Microsoft Workloads on AWS
Reserve your seat: Microsoft workloads on AWS sessions–including .NET–at re:Invent 2022
In just a few weeks, Amazon Web Services (AWS) will host its 11th annual re:Invent for both in-person and virtual attendees. Join us in Las Vegas from November 28th through December 2nd for a full week of keynotes, leadership sessions, bootcamps, breakout content, and technical deep dives.
This year, there is a new Enterprise & Migration track, which includes enterprise strategy sessions for business leaders, as well as enterprise workload sessions for Microsoft, SAP, Oracle, VMware, and mainframe. In past years, if you’ve attended sessions in the Windows track, you’ll now find that the Windows sessions are part of this new Enterprise & Migration track.
This blog post features the 22 Microsoft-related sessions in both the Enterprise & Migration (ENT) and .NET (XNT) tracks, organized as follows:
- Microsoft: Migrate, optimize, and modernize–5 sessions
- Windows Server workloads–3 sessions
- SQL Server workloads–3 sessions
- .NET on AWS for builders–11 sessions
At the end of the post, you will find a list of additional SQL Server and .NET sessions in other tracks.
Microsoft: Migrate, optimize, and modernize
How NextGen Healthcare uses AWS to deliver better services (ENT216)
In 2018, NextGen Healthcare went all in on AWS and moved their legacy Microsoft Windows and SQL Server workloads to the AWS Cloud. Where are they now in their AWS migration and modernization journey? In this session, NextGen Healthcare shares how they continue to build for and innovate in the cloud, offering better services to their clients while continuing to optimize and ensure predictable costs of running their HIPAA-compliant cloud environment.
How to save costs and optimize Microsoft workloads on AWS (ENT205)
Customers have been running Microsoft workloads on AWS for 14 years—longer than any other cloud provider—giving AWS unmatched experience to help you migrate, optimize, and modernize your Windows Server and SQL Server workloads. In this session, learn best practices and see demos on how to right-size your infrastructure and save on Microsoft licensing costs; how to configure your workloads to run more efficiently; how to avoid expensive and punitive licensing restrictions; and how AWS offers you the most and highest performing options for your Microsoft workloads.
How to set up Microsoft identity solutions on AWS (ENT323)
In this workshop, learn how to set up AWS Managed Microsoft AD, configure directory security settings, extend the directory across multiple AWS Regions, create trust with on-premises directories, and verify on-premises authentication to Amazon RDS for SQL Server resources.
Salesforce’s journey of more than a billion messages: Innovating with AWS (ENT208)
Seeing the speed of transformation and innovation AWS provides, Salesforce trusted AWS to migrate its legacy Messaging and Journeys (M&J) application from on premises to SQL Server on Amazon EC2, providing a secure, cloud-based solution. AWS removed the burden of undifferentiated heavy lifting, allowing Salesforce to focus on innovation and modernization at the application layer. Today, Salesforce launches M&J in new regions for their customers in hours instead of weeks and can reliably send 8 billion messages per day to consumers around the globe. Additionally, the application delivers 99.99 percent availability and no customer impact when compared to its on-premises deployment.
Use Terraform to build Microsoft infrastructure on AWS (ENT303)
Terraform is used by many AWS Partners and customers. The AWS Terraform provider has been downloaded over 644 million times and has over 2,100 active contributors. In this workshop, explore how to use Terraform to deploy services such as Amazon EC2 for Windows Server, AWS Managed Microsoft Active Directory, Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, and Amazon RDS for SQL Server. Learn from best practices for how to use Terraform to create fully functioning, well-architected AWS solutions in a quick and repeatable manner.
Windows Server workloads
Operate Windows Server workloads at scale by using automation (ENT305)
In this workshop, learn how to operate Windows fleets at scale. First, use Amazon EC2 Image Builder to build, distribute, and deploy secure Windows images with your organization’s software and settings included. Next, learn how to use AWS Systems Manager to automate patching and set configurations at runtime. Finally, automate monitoring, alerting, and log aggregation through Amazon CloudWatch.
