The AWS Systems Manager Agent is Now Pre-Installed on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and 18.04 LTS AMIs
The AWS Systems Manager Agent is now installed by default on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS, in the 2018.07 version and later, and in all 18.04 LTS AMIs.
With this new feature release, AWS Systems Manager Agent is installed by default on all instances launched or built from Ubuntu 16.04 LTS (2018.07 and later) and 18.04 LTS (all versions) AMIs. By having the agent pre-installed, you can quickly start using AWS Systems Manager features such as Run Command, State Manager, Inventory and Patch Manager. This will help you save time by removing the manual steps to log in to each instance and install the agent. The AWS Systems Manager Agent is open source and available on GitHub, so you can customize the agent as needed.
To start using AWS Systems Manager, you will need to attach AWS Identity and Access Management policies to the instances, and no additional configuration is required. AWS Systems Manager is available in all commercial regions and GovCloud (US).
To learn more about AWS Systems Manager, visit here, or view documentation here.