
- Removing instances
- Connecting to instances using Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP)
- Managing Windows or Linux instances
- On running Windows instances, the administrator password can be retrieved, decrypted and displayed
- Applying actions against a group of selected instances
While the tool is still limited in creating new instances, I think that limitation will soon be removed.
This is not AWS' first attempt at closer integration with Microsoft System Center; it's also released the AWS Management Pack for Microsoft System Center, which integrates with Operations Manager. When combined, the tools enhance Amazon's ability to appeal to enterprise customers, as well as improving its hybrid cloud story.
You can download AWS System Manager for free.
Posted by Elias Khnaser on 11/12/2014 at 7:12 AM