Active Directory Domain Services on the AWS Cloud: Quick Start Reference Deployment
Deployment Guide
Aaron Lima
Solutions Architect, AWS Quick Start Reference Team
March 2014 (last update: October 2019)
This Quick Start reference deployment guide includes architectural considerations and configuration steps for deploying a highly available Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) environment on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. It also provides links for viewing and launching AWS CloudFormation templates that automate the deployment.
The guide is for IT infrastructure architects and administrators who want to design and deploy a solution to launch AD DS in the AWS Cloud, or extend their on-premises AD DS into the AWS cloud.
The following links are for your convenience. Before you launch the Quick Start, please review the architecture, configuration, network security, and other considerations discussed in this guide.
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If you have an AWS account and you're already familiar with AD DS and AWS, you can launch the Quick Start to deploy a new installation of AD DS in a new VPC on AWS. The deployment takes approximately one hour. (To extend your existing on-premises AD DS to the AWS Cloud, to deploy AD DS with AWS Directory Service, or to deploy AD DS into an existing VPC infrastructure, see the Deployment Steps section.)
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If you'd like to take a look under the covers, you can view the template to see the AWS CloudFormation script that automates a new AD DS deployment. You can customize the template during launch, or download and extend it for other projects.
Note
You are responsible for the costs related to your use of any AWS services used while running this Quick Start reference deployment. There is no additional cost for using the Quick Start. For cost estimates, see the pricing pages for each AWS service you will be using in this Quick Start.
About Quick Starts
Quick Starts are automated reference deployments for key workloads on the AWS Cloud. Each Quick Start launches, configures, and runs the AWS compute, network, storage, and other services required to deploy a specific workload on AWS, using AWS best practices for security and availability.
