How to Identify Raspberry Pi Devices in the Managed Instances Console of AWS Systems Manager
Question
An IoT company has a hybrid environment to maintain.
It owns several EC2 instances in AWS and also dozens of Raspberry Pi devices.
The DevOps team starts using AWS Systems Manager to manage all servers such as apply a patching strategy in both on-premises and cloud environments.
The Systems Manager agents are installed successfully in all the servers.
What is the best way to tell which servers are Raspberry Pi devices in the Managed Instances console of Systems Manager?
Answers
Explanations
Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer
A. B. C. D.Correct Answer - B.
AWS Systems Manager can configure EC2 instances or on-premises servers in a hybrid environment.
Various distributions of Linux, including Raspberry Pi devices and Microsoft Windows Server are supported.
Check https://docs.aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/latest/userguide/managed_instances.html for the supported instances of AWS Systems Manager.
Option A is incorrect: Because EC2 instances may also have the platform name as CentOS Linux.
Option B is CORRECT: Because any machine prefixed with "mi-" is an on-premises server or virtual machine (VM) managed instance.
The Amazon EC2 instances have the prefix “i-”
Refer to the below example:
Option C is incorrect: Option B is more straightforward than this option as the user does not need to dig into the IP range of VPC.Option D is incorrect: Because prefix “i-” machines belong to EC2 instances.
The correct answer is B. The machines prefixed with "mi-" are Raspberry Pi devices.
Explanation: AWS Systems Manager allows you to manage your hybrid cloud infrastructure, including Amazon EC2 instances, on-premises servers, and Raspberry Pi devices. The Managed Instances console of AWS Systems Manager displays all the instances that are managed by Systems Manager. In this case, the DevOps team has installed the Systems Manager agents on all servers, including both EC2 instances and Raspberry Pi devices.
To identify which instances are Raspberry Pi devices in the Managed Instances console of Systems Manager, we need to look for a unique identifier. The platform name or IP address cannot be used to differentiate between EC2 instances and Raspberry Pi devices, as they can share the same platform name and IP range.
The best way to identify Raspberry Pi devices in the Managed Instances console of Systems Manager is by looking for the prefix "mi-" in the instance name. The Systems Manager agent that is installed on Raspberry Pi devices automatically adds this prefix to the instance name during registration. Therefore, any instance with a name starting with "mi-" is most likely a Raspberry Pi device.
Hence, the correct answer is B. The machines prefixed with "mi-" are Raspberry Pi devices.