Run Windows containers on Amazon EKS, Amazon ECS, and AWS Fargate (ENT401)
Customers have been running Linux containers on AWS for years, and now, as Windows teams start to modernize, migrate, and optimize their workloads, they want to align best practices across platforms. Join this workshop to gain hands-on experience building and operating Windows containers on Amazon EKS, Amazon ECS, and AWS Fargate. You can choose to work with all three services or just pick the one(s) you find interesting.
Troubleshoot Windows instances via AWS Systems Manager Fleet Manager (ENT302)
AWS Systems Manager Fleet Manager streamlines the remote server troubleshooting process for your fleet of servers running on AWS and on premises. In this chalk talk, see how with Fleet Manager you can drill down to individual servers to perform common management tasks using a centralized visual interface as well as troubleshoot systems from your web browser with tools to view logs, browse the Windows Registry, or view performance counters, such as CPU and memory usage. Also see how to securely connect to your systems via a console-based RDP and build your own automation using the same capabilities as within Fleet Manager.
SQL Server workloads
Achieve high availability and disaster recovery with SQL Server (ENT319)
Amazon RDS for SQL Server makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale SQL Server deployments in the cloud. Amazon RDS Multi–Availability Zone deployments provide enhanced availability and durability, making them a natural fit for production database workloads. In this hands-on builders’ session, learn how to achieve high availability and disaster recovery based on your recovery point objective, recovery time objective, and cost for your mission-critical SQL Server databases on Amazon RDS.
Babelfish: Efficiently modernize SQL Server to Amazon Aurora (ENT301)
Migrating from legacy SQL Server databases can be time-consuming and resource-intensive. Babelfish extends your Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition database with the ability to accept database connections from Microsoft SQL Server clients. In this chalk talk, explore how, with Babelfish, you can run SQL Server code side by side with native PostgreSQL and learn how the applications originally built for SQL Server work directly with Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible Edition without extensive code rewrites.
SQL Server on AWS: Run with the best (ENT306)
AWS has the longest experience running and modernizing SQL Server. In this session, consider deployment options for your SQL Server workloads on AWS and learn best practices for how to choose between SQL Server on Amazon EC2, Amazon RDS for SQL Server, and Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL. Also hear how AWS can help when your SQL Server (and Windows Server) software reaches end of support.
.NET on AWS for builders
In the online catalog, you can quickly view all 11 sessions in the .NET (XNT) track and/or simply skim the list below:
Boosting .NET application performance with Arm64 and AWS Graviton3 (XNT401)
Did you know you can achieve 40 percent or higher price performance for your .NET 6+ applications using Arm64 and AWS Graviton3 processors? This session dives into the details on how to compile ASP.NET Core for Arm64 and deploy to Graviton3. Learn how to automate the deployment process with an Arm64-based CI/CD pipeline and benchmark a sample application on both Graviton3 and x86 instances to illustrate the benefits. Also, explore strategies such as threading approaches versus those used in x86-based instances and other optimization techniques that you can use to optimize your .NET 6+ applications on Graviton3.
Build, test, and deploy your .NET applications on AWS (XNT302)
A benefit of moving to the cloud is the opportunity to accelerate development and deployment processes, streamlining and automating release processes. In this session, learn how to use .NET with AWS DevOps services, as well as other popular third-party DevOps tools, CI/CD best practices, and test automation strategies. Leave this session with the knowledge you need to build, test, and deploy .NET code on AWS.
Building AI-enriched applications with .NET on AWS (XNT303)
With AWS AI services, you can add capabilities like image and video analysis, natural language processing, personalized recommendations and translation, virtual assistants, and speech recognition. You can use each service standalone, or you can use them together to build a sophisticated AI-capable application. In this demo-heavy session, discover how to iteratively enrich your existing .NET applications with AI capabilities using AWS SDK for .NET.
