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Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows Server

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale cloud computing easier for developers.

Why Amazon EC2 for Microsoft Windows Server?

Amazon EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server (2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2, 2012 and 2012 R2, 2016, 2019 and 2022) is a secure, reliable, and high-performance environment for deploying Windows-based applications and workloads. You can provision instances quickly, and scale up or scale down as you need it, while only paying for what you use.

Using Amazon EC2 with Windows Server is similar to using Amazon EC2 with any other operating system. Amazon EC2 running Windows Server provides seamless integration with existing Amazon EC2 features like Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing, and Elastic IPs. Windows instances are available in multiple Availability Zones in all Regions.

The AWS Free Usage Tier includes Amazon EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server. Customers eligible for the AWS Free Usage tier can use up to 750 hours per month of t2.micro instances running Microsoft Windows Server for free. For more information about the AWS Free Usage Tier, please visit the AWS Free Usage Tier page.

To get started with an Amazon EC2 Instance running Windows Server, see the EC2 Windows Guide. To learn more about using Windows on AWS, see the AWS and Windows page.

  

Managing your Amazon EC2 with Windows Environment

Amazon EC2 makes it easy to start and manage your Windows-based instances. Amazon EC2 provides you with several pre-configured AMIs that allow you to start running instances in minutes. To find the most up-to-date listing of these images and their contents, please visit the Windows AMI page or the AMI catalog.

Once you choose your AMI, you can use the AWS Management Console to configure, launch, terminate, and even bundle your Amazon EC2 Windows instances. Moreover, you can employ a graphical interface to utilize all of the features of Amazon EC2, including Amazon EBS, Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Elastic IPs. To learn more about the AWS Management Console, please visit the AWS Management Console page. A set of command line tools (API Tools) are also available for those interested in implementing management scripts.

For more advanced topics about managing Windows-based instances, including tutorials, technical articles, and other resources available to help you manage your Windows-based instances, please visit the Windows and .Net Developer Center.

  

Developing for the Windows Environment

You can manage your Amazon EC2 resources using our web service APIs. We provide the AWS SDK for .NET that enables you to call AWS infrastructure services (e.g., Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon SQS, and more) programmatically, so that you can build and deploy your applications within .NET.

AWS also provides a set of publicly available AMIs that are pre-bundled with SQL Server Express, Internet Information Services (IIS) and ASP.NET to help you get started quickly. These AMIs may be used with Amazon EC2 running Windows Server at no additional cost. Many customers use one or more of these AMIs for their Web 2.0 and ASP.NET applications.

To learn more about the resources available to AWS Developers developing in and for Windows-based environments, please visit the Windows and .NET Developer Center.