The answer to the titled question is simple: Because Windows has an excellent operating system, and AWS provides extra benefits and cost savings.
Customers have been running Microsoft workloads on AWS for more than 12 years, longer than any cloud provider. One of AWS’s benefits includes hosting a Windows platform with the ability to launch Microsoft Windows Server virtual machines (AWS instances) up to 65% faster on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Prior to this, AWS customers running Microsoft Windows Server instances endured lengthy wait times as the Windows Server operating system (OS) slowly provisioned instances.
With AWS, customers can flag any Amazon Machine Image (AMI) running Microsoft Windows Server to launch faster. Once flagged, every instance launched from the AMI will automatically launch faster. For custom AMIs, the launch time is reduced to about 85s from a typical 242s. For stock AMIs, launch times average 45s. Launching Windows instances faster enables quicker provisioning of instances at scale, improved SLAs in supporting spiky workloads, and faster response times in meeting recovery or fail-over service requests.
Another benefit of using Windows on AWS is a reduction in storage costs.
AWS’s benefit is migrating quickly and securely from Azure SQL to Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition by using the Babelfish for Aurora PostgreSQL feature. With Babelfish, apps originally written for SQL Server work with Aurora with fewer code changes. It minimizes application downtime and user intervention and provides faster, lower-risk, and more cost-effective migrations. AWS provides two times higher performance for a SQL Server workload than the next largest cloud provider.
AWS also covers Windows government contractors. Many AWS GovCloud (US) customers and their partners use AWS CodePipeline and AWS CodeBuild to build continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines on AWS. However, building on AWS GovCloud (US) introduces a few restrictions not present in other AWS Regions. AWS explains these restrictions and how to overcome them, and provides a technical solution that AWS Windows customers can further extend.
By running Windows on AWS, customers can accelerate growth, modernize to drive efficiencies, realize long-term cost reductions, and greatly enhance their security.
Of course, running Microsoft workloads on AWS requires some technical expertise that involves coding, doing some migrating, or deciding whether or not to bring your own license (BYOL).
Questions to consider:
As an AWS Premier Tier Services Partner, nClouds and our certified engineers can answer your questions and guide you through the process. After all, making you successful is what nClouds does best.
To learn more about Microsoft workloads on AWS, check out these blog posts:
Optimize costs with your SQL Server workloads on AWS
Why run Windows containers on Amazon EKS?
Top takeaways: AWS Managed Microsoft AD and Microsoft Active Directory
Enable LDAPS for your AWS Microsoft AD Directory
Top takeaways: AWS Managed Microsoft AD and Microsoft Active Directory
2022-12-05 15:25:16Improve global application availability and performance with AWS Global Accelerator.
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