Microsoft Workloads on AWS
Category: Windows on AWS
Convert Ansible playbooks for AMI creation into EC2 Image Builder component documents
In this post, I will show you how to automate the conversion of Ansible playbooks into EC2 Image Builder components. Automating this conversion is useful for migrations to EC2 Image Builder, where the amount of Ansible playbooks is considerable and manually creating an equivalent AWS Task Orchestrator and Executor (AWSTOE) component for each playbook becomes […]
How to set up Microsoft Office on Amazon EC2
Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced the general availability of Microsoft Office, along with Remote Desktop Service Subscriber Access License (RDS SAL), as license included offerings on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. Empowering employees to work from anywhere with many different devices is at the core of many of our customers’ IT strategy. […]
Accelerate Microsoft Exchange Server deployments with AWS Launch Wizard
Managing your infrastructure as code improves consistency and reliability of your deployments. Using the AWS Launch Wizard for Exchange Server, you can deploy a reference architecture for Exchange Server according to best practices with minimal effort. In this post, we will discuss options available within the Launch Wizard and then deploy a fully functional Exchange […]
Automate the Upgrade of an Amazon FSx for Windows File Server to a Multi-AZ deployment
For many workloads, customers use Amazon FSx for Windows File Server (Amazon FSx), a fully managed storage service based on Windows File Server. For non-production workloads, a single Availability Zone (AZ) deployment may be sufficient. But sometimes, the need arises to add high availability to the storage in an environment. Customers need a simple way […]
Backup SQL Server databases to Amazon S3
In this blog post, I will explore the new functionality in SQL Server 2022 that allows you to run native backups directly to Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3). I will also review the best practices for security and considerations of cost and performance. Update: We have recently published a new blog on how to […]
Using AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator to simplify and accelerate Microsoft SQL Server migrations to AWS
This year, Amazon Web Services (AWS) introduced AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator, a feature which provides customized migration templates with a predefined set of migration tasks, migration tools, and automation features. Moreover, it allows customers to track their migration progress in one place. From a SQL Server migration perspective, customers often run into challenges, like not […]
Extracting microservices from a monolithic ASP.NET Web Forms application
AWS Microservice Extractor for .NET is an assistive tool that simplifies refactoring monolithic .NET applications into independent microservices. AWS Microservice Extractor for .NET helps extract source code segments as microservices or shared libraries from legacy ASP.NET based applications, and ports those directly to modern cross-platform .NET. This new capability of extract and port workflow now enables developers […]
Automate Active Directory domain join activities at scale with AWS Systems Manager
In a previous blog post, I showed how you can use AWS Systems Manager Automation to dynamically automate domain join and unjoin activities with Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) for your Windows instances on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). The previous solution showed you how to manually domain join/unjoin activities against single or multiple […]
Join AWS at PASS Data Community Summit 2022
Join us at the PASS Data Community Summit 2022 in Seattle November 14 to 18, and we’ll show you how to accelerate the migration and modernization of your SQL Server workloads.
Increasing sustainability for your Microsoft workloads on AWS
At re:Invent 2021, Amazon Web Services (AWS) launched the sustainability pillar as part of the AWS Well-Architected framework. It focuses on minimizing the environmental impact of running cloud workloads. Key topics include a shared responsibility model for sustainability, understanding impact, and maximizing utilization to minimize required resources and reduce downstream impact. In this blog post, […]