Category: Best Practices

Introduction In this blog post, we show you how to eliminate Microsoft Active Directory (AD) as a single point of failure in your hybrid architecture using AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, specifically AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid Edition). Many organizations running hybrid workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS) have a hard dependency on […]

In this post, we describe how Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Kloia, an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, compressed a three-to-six months discovery and assessment cycle into four weeks for a UK-regulated financial institution, delivering a board-ready modernization blueprint on AWS. The engagement scope was discovery and AI-driven analysis using Claude Code via Amazon Bedrock […]

Introduction Migrating SQL Server off Azure SQL Managed Instance usually means paying for licenses you already own. With Bring Your Own Media (BYOM) on Amazon RDS for SQL Server, you can move those databases to a fully managed AWS service and reuse your existing SQL Server licenses instead of paying twice. In this post, you […]

Introduction Running mission-critical Microsoft SQL Server databases on AWS requires storage infrastructure that can deliver consistent high performance, enterprise-grade data protection, and cost efficiency at scale. Database administrators and solutions architects face several persistent challenges: managing I/O performance bottlenecks during peak workloads, scaling storage seamlessly as data volumes grow, and optimizing storage costs without compromising […]

Introduction This blog post shows you how to back up, replicate, and restore the Microsoft SQL Server encryption key hierarchy across AWS Regions. This approach lets encrypted databases recover successfully during cross-region disaster recovery (DR) events on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). Cross-region DR planning for SQL Server on Amazon EC2 focuses on database […]

In today’s hybrid IT landscape, many organizations are strategically moving their infrastructure to Amazon Web Services (AWS) while maintaining certain on-premises services. Microsoft Exchange Server remains a critical communication platform for businesses and deploying it in AWS provides excellent opportunities to leverage cloud scalability and reliability. Whether you’re migrating an existing Exchange infrastructure or implementing […]

Update (June 2026): AWS License Manager now automatically recognizes EC2 Image Builder instances using the Ec2ImageBuilderArn and CreatedBy tag keys (with value EC2 Image Builder). This means License Manager skips the domain join and license activation process for Image Builder build instances, eliminating the need for the wait mechanism described in this post. The GitHub […]

In this blog post, we will guide you through the process on performing a snapshot backup using native T-SQL based backup abilities and snapshot technology of Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP (FSxN). This method provide near-instant, consistent backups with negligible I/O, storage and compute capacity impact unlike traditional Microsoft SQL Server backups. Introduction Microsoft SQL […]

In this blog post, we will extend the analysis of the Optimize CPUs feature provided in a previous publication to other Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances suitable for deployment of Microsoft SQL Server workloads on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. Amazon EC2 now allows customers to modify an instance’s CPU options to […]

Introduction Today, we are announcing the general availability of the Hybrid Edition of AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD). This new edition lets you extend your existing self-managed Active Directory (AD) domain to AWS Managed Microsoft AD while preserving your current identity and access infrastructure. AWS Managed Microsoft AD (Hybrid […]