Microsoft Workloads on AWS

Category: Technical How-to

Setting up Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL for performance testing using HammerDB

In this blog post, I will provide details on how to set up Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL for performance analysis using the HammerDB performance tool. 1.   Introduction Whether it’s a component of migrating to AWS or optimizing workloads already on AWS, customers are looking at the options to modernize their SQL Server workloads. An attractive […]

Build, package, and publish .NET C# Lambda functions with the AWS CDK

CDK offers a high-level abstraction to define AWS resources using modern programming languages. Among its components, it provides aws-s3-assets, which is a high level construct that abstracts packaging AWS Lambda functions. The default behavior of this construct is to zip all the content into a folder and upload it to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) bucket. That works great for Lambda runtimes like Python or Node.js, which do not require code compilation, but for .NET, Java, or Go, which requires code compilation, you’ll need extra steps to restore external dependencies, compile the code, and publish the binary. This post will explore how to streamline building, packaging, and publishing .NET Lambda functions using AWS CDK.

How to calculate a Dedicated Hosts cost estimate for Windows Server and SQL Server

In this blog post, I will show you how to use the new Dedicated Host packing and pricing capability for Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server in the AWS Pricing Calculator. This used to be a manual process, but our customers wanted us to automate it—so here we are. Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon […]

Deploying Microsoft Always On VPN on AWS

In this blog post, I will detail how to create a cost-effective, secure, and resilient VPN remote access architecture on AWS. With the increasing number of full-time remote employees and a mobile workforce, the requirement for remote access has moved from a nice-to-have feature to one that can have a significant financial impact in the […]

How to use the new AWS Modernization Calculator for Microsoft Workloads to estimate modernized architectures

On November 18, 2022, we announced the general availability of the AWS Modernization Calculator for Microsoft Workloads. Using this tool, you can estimate the cost of modernizing your Microsoft workloads to a new architecture that uses open-source software and cloud-based services in the AWS cloud. It enables you to assess the benefits of using technologies […]

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 […]