Microsoft Workloads on AWS

Microsoft workloads on AWS: Your complete re:Invent 2026 guide

AWS re:Invent 2026 brings a strong lineup of sessions for customers running Microsoft workloads on AWS. This year’s content centers on agentic AI for .NET and SQL Server modernization with AWS Transform and Kiro, moving off Windows and SQL Server licensing costs, VMware exit strategies, and operating Microsoft workloads resiliently once they are in the cloud.

In this post, we highlight the must-attend sessions across modernization, migration, licensing optimization, resiliency and DBA essentials, from hands-on workshops to customer stories.

Application Modernization & .NET

Your playbook for modernizing 988K lines of .NET in 2 days | MAM346 | Level: 300

Type: Lightning talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 10:30 AM – 10:50 AM PST | Wynn/Encore
TNS moved its Altitude payments platform (274 projects, 988K lines of code) from .NET Framework to .NET 10 in two days instead of an estimated six months, resolving 34 security vulnerabilities. Learn the playbook.

Modernize your full .NET and SQL Server stack with AWS Transform | MAM417 | Level: 400

Type: Workshop
Location: Wednesday, Dec 2 12:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Modernize .NET and SQL Server together with AWS Transform: port .NET Framework to cross-platform .NET, migrate to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL, and deploy to Amazon ECS or Amazon EKS, cutting operating costs by up to 70%. Bring a laptop and GitHub account.

Best Practices for .NET modernization with AWS Transform | MAM411 | Level: 400

Type: Builders’ session
Location: Thursday, Dec 3 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Learn best practices for modernizing .NET Framework applications by working alongside the AWS Transform agent, applying plan customizations, steering documents, checkpoints and iteration. Bring your laptop and your use cases.

Free your .NET app from Windows licensing with AI-powered portability | MAM416 | Level: 400

Type: Workshop
Location: Thursday, Dec 3 3:30 PM – 5:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Port a .NET Framework 4.8 Web Forms application to .NET 10 Blazor with AWS Transform Interactive Mode, then use Kiro to fix post-transformation runtime issues and deploy to Amazon ECS on AWS Fargate.

Infrastructure and Database Migration

On-premises to AWS readiness: foundational decisions before your migration | MAM210 | Level: 200

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Tuesday, Dec 1 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Explore how choices in licensing, operating models, architecture and organizational readiness shape migration outcomes, whether you are moving off VMware or other on-premises environments, and build a plan that avoids common pitfalls.

Build a data-driven migration plan with AWS Transform | MAM306 | Level: 300

Type: Builders’ session
Location: Monday, Nov 30 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Thursday, Dec 3 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Use AWS Transform with Discovery Agent data to assess your environment, estimate costs and build a business case, and leave ready to present a data-driven data center exit proposal to leadership.

How to assess your environment to migrate & modernize with confidence | MAM211 | Level: 200

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Tuesday, Dec 1 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Get a clear picture of your environment with AWS Transform‘s agentic assessment, or with AWS specialists and partners, then use the data to make informed decisions and eliminate redundant licensing.

Decompose a monolith database into microservices with agentic AI | MAM403 | Level: 400

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Tuesday, Dec 1 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST | Wynn/Encore
Learn a two-layer strategy, combining database structure and runtime patterns, to find microservice boundaries and extract business logic from stored procedures, using AWS Transform and Kiro to turn months of analysis into hours.

How to decompose Oracle and SQL Server into purpose-built databases | MAM317 | Level: 300

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 12:00 PM – 1:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Tuesday, Dec 1 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST | MGM Grand
Whiteboard how to break a monolithic proprietary database into purpose-built layers: Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL for transactions, Aurora pgvector for GenAI search, and Amazon Redshift via zero-ETL for analytics, eliminating licensing costs and ETL pipelines.

Migrate SQL Server to Aurora PostgreSQL with AI-powered conversion | MAM305 | Level: 300

Type: Workshop
Location: Monday, Nov 30 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Tuesday, Dec 1 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST | MGM Grand
Use AWS Transform to assess a SQL Server database, automate schema conversion to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL and resolve dependencies, then review and deploy converted objects from your IDE, cutting weeks of effort to hours.

Watch AWS Transform convert SQL Server to Aurora PostgreSQL live | MAM337 | Level: 300

Type: Code talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Watch AWS Transform modernize SQL Server and its .NET applications to Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL live: schema transformations, T-SQL to PL/pgSQL conversions, Entity Framework provider updates and wave-based orchestration with human-in-the-loop checkpoints.

Architect and optimize your VMware environment on Amazon EVS | MAM330 | Level: 300

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Explore architecture decisions for VMware on Amazon Elastic VMware Service (Amazon EVS): VCF 9 support, Windows Server license-included entitlements, networking, storage, backup and disaster recovery, with lessons from a production customer.

Large-scale VMware exit: engineering a 10,000+ server migration wave engine | MAM415 | Level: 400

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Facing VMware licensing pressure? See how AWS Transform drives each phase of a structured exit, from TCO assessment and wave planning to cutover and modernization, compressing 18-month timelines to ten months or less.

