Category: Technical How-to

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 […]

Updated on February 15, 2024. In this blog post, we’ll walk you through creating a Microsoft SQL Server failover cluster on Amazon Web Services (AWS) with Amazon Elastic Block Storage (Amazon EBS) Multi-Attach, using the recently introduced Amazon EBS Multi-Attach on io2 volumes with persistent reservations feature. We will also highlight the potential for cost […]

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, we will show you how to downgrade Microsoft SQL Server instances from Enterprise edition to Developer edition on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances. This post is especially useful if there are a single digit number of SQL Server instances to be downgraded. In our next blog post, we will […]

In this blog post, we will cover how to containerize and deploy an ASP.NET application running on an Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) for Microsoft Windows Server instance to Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate using AWS Migration Hub Orchestrator.

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 will guide you through configuring cross-tenant synchronization with multiple Microsoft Entra ID tenants using AWS IAM Identity Center. By following the steps outlined in this post, you can simplify access to your Amazon Web Services (AWS) resources while enabling collaboration efforts between Entra ID tenants within your organization. Background Organizations […]

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. […]