Microsoft Workloads on AWS

Category: AWS CloudFormation

Automate SCIM provisioning from Active Directory to IAM Identity Center

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 […]

Accelerate Remote Desktop Gateway deployments with AWS Launch Wizard

Introduction In this blog post, I am going to show you how easy it is to deploy a secure infrastructure to manage your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances for Microsoft Windows Server through the automation provided by AWS Launch Wizard. AWS Launch Wizard offers a guided way of sizing, configuring, and deploying AWS […]

Automate downgrading SQL Server to Developer edition on Amazon EC2

In this blog post, we will show you how to automate the process of downgrading from Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise or Standard edition to SQL Server Developer edition to save cost. Introduction Every day, customers benefit from the cost savings, scalability, performance, and ease of management of running SQL Server on AWS. Deploying SQL Server […]

Automated user creation and provisioning in Active Directory and Amazon WorkSpaces

For customers that have workloads in the AWS Cloud, a common use case is the provisioning of new user accounts in Active Directory, and subsequently, WorkSpaces for these new users. In this blog post, we will present an efficient and reusable solution to automate the creation, provisioning, and deprovisioning of Microsoft Active Directory (AD) user […]

Automatically create self-managed licenses in multiple accounts using tags

In this blog post, we will demonstrate how you can set up self-managed licenses to be tracked automatically through tagging. Managing licenses for software running on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) is critical for compliance and auditing purposes. Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides a free tool, AWS License Manager, to help you manage your licenses. However, license […]

Accelerate Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling for Microsoft Windows workloads

In this blog post, we will present a sample solution and provide recommendations on how to reduce both the cost and time associated with a Microsoft Windows Server instance joining an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Auto Scaling group up to 78%. Customers using Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling often desire faster scale-out times to […]

Using Amazon EC2 Auto Scaling to Manage Azure Pipelines Agent Capacity

In this blog post, we will show you how to use Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Auto Scaling with your self-hosted Amazon EC2 Azure Pipelines agents to deploy applications to Amazon Web Services (AWS) using Azure DevOps. Introduction There are many ways that you can build and deploy your applications to AWS. You can […]

Rotate Active Directory credentials stored in AWS Secrets Manager

In this blog post, I will show you how to use AWS Systems Manager (SSM) Automation to keep a service account’s password synchronized in Microsoft Active Directory (AD) and a Secret in AWS Secrets Manager encrypted with an AWS Key Management Service (KMS) customer managed key (CMK). This blog post uses AWS Secrets Manager, but […]

Synchronize Active Directory users to AWS IAM Identity Center using SCIM and PowerShell

In this blog post, I will show you how to use PowerShell to synchronize changes to Microsoft Active Directory (AD) users and groups for federated access to Amazon Web Services (AWS). Introduction Some customers have a well-established Active Directory Federation Service (ADFS) implementation and would like to leverage it for federated access to AWS via […]

Switching Amazon RDS for SQL Server from AWS Managed Microsoft AD to self-managed AD

In this blog post, I will show how to move Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for SQL Server deployments from AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD) to your self-managed Microsoft AD. This blog post is not saying you should move away from AWS Managed Microsoft AD to self-manged AD. Keep […]