Microsoft Workloads on AWS

Category: Learning Levels

Automate SCIM provisioning from Active Directory to IAM Identity Center

In this blog post, we will show you how to build and deploy a custom solution to automate the process of provisioning users and groups from Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to AWS IAM Identity Center using the System for Cross-domain Identity Management (SCIM) protocol. Introduction Many organizations manage their user identities using AD and rely […]

Event-driven Active Directory domain join with HAQM EventBridge

In this blog post, I will show you how HAQM EventBridge can automate Microsoft Active Directory (AD) domain join and unjoin for your HAQM Elastic Compute Cloud (HAQM EC2) instances. In a previous blog post, I showed you how AWS Systems Manager Automation can dynamically domain join and unjoin EC2 instances manually. I have worked […]

MultiCloud cost visibility with HAQM QuickSight and FOCUS

Customers with multi-cloud environments struggle to effectively track and manage their usage and costs. They access the individual billing portals of each cloud provider to gather cost information. Without a consolidated view on cloud expenditure, making data-driven decisions to optimize costs becomes difficult. In September 2023 we introduced the Cloud Intelligence Dashboard for Azure. This […]

Simplifying Active Directory domain join with AWS Systems Manager

In this blog post, I will demonstrate a solution for managing the Active Directory domain membership for a dynamic fleet of HAQM Elastic Compute Cloud (HAQM EC2) Windows instances using AWS Systems Manager Automation. Using Systems Manager Automation, you can dynamically automate domain join and unjoin activities with Microsoft Active Directory (AD) for your HAQM […]

Make SQL Server end of support the start of your AWS cloud journey

Let’s face it. End of support (EOS) –three words that can unsettle any IT professional– is the last thing you want to hear about for your mission-critical applications. It creates additional work for you to deal with the upgrades and causes downtime for your end users. The Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server end of […]

Automate Microsoft web application deployments with GitHub Actions and Terraform

Managing infrastructure deployments and application code releases can be challenging. Manual processes often lead to delays, errors, and inconsistency across different environments. This inconsistency, known as environment drift, makes it difficult to ensure reliable deployments. As a result, teams struggle to maintain a high release velocity. In this blog post, we will show how GitHub […]

Monitor Microsoft SharePoint Server using HAQM CloudWatch Application Insights

Introduction In this blog post, I will demonstrate how to configure HAQM CloudWatch Application Insights for a Microsoft SharePoint farm. Management and governance are important aspects of any workload, whether it is running on-premises or in the AWS Cloud. In this context, management refers to performing defined actions, either automated or manual, to make sure […]

How to deploy Extended Security Updates for Windows Server 2012 on HAQM EC2 with AWS Systems Manager

In this blog post, I will guide you through the procedure necessary to prepare your HAQM Elastic Compute Cloud (HAQM 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 […]

Configure Microsoft Active Directory to use HAQM Time Sync

In this blog post, I will explain how to utilize Group Policy Objects (GPOs) to configure Microsoft Active Directory (AD) to use the HAQM Time Sync Service for time synchronization. Additionally, I will explain how to monitor and alert on the time synchronization health of the domain with HAQM CloudWatch and HAQM Simple Notification Service. […]

Optimizing protocol selection when using HAQM FSx for NetApp ONTAP for Microsoft SQL Server

In this blog post, we will review advantages and disadvantages of the two storage access protocols, iSCSI and SMB, offered by HAQM FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSx for ONTAP). For comparison purposes, we will use Microsoft SQL Server on Windows. We will provide recommendations for selecting the optimal storage access protocol for your specific scenario. […]