In this blog post, we show you how to add intelligence to your existing Microsoft infrastructure investments with Kiro CLI. The result is an AI-powered toolset to improve your Windows infrastructure’s health and security posture. Introduction Managing, monitoring, and governing a Windows-based environment is tedious and error-prone. At the same time, you have likely invested [...]

Introduction A common approach to implementing SQL Server Always On Failover Cluster (FCI) on Amazon EC2 is using Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN). The general approach for migrating an FSxN file systems from first to second generation is using NetApp SnapMirror. That approach works well for NAS workloads (NFS/SMB file shares) where you can [...]

In this blog, we’re going to show you how AWS License Manager can leverage the directory sharing feature available from AWS Directory Services for AWS Managed Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD) to centrally manage user subscriptions services while using multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts. AWS License Manager offers you user-based subscriptions for [...]

In this blog post, we will extend the analysis of the Optimize CPUs feature provided in a previous publication to other Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances suitable for deployment of Microsoft SQL Server workloads on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Introduction In our previous blog post, we detailed the Optimize CPUs feature [...]

Microsoft SQL Server Developer edition offers organizations a cost-effective solution for their non-production database workloads on AWS. While many enterprises rely on this edition for development and pre-production testing environments, the traditional deployment process can be cumbersome – requiring manual steps like logging into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, downloading installation media, and [...]

In this blog post, we will describe how TEKsystems Global Services (TGS) worked with a university to modernize their legacy .NET Framework 3.5 applications to .NET 8 based microservices and Microsoft SQL Server (SQL Server) to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL (Aurora PostgreSQL). TGS is an Amazon Web Services (AWS) premier tier services partner leading digital transformation [...]

One way that customers running Microsoft Workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS) may reduce costs is taking advantage of Bring Your Own License (BYOL) for eligible licenses they own. In this blog post, we are going to share a few practices to help you optimize your operation of BYOL Windows Server workloads on AWS. Introduction [...]

Introduction Today, we are announcing the general availability of the Hybrid Edition of AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD). This new edition lets you extend your existing self-managed Active Directory (AD) domain to AWS Managed Microsoft AD while preserving your current identity and access infrastructure. AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid [...]

Are you ready to transform your Microsoft workloads with AI-powered modernization and migration capabilities? AWS re:Invent 2025 brings you an extensive lineup of sessions focused on .NET modernization, SQL Server migration, and Windows workload optimization. As we gear up for AWS re:Invent 2025, we’re thrilled to present an extensive lineup of sessions focused on Microsoft [...]

In this blog post I show how AWS Fault Injection Service (FIS) can be used to test how your deployed services respond to the loss of access to a Microsoft Active Directory domain controller from the AWS Managed Microsoft AD service. To understand the behaviour of infrastructure deployed in AWS and prove that your configuration [...]

SQL Server professionals manage critical database systems that power enterprise applications, from financial platforms to ecommerce systems. Their responsibilities include optimizing query performance, managing schemas, ensuring high availability, and troubleshooting complex issues. With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), businesses are redesigning their workflows, enabling AI to independently complete tasks and achieve business goals. Customers [...]

As enterprises of all sizes accelerate their cloud transformation journeys, running Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) has emerged as a strategic choice for mission-critical database workloads, with AWS emerging as a lead cloud provider for SQL Server users.Whether deploying SQL Server on Amazon EC2 instances for maximum control and customization, or leveraging [...]

This post has been co-written by Nits Jeganathan, Vijay Mandadi, Rakshith Ravi Kumar from AWS and Nicolas Bidaux, Gaby Choucrallah, Damien Santé from CAST In today’s rapidly evolving cloud landscape, modernizing legacy .NET applications is a great opportunity for enterprises to transform their application portfolio. However, modernization presents challenges due to limited expertise and resource-intensive [...]

Resilience testing has emerged as a critical practice for organizations seeking to build and maintain resilient cloud applications. As environments grow more complex, more comprehensive testing methods become necessary. Resilience testing principles can be applied to Windows workloads on AWS to create controlled experiments that test system behavior under stress. These experiments can help you [...]

AWS has helped hundreds of thousands of customers transition their SQL Server workloads to the cloud since 2008, longer than any other cloud provider. Running business-critical applications often requires Microsoft SQL Server databases to be highly available. Customers choosing to use SQL Server for their mission-critical workloads can achieve high availability by deploying SQL Server [...]

In this blog post we will guide you on how to use Okta as an identity hub to integrate multiple identity providers with AWS IAM Identity Center. This approach provides users with a consistent authentication experience, enhances security, and simplifies administration. Introduction In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, enterprises face the complex challenge of managing [...]

In this blog post, I will show you how Amazon EventBridge can automate Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domain join and unjoin for your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. In a previous blog post, I showed you how AWS Systems Manager Automation can dynamically domain join and unjoin EC2 instances manually. I have worked [...]

Introduction Running databases and other stateful workloads in containers has grown significantly over the years. According to the CNCF Annual Survey 2024, 74% of organizations are using containers to manage stateful applications, up 10% from 2023. Running SQL Server in containers offers several benefits. You can quickly create and start multiple SQL Server instances for [...]

Introduction This two-part series equips you with essential knowledge for a successful Windows Server migration to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Part 1 laid the groundwork by exploring critical licensing decisions and Active Directory integration strategies. Building on that foundation, this post delves into the technical intricacies of preparing your Windows Server instances for [...]

In this blog post, we will show you how to build and deploy a custom solution to automate the process of provisioning users and groups from Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to AWS IAM Identity Center using the System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) protocol. Introduction Many organizations manage their user identities using AD and rely [...]

In this blog post, we will guide you through the process on performing a snapshot backup using native T-SQL based backup abilities and snapshot technology of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN).This method provide near-instant, consistent backups with negligible I/O, storage and compute capacity impact unlike traditional Microsoft SQL Server backups. Introduction Microsoft SQL Server [...]

Recently, we announced the general availability of AWS Transform for .NET, the first agentic AI service for modernizing .NET applications at scale. With AWS Transform for .NET, you can accelerate modernization of .NET Framework applications to cross-platform .NET by up to 4x. Since .NET 8 and later are cross-platform, you can run your .NET 8 [...]

Customers with multi-cloud environments struggle to effectively track and manage their usage and costs. They access the individual billing portals of each cloud provider to gather cost information. Without a consolidated view on cloud expenditure, making data-driven decisions to optimize costs becomes difficult. In September 2023 we introduced the Cloud Intelligence Dashboard for Azure. This [...]

This post shows how to implement a hybrid disaster recovery solution by extending your on-premises Microsoft SQL Server Always On Availability Group (AOAG) to SQL Server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Introduction Many Organizations need cloud-based disaster recovery solutions that maintain critical on-premises operations while minimizing costs. This post demonstrates how to extend [...]

In this blog, we’ll demonstrate how to architect and implement a high-availability Windows Server Failover Cluster (WSFC) with SQL Server using Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) across three Availability Zones (AZs). This approach transcends the traditional two-AZ limitations of Amazon FSx and one-AZ limitation of EBS multi-attach. [...]