Microsoft Workloads on AWS

Category: Security, Identity, & Compliance

How to simplify certificate provisioning in Active Directory with AWS Private Certificate Authority

In this blog post, we will explore a new feature for AWS Private Certificate Authority (AWS Private CA), Connector for Active Directory, that can help you more easily provision certificates for users and machines within your Microsoft Active Directory (AD) environment with just a few clicks. AWS Private CA can accelerate your provisioning and reduce […]

Automate disaster recovery for your self-managed Active Directory on AWS

In this blog post, I will show how you can leverage Amazon Web Services (AWS) for disaster recovery (DR) for your self-managed Microsoft Active Directory (AD). I will also provide an automated solution to help you run on-demand, periodic DR tests of your AD infrastructure as part of your larger business continuity strategy. Introduction Most […]

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 […]

Integrating SAMBA 4 Active Directory with AWS IAM Identity Center

In this blog post, we will show you how to integrate an LDAP open-source solution with AWS IAM Identity Center leveraging either AWS Managed Active Directory or Active Directory Connector. Introduction Microsoft Active Directory has been a widely used identity management solution in Windows networks for decades. It delivers authentication and access protocols, such as […]

How to automate your Microsoft Windows Server upgrades using AWS Systems Manager

This blog post is the second of a four-part series on how to upgrade Windows Server 2012 and 2012 R2. The focus of this series is to provide options to handle the upcoming end-of-support event in October. Part 1 overviews the end-of-support dilemma, plus how to perform an in-place, manual upgrade along with an insight […]

Embedding Amazon QuickSight analytics in .NET applications

In this blog post for .NET developers, we will discuss step-by-step instructions on how to embed Amazon QuickSight analytics in your .NET applications using QuickSight APIs and make them available for Amazon Cognito authenticated users. Amazon QuickSight Embedded analytics is a feature of QuickSight that applies data analytics to the applications used by your end users, analysts, and business leaders. QuickSight Embedded provides […]

How to load .NET configuration from AWS Secrets Manager

AWS Secrets Manager helps you protect secrets needed to access your applications, services, and IT resources. It enables you to easily rotate, manage, and retrieve secrets used by your application, eliminating the need to hard-code sensitive information in plain text. You can use the Secrets Manager client to retrieve secrets using AWS SDK for .NET. However, this would require code changes and add to the complexity of your code, as you need to invoke the client whenever you need to read data stored in Secrets Manager. Instead, you can use the .NET configuration system – an extensible API used to read and manage application secrets. This lets developers use a familiar API to access secrets in secure storage and reduce complexity by using a single code path for all environments. Additionally, the provider lets existing applications move to Secrets Manager without making any code changes.

An AWS perspective on securely managing Windows Server infrastructure at scale

In this blog, we will provide a holistic approach to help customers manage their Windows Server infrastructure securely and at scale for both cloud-only and hybrid cloud using AWS services. This approach helps our customers use more efficient, unified, and automated operational solutions for managing server infrastructure. Cloud innovations have opened new possibilities for enterprise […]