Category: Management Tools

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 […]

In this blog post, we will look at how to automate the rotation of the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) credentials synchronized with Microsoft SQL Server credentials to meet password rotation requirements. Solution overview The IAM Access key and Secret access key are used to create a SQL Server credential; therefore, to rotate the […]

In this blog post, I will guide you through the procedure necessary to prepare your Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) workloads to receive Extended Security Updates (ESU) purchased from Microsoft. This is achieved by utilizing the Patch Manager and Run Command capabilities of AWS Systems Manager. Windows Server users are familiar with Microsoft’s regular […]

In this blog post, I will explain how to utilize Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to configure Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to use the Amazon Time Sync Service for time synchronization. Additionally, I will explain how to monitor and alert on the time synchronization health of the domain with Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon Simple Notification Service. […]

In this deep-dive blog post, we will go through a step-by-step guide on how to capture Windows Failover Cluster Event Viewer logs using Amazon CloudWatch agent and send alerts using Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS). Introduction Windows Event Viewer logs are a crucial aspect of monitoring and troubleshooting Windows systems. However, manually reviewing these […]

In this blog post, we explore a new capability of AWS Compute Optimizer that generates Microsoft SQL Server licensing recommendations. AWS Compute Optimizer has the capability to provide customers running Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) with licensing cost optimization recommendations, which can, result in significant SQL Server licensing cost savings. […]

With the upcoming end of support for Microsoft Windows Server 2012/2012 R2 on October 10, 2023, and the ongoing challenges faced by those on Windows Server 2008/2008 R2, many organizations find themselves in a delicate position. Transitioning away from these older versions isn’t always straightforward. Some organizations are running third-party software that is not yet […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]