Category: Technical How-to

When building Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, you often bootstrap them to accomplish basic tasks, like OS/application configuration, domain join, installing software, and configuration at scale. However, as configurations grow more complex, requiring multiple steps such as hostname changes, domain joins, and software installations, relying solely on a single bootstrap method can lead […]

Amazon Web Services (AWS) recently announced license asset groups as a new feature for AWS License Manager to help you track license usage in a single AWS account or across different AWS accounts and regions in your AWS Organization. In our previous blog post, we explained how you can utilize license asset groups to build […]

Introduction We recently announced that Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for SQL Server supports Microsoft SQL Server Developer Edition using your own installation media through the custom engine version (CEV) feature. This capability enables you to use SQL Server Developer Edition in development and testing environments without incurring additional licensing costs, while benefiting from […]

In modern database environments, the ability to quickly restore databases is just as critical as creating reliable backups. An 11-hour database restore window is no longer acceptable in today’s enterprise workloads. Here’s how to cut that to under 10 minutes. In our previous blog, we discussed how to create application consistent snapshot backups for Microsoft SQL […]

Enterprises struggle to integrate AI capabilities into existing applications without costly code changes. Traditional approaches require modifying application layers, updating APIs, and extensive testing cycles—all of which extend time-to-market and increase project risk. This post demonstrates how you can reduce time-to-market by invoking AI agents on Amazon Bedrock AgentCore directly from Microsoft SQL Server 2025. […]

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 […]

Enterprises are under increasing pressure to optimize software licensing costs, maintain vendor compliance, and make data-driven renewal decisions while managing fragmented license data across multiple Amazon Web Services (AWS) accounts and regions. Centralizing and governing this license data facilitates cost optimization, audit readiness, and strategic procurement planning. In this blog post, we’ll show you how […]

Last updated on May 18 2026 SQL Server professionals manage critical database systems that power enterprise applications, from financial platforms to ecommerce systems. Their responsibilities include optimizing query performance, managing schemas, ensuring high availability, and troubleshooting complex issues. With the advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AI), businesses are redesigning their workflows, enabling AI to independently complete […]

Microsoft SQL Server Developer edition offers organizations a cost-effective solution for their non-production database workloads on AWS. While many enterprises rely on this edition for development and pre-production testing environments, the traditional deployment process can be cumbersome – requiring manual steps like logging into Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, downloading installation media, and […]