User-based subscriptions in License Manager

With user-based subscriptions in AWS License Manager, you can purchase fully-compliant licensed software subscriptions. Licenses are provided by Amazon and have a per-user subscription fee. Amazon EC2 provides pre-configured Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) with the supported software, along with license-included Windows Server licenses. These licenses can be used without long-term licensing commitments.

To utilize user-based subscriptions, you associate users from AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory (AWS Managed Microsoft AD), or from your self-managed (on-premises) domain, with EC2 instances providing the software. To make your licensed software available, you must create user-based subscriptions and associate them with instances launched from pre-configured AMIs. AWS Systems Manager will configure and harden the license-included instances you launch. Users must connect with Remote Desktop software to access the instances providing the software.

Each associated user and vCPU for the license-included instances incur charges. Amazon EC2 Reserved Instances and Savings Plan pricing models can help optimize your Amazon EC2 costs. For more information, see Reserved Instances in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud User Guide. User-based subscriptions are billed from the first half of the month to the end of the month.

Contents

• Prerequisites
• Considerations
• Software for user-based subscriptions
  • Supported software for user-based subscriptions
    • Microsoft Visual Studio
    • Microsoft Office
    • Launch from a supported AMI
  • Additional software
• Getting started with user-based subscriptions
  • Step 1: Configure your AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory and virtual private cloud (VPC)
  • Step 2: Subscribe to a product
  • Step 3: Launch an instance to provide user-based subscriptions
  • Step 4: Associate users to a user-based subscription instance
  • Step 5: Connect to a user-based subscription instance
• Modifying directory settings for user-based subscriptions
• Modifying VPC settings for user-based subscriptions
• Disassociating users from user-based subscriptions
• Unsubscribing users from user-based subscriptions
• Terminating EC2 instances providing user-based subscriptions
• Removing a directory for user-based subscriptions
• Troubleshooting user-based subscriptions
  • Troubleshooting instance compliance
  • Troubleshooting license compliance
  • Troubleshooting instance connectivity
  • Troubleshooting failures to join the domain
  • Troubleshooting Systems Manager connectivity
  • Troubleshooting Systems Manager Run Command