Your playbook: turn your scattered databases into AI-ready infrastructure | MAM314 | Level: 300

Type: Lightning talk
Location: Tuesday, Dec 1 12:00 PM – 12:20 PM PST | Wynn/Encore
Get a practical playbook for migrating Oracle, SQL Server, and VMware- or Nutanix-hosted databases to AWS, covering licensing challenges, cost optimization and modernization pathways with AWS Transform and agentic AI.

Building migration readiness when the timeline is tight | MAM208 | Level: 200

Type: Breakout session
Location: Tuesday, Dec 1 4:00 PM – 5:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
When licensing changes or compliance requirements compress your timeline, learn how to build migration readiness fast. Hear from Vanguard, who moved hundreds of applications under real pressure with zero critical outages.

Fanatics path to AWS: 5 data centers, 1,800 servers, 48% savings | MAM320 | Level: 300

Type: Breakout session
Location: Wednesday, Dec 2 2:30 PM – 3:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Fanatics Commerce had 1,800 servers in five data centers and projected 48% savings on AWS. Hear their sequence: OLA for licensing clarity, DAP for dependencies, EBA for alignment and MAP for execution.

Modernize Windows to Linux and SQL to PostgreSQL with agentic AI | MAM406 | Level: 400

Type: Workshop
Location: Thursday, Dec 3 12:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Migrate on-premises Windows Server workloads to Amazon EC2 with agent installation, replication and cutover, then upgrade SQL Server to PostgreSQL and move PHP to Amazon EKS with agentic AI. Laptop required.

Licensing and Cost Optimization

Four labs to shrink your Windows and SQL Server licensing bill | MAM405 | Level: 400

Type: Builders’ session
Location: Thursday, Dec 3 8:30 AM – 9:30 AM PST | Caesars Palace
Four labs to cut Windows and SQL Server spend on Amazon EC2: AWS Compute Optimizer right-sizing, Optimize CPU, removing passive-node SQL Server HA licensing fees, and downgrading SQL Server Enterprise to Standard edition.

Strategies for optimizing enterprise licenses on AWS | MAM209 | Level: 200

Type: Breakout session
Location: Thursday, Dec 3 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Learn levers for optimizing Microsoft and other enterprise licenses across Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS, and hear how a customer turned a one-time AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment into an ongoing optimization practice.

Resiliency and Operations

Observability patterns for Microsoft workloads migrating to AWS | MAM329 | Level: 300

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 3:00 PM – 4:00 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Tuesday, Dec 1 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM PST | MGM Grand
Avoid observability blind spots as you migrate .NET applications, SQL Server databases and Windows services to AWS, using AWS-native and open-source tooling to monitor workloads across VMs, containers and serverless.

Build and test HA/DR architectures for Microsoft workloads on AWS | MAM401 | Level: 400

Type: Builders’ session
Location: Wednesday, Dec 2 10:00 AM – 11:00 AM PST | Caesars Palace
Build and test HA/DR for Windows Server and SQL Server against simulated failures with AWS Elastic Disaster Recovery and AWS Systems Manager, measuring RTO and RPO live. Also covers Amazon RDS, Amazon S3, AWS Elastic Beanstalk and AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

Database Administrator Essentials

AWS fundamentals for the accidental SQL Server database administrator | MAM311 | Level: 300

Type: Chalk talk
Location: Monday, Nov 30 10:30 AM – 11:30 AM PST | Caesars Palace
Repeat: Tuesday, Dec 1 11:30 AM – 12:30 PM PST | Caesars Palace
Map your core SQL Server DBA tasks to AWS equivalents across networking, security, high availability and disaster recovery, and see how Kiro and AWS Transform can speed your ramp-up.

Get Ready for re:Invent 2026

Don’t miss these opportunities to learn from AWS experts and customers who have successfully modernized and migrated their Microsoft workloads to AWS. Here’s how you can prepare:

  1. Register for AWS re:Invent 2026
  2. Reserve your seats for these sessions in the re:Invent Portal
  3. Join the conversation on social media using #reInvent
  4. Download the AWS Events mobile app to build your schedule

Additional Resources

Stay Connected

Join the #reInvent and @AWSreInvent conversation on social media and connect with other attendees!

Note: Session schedule and availability are subject to change. Please check the AWS re:Invent Session Catalog for the most up-to-date information.

Yogi Barot

Yogi Barot

Yogi Barot is WorldWide Tech leader leading Migrations and Modernization Technical field community at AWS. Part of her role, she is leading community for technical enablement and supporting customers migrate and modernize to AWS. Yogi has 28 years of experience working with different Microsoft technologies, her specialty is in SQL Server and different database technologies. Yogi has in depth AWS knowledge and expertise in running Microsoft workload on AWS.

Hrushikesh Shah

Hrushikesh Shah

Hrushikesh Shah is a Senior Solutions Architect at AWS specializing in migration and modernization strategy. He helps organizations plan how they move to and modernize on AWS, and works with AWS service teams to build new capabilities. Before becoming a Solutions Architect, he worked as a software developer and taught AWS classes.