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 In this blog post, we show you how to eliminate Microsoft Active Directory (AD) as a single point of failure in your hybrid architecture using AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, specifically AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid Edition). Many organizations running hybrid workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS) have a hard dependency on [...]

In this post, we describe how Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Kloia, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, compressed a three-to-six months discovery and assessment cycle into four weeks for a UK-regulated financial institution, delivering a board-ready modernization blueprint on AWS. The engagement scope was discovery and AI-driven analysis using Claude Code via Amazon Bedrock [...]

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 [...]

Introduction If you host multiple ASP.NET web applications on a single AWS Elastic Beanstalk (Elastic Beanstalk) Windows Server environment, you face a common operational challenge: every deployment restarts Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS), which takes down all sites on the instance, even the ones that did not change. For multi-tenant workloads where each IIS site [...]

Introduction Migrating SQL Server off Azure SQL Managed Instance usually means paying for licenses you already own. With Bring Your Own Media (BYOM) on Amazon RDS for SQL Server, you can move those databases to a fully managed AWS service and reuse your existing SQL Server licenses instead of paying twice. In this post, you [...]

If you want to use software available from the AWS Marketplace, it can be challenging to use multiple software offerings on a single server because each offering is specific to a different Amazon Machine Image (AMI). For example, if your users needed Microsoft Office and Visual Studio, it would require two different Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud [...]

Introduction Running mission-critical Microsoft SQL Server databases on AWS requires storage infrastructure that can deliver consistent high performance, enterprise-grade data protection, and cost efficiency at scale. Database administrators and solutions architects face several persistent challenges: managing I/O performance bottlenecks during peak workloads, scaling storage seamlessly as data volumes grow, and optimizing storage costs without compromising [...]

Introduction In this post, you learn how to integrate Amazon Connect with Amazon Web Services (AWS) Managed Microsoft Active Directory (AD) using IAM Identity Center (formerly AWS SSO) with SAML-based authentication. This solution addresses a common challenge you might face when attempting to use your existing Microsoft Active Directory infrastructure for contact center authentication across [...]

With Microsoft Windows Server 2016 reaching end of support in January 2027, organizations running workloads on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) need to plan their migration strategy now. Recently, a large financial services industry (FSI) customer approached Amazon Web Services (AWS) with a significant challenge: they needed to upgrade over 2,000 Amazon EC2 instances [...]

This post is co-written with Danny Teller from Tipalti. Tipalti is a global payables automation platform processing billions of dollars annually for thousands of customers worldwide. The platform handles complex payment workflows requiring high availability, data integrity, and rapid scaling during peak processing periods. This blog post will show you how Tipalti modernized a legacy [...]

When building Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, you often bootstrap them to accomplish basic tasks, like OS/application configuration, domain join, installing software, and configuration at scale. However, as configurations grow more complex, requiring multiple steps such as hostname changes, domain joins, and software installations, relying solely on a single bootstrap method can lead [...]

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced license asset groups as a new feature for AWS License Manager to help you track license usage in a single AWS account or across different AWS accounts and regions in your AWS Organization. In our previous blog post, we explained how you can utilize license asset groups to build [...]

Introduction This blog post shows you how to back up, replicate, and restore the Microsoft SQL Server encryption key hierarchy across AWS Regions. This approach lets encrypted databases recover successfully during cross-region disaster recovery (DR) events on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Cross-region DR planning for SQL Server on Amazon EC2 focuses on database [...]

In modern database environments, the ability to quickly restore databases is just as critical as creating reliable backups. An 11-hour database restore window is no longer acceptable in today’s enterprise workloads. Here’s how to cut that to under 10 minutes. In our previous blog, we discussed how to create application consistent snapshot backups for Microsoft SQL [...]

Enterprises struggle to integrate AI capabilities into existing applications without costly code changes. Traditional approaches require modifying application layers, updating APIs, and extensive testing cycles—all of which extend time-to-market and increase project risk. This post demonstrates how you can reduce time-to-market by invoking AI agents on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore directly from Microsoft SQL Server 2025. [...]

In today’s hybrid IT landscape, many organizations are strategically moving their infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) while maintaining certain on-premises services. Microsoft Exchange Server remains a critical communication platform for businesses and deploying it in AWS provides excellent opportunities to leverage cloud scalability and reliability. Whether you’re migrating an existing Exchange infrastructure or implementing [...]

In today’s fast-paced cloud transformation landscape, organizations face the critical challenge of modernizing their legacy Microsoft .NET applications efficiently while minimizing risk and maximizing return on investment. Many customers are turning to containerization, often starting with Linux containers to modernize applications built on .NET Core or other cross-platform frameworks. However, legacy .NET Framework applications often [...]

Enterprises worldwide rely on Microsoft Office for critical business operations. AWS makes it straightforward to deploy Microsoft Office on individual Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances using the Office LTSC Professional Plus 2021 image from AWS Marketplace, as in the blog post How to Set Up Microsoft Office on Amazon EC2. This approach works well for small-scale deployments, [...]

Enterprises are under increasing pressure to optimize software licensing costs, maintain vendor compliance, and make data-driven renewal decisions while managing fragmented license data across multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts and regions. Centralizing and governing this license data facilitates cost optimization, audit readiness, and strategic procurement planning. In this blog post, we’ll show you how [...]

In this blog post, we will introduce the AWS Well-Architected Microsoft Workloads Lens, a comprehensive framework designed to help you build and operate Microsoft-based systems on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with confidence. Organizations continue to run Microsoft workloads on AWS to leverage the scalability, reliability, and innovation of the cloud while maintaining their investments in [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]