Breeze Agent Deployment Via AWS Systems Manager Distributor

This article instructs on how to create a Breeze Agent Deployment via AWS Systems Manager Distributor.

Description

The user creates a package with Breeze Agent. The distributor publishes this package to System Manager managed instances. Then the agent can be installed or uninstalled:

one time by using AWS Systems Manager Run Command
on a schedule by using AWS Systems Manager State Manager

Prerequisites

The distributor package consists of a manifest and two .zip archive files for Windows and Linux platforms. Each archive contains install and uninstall scripts, as well as Breeze Agent distro respectively to the platform. The manifest template and scripts can be obtained from the GitHub repository.

In the file manifest.json, find the field "version" and change its value to a meaningful one. The value of a version name should also be specified when the package is added to the Distributor (it becomes a part of the AWS Systems Manager document). The version value can contain letters, numbers, underscores, hyphens, and periods, and be from 3 to 128 characters in length. Using a human-readable value is recommended.

Preparing Package Files

A Linux archive named breeze-agent-linux.zip should contain such files as install.sh, uninstall.sh and agent.XXX.YY.Z.x86_64.linux.tgz (the Linux Breeze Agent distro as downloaded from CMDB).

A Windows archive named breeze-agent-windows.zip should contain such files as install.ps1, uninstall.ps1 and agent.XXX.YY.Z.windows.signed.exe (the Windows Breeze Agent distro as downloaded from CMDB).

Ensure the script files have correct lines breaks, namely LF (\n == 0x0A) on Linux and CRLF (\r\n == 0x0D 0x0A) on Windows.

For each archive file mentioned in the manifest, a sha256 checksum should be specified. To calculate it, the following commands can be used:

Linux: shasum -a 256 file-name.zip or openssl dgst -sha256 file-name.zip
Windows: Get-FileHash -Path file-name.zip (PowerShell)

In the manifest.json, find the section "files" and replace ARCHIVE_CHECKSUM placeholders with the calculated checksums.

Distributor Package

Create an Advanced package in the AWS Systems Manager, as described in AWS documentation.