Microsoft Workloads on AWS

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 We recently announced that Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for SQL Server supports Microsoft SQL Server Developer Edition using your own installation media through the custom engine version (CEV) feature. This capability enables you to use SQL Server Developer Edition in development and testing environments without incurring additional licensing costs, while benefiting from […]