Cloud-native .NET applications on AWS (XNT402)
Does your future include building cloud-native applications? In this session, learn how to design well-architected, modern .NET applications. This includes building secure, scalable, low-cost serverless applications with tracing, debugging, testing, monitoring, CI/CD pipelines, and purpose-built databases. Review a sample application, including full source code in GitHub, that showcases a reference architecture and how to design a .NET application on AWS. This sample code includes Blazor, .NET Core, Amazon Cognito, Amazon ECS, Amazon API Gateway WebSocket APIs, AWS Step Functions with AWS Lambda, and Amazon DynamoDB. Leave this session prepared for your future building modern cloud-native .NET applications on AWS.
Designing cloud-native .NET applications (XNT406)
In this chalk talk, learn about application design and how to select appropriate combinations of AWS services for building well-architected, modern .NET applications. This includes building secure, scalable, low-cost serverless applications with observability, continuous integration, and purpose-built databases. Bring your ideas, plans, and questions to this talk for us to whiteboard reference architectures that fit your application requirements.
Don’t overthink it: Identifying services for modernized .NET workloads (XNT405)
Application modernization is a common theme when companies go through digital transformation. But, with so many different services to deploy your modernized workloads to and many different target environments, including hybrid, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. This chalk talk examines the options and discusses how to simplify decision-making to help you determine the right services for your application, including container orchestration and compute options, serverless frontends, and messaging services.
Modernize .NET Framework applications with AWS tools (XNT305)
This hands-on workshop takes you through an end-to-end ASP.NET application modernization journey. In this workshop, take an existing .NET Framework application, analyze and identify components to be modernized, and then modernize it using AWS tools such as Porting Assistant for .NET and AWS Microservice Extractor for .NET. Then, use modern infrastructure-as-code tools such as AWS CloudFormation templates to create resources to host the application using an automated deployment pipeline. Finally, learn best practices for building and deploying modern .NET applications on AWS.
Optimizing performance for .NET on AWS Lambda (XNT403)
Are your .NET serverless applications tuned for performance? This session covers a variety of techniques you can use to optimize the performance of your code to help save development time, reduce costs, and improve the responsiveness of your applications. Discover a range of techniques, including code optimization, provisioned concurrency, and using new .NET features such as native AOT.
Purpose-built databases for modern .NET applications on AWS (XNT304)
Previously, the only database choice that .NET developers had was either Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle. Today, developers are moving away from one-size-fits-all monolithic databases and are increasingly building modern cloud-native applications using multiple purpose-built databases. AWS offers a choice of relational, key-value, wide-column, document, in-memory, graph, time-series, and ledger databases, with each purpose-built database solving a specific problem or usage scenario. In this chalk talk, learn about AWS purpose-built databases for .NET developers that meet the scale, performance, and manageability requirements of modern applications built for the cloud.
Refactoring strategies for .NET applications as you migrate to the cloud (XNT301)
Modernizing .NET Framework applications by porting to .NET 6+ and refactoring to microservices can help maximize business value and ROI for your most important business applications. In this session, learn how to accelerate .NET Framework porting using Porting Assistant for .NET and refactor monolithic .NET applications using the strangler fig pattern with AWS Microservice Extractor for .NET.
Scaling .NET applications with asynchronous workflows (XNT404)
Asynchronous workflows are critical for modern .NET applications to meet their scaling requirements. This design helps solve the problem of making sure applications are responsive to users while the backend infrastructure scales up and down to meet the current demand. In this session, learn how to take advantage of AWS services such as Amazon SQS queues and AWS Lambda functions with a focus on .NET applications and the AWS .NET libraries and tools offered today.
Additional SQL Server and .NET sessions in other tracks
- SQL Server
- .NET
Next steps
This year’s re:Invent has over 50 content tracks and 2,000 sessions. To explore all these sessions in detail, visit the session catalog. If you’re attending re:Invent in person, plan to stop by the AWS Village in the Expo at the Venetian to get your questions answered; you’ll find us in the Enterprise Workloads and .NET kiosks. And if you don’t have your ticket yet, you can register here.
Start planning your schedule by visiting the session catalog, logging into your re:Invent account, and reserving or favoriting your sessions of interest. We look forward to connecting with you at re:Invent 2022!