Question

A CloudOps engineer maintains a Systems Manager Automation runbook that resizes production EC2 instances during scheduled changes. Company policy requires that a senior operator manually approve the resize before it executes, and the approval request must pause the automation until a response is received. The team wants to implement this control within the existing runbook without building custom Lambda functions. Which approach meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Add an aws:approve action step to the Automation runbook that pauses execution and notifies the approvers via an SNS topic until they approve or reject.

Answer

Configure the runbook to use an aws:pause step and require operators to manually resume the execution from the console.

Answer

Wrap the runbook in an EventBridge rule that triggers only after an approval email is received in Amazon SES.

Answer

Use a Systems Manager Change Calendar to block execution until an operator opens the calendar window.