Posted On: Feb 24, 2022

Today, Amazon Systems Manager announces new features for Session Manager to support maximum session timeout and annotate the reason for starting a session. These features are available in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. Amazon Systems Manager is the operational hub for Amazon Web Services, that provides a unified user interface to track and resolve operational issues across Amazon Web Services applications from a central place. Amazon Systems Manager Session Manager allows you to manage your EC2 instances, edge devices, and on-premise servers and virtual machines (VMs), using either an interactive browser based shell or command line.

Amazon Systems Manager Session Manager now supports specifying a maximum session duration. This helps IT administrators restrict the session length, reducing use of system resources due to unattended open sessions. When a session reaches the maximum allotted time, it automatically terminates. When using Console, operators can also see a countdown timer informing them when the session will automatically close due to max-session time-out. Session Manager now allows an operator to provide a reason for starting a session (a free form text up to 256 characters long), that helps IT administrators to track purpose for each session during audits. For more information about these new features, visit the Amazon Systems Manager product page and documentation.