AWS Partner Network (APN) Blog

We launched the APN Blog in late November 2014, and I’ve loved developing and growing this blog as an outlet of news and information about the APN. It’s also been quite a treat to get to work with teams across AWS and with a number of APN Partners around the globe to highlight great APN Partner stories and solutions on AWS. We’ve only just begun, and I can’t wait to share more with you throughout 2016.

As we wrap up the year, I want to share with you some of our most popular posts from 2015. In case you missed ’em, here’s a recap of 10 of our most popular posts. Happy reading! See you in 2016.

• Getting Started with Ansible and Dynamic Amazon EC2 Inventory Management
• Active Directory Single Sign-On (SSO) on AWS with Bitium
• Leveraging CircleCI and AWS CodeDeploy for Continuous Integration Workflows
• Introducing the Amazon RDS Migration Tool
• Announcing Mesosphere DCOS on AWS
• Deploy High Availability Architectures with the Help of APN Consulting Partners
• Cloud Deduplication, On-Demand: StorReduce, an APN Technology Partner
• Announcing Our Inaugural AWS Managed Service Provider Program Partners
• Getting the Most out of the Amazon S3 CLI 
• Performance Testing in Continuous Delivery Using AWS CodePipeline and BlazeMeter

As we head into the holidays and the New Year, I’m excited to share some holiday reading with you. We’ve recently published three new AWS Partner case studies that tell the stories of APN Consulting Partner Vision33, and APN Technology Partners ANSYS and Fusionex. Whether it be in engineering simulation, SAP Business One, or big data solutions, these APN Partners are constantly innovating on AWS to drive value for end customers. Read on to learn more…

ANSYS

ANSYS is a global leader in computer-aided simulation software. Based near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the company’s software applications help engineers solve their most complex design challenges through engineering simulations in areas such as fluid dynamics, electromagnetics, and structural mechanics. Many modern products, from smartphones to airplanes, are designed using ANSYS software solutions. For the large and small organizations that use ANSYS software, computing capacity and performance are constant challenges. To meet these specific customer needs, ANSYS looked to the cloud. “We saw cloud computing as an enabler for our customers because we thought it could give them the scalability and global delivery they were looking for from us,” says Wim Slagter, director, HPC & cloud marketing at ANSYS. “We also thought the cloud could help many of our enterprise customers centralize their simulation assets.”

After it had begun its relationship with AWS, ANSYS created ANSYS® Enterprise Cloud™, a new engineering simulation platform in the cloud that is deployed as a turnkey solution within customers’ dedicated corporate accounts. Because it can deliver its simulation workloads to customers via the AWS cloud, ANSYS can now help its customers achieve the scalability they need to take on the most demanding simulations.

Read the full ANSYS case study here.

Fusionex

Fusionex is a global, multinational IT Group, specializing in analytics, business intelligence and big data. Fusionex focuses on helping its clients manage, understand, and derive useful insights and value from data. The firm has been an APN Partner since 2012. With offices in Asia, Europe, and the Americas, Fusionex possesses a global customer base and needs to be able to scale to meet demand and reach customers effectively, regardless of a customer’s location. Prior to moving to the cloud, the company’s systems, solutions, and data processing was by and large hosted on premise which not only prohibited the ability to scale quickly as the company grew, but also limited its expansion plans due to cost deterrence. A number of factors contributed to Fusionex’s decision to use AWS and become an APN Partner, including the inherent scalability of the AWS platform, the global footprint of AWS, and the business and technical support available through AWS.

As the company’s use of AWS became more integral to the services and solutions it offers to customers, Fusionex decided to become an APN Partner. “We started our relationship with AWS as a customer ourselves, and decided to become an APN Partner as we’ve observed that our relationship with AWS will only continue to deepen,” says Tan. Since moving to AWS, Fusionex’s speed to market has increased substantially, allowing the company to increase the rate at which it expands its offerings to customers. “In using AWS and working as an APN Partner, we’ve been able to expand our offerings and our speed to market has dramatically increased,” explains Tan. “We’ve been able to increase our speed to market by at least eight times using AWS, thus edging many a competitor by sheer speed in terms of our offering.”

Want to learn more? Click here.

Vision33

Vision33, Inc. is a leading global consulting company and value-added reseller (VAR) for SAP Business One, and the recipient of the B1 Award from SAP in North America. Vision33 focuses on implementing SAP Business One for growing businesses and subsidiaries of large enterprises. Throughout North America and abroad, as the number one global VAR for the SAP Business One application, Vision33 has helped hundreds of customers gain real insight into their business processes. Vision33 is an AWS Partner Network (APN) Consulting Partner, an AWS SAP Competency holder, and has been a member of the APN since 2011.

As the company began to experience demand for cloud-based solutions from its customer base, the team saw the opportunity afforded through the cloud to provide customers with rapid provisioning capabilities around the globe and high availability. The Vision33 team focused on building a relationship with AWS for many reasons. “In AWS, we saw the opportunity to work with an SAP Certified company with a strong brand, a robust global footprint, and Enterprise-level solutions,” says Rooney. “SAP products are certified for production deployment on AWS, and it meant we could have the confidence to know that our customers can access SAP Business One from anywhere, at any time, with maximum uptime. This enables us to offer greater value to our customers.” Using the AWS platform has opened up new business opportunities for Vision33 through the ability to offer customers SAP Business One on HANA. “By building on AWS, we now offer customers SAP Business One on HANA, which runs on a Linux platform,” explains Romero. “With this offering, our customers with SAP Business One on HANA no longer need to worry about how to manage their on-premise Linux servers. We can also automate SAP Business One on HANA builds, compared to the traditional methods of sourcing servers from vendors.”

Learn more about Vision33’s journey here.

Read all of our APN Partner case studies and watch our Partner Success Story videos here.

AWS, Sumo Logic, and three AWS Managed Service Partners (Smartronix, Logicworks, and Day1 Solutions) came together at the AWS Loft in NYC last week for an interactive discussion with customers around the Next Generation of Cloud Delivery and Management. Cloud managed services play an increasingly important role as customers look to migrate and manage workloads on the cloud. The goal of this event was to educate customers on what a next-generation cloud Managed Service Provider is, and the value they deliver to customers.

Participants at the event spoke about the differences in the role that on-premises MSPs play as compared to next-gen MSPs, what customers look for (and conversely, don’t look for) in a next-gen MSP, and the role that the AWS Managed Service Program and the program audit can play in helping customers identify expert next-gen MSPs. “We participated in this event to promote the understanding of the Next-Gen MSP to the customer, as well as to put context around what the old MSP model versus the new MSP model looks like. We also participated to illustrate the value of next-gen MSPs,” says Brian Clark, VP, Managed Services at Day1 Solutions.

Kelly Hartman, AWS Global Segment Leader, MSPs, spoke of the importance of building customer awareness for next-generation MSPs. “Events such as this are a critical step in ensuring that customers understand what to expect from a next-generation MSP. It’s important that we continue to highlight the paradigm shift that has taken place in the MSP landscape, and what it takes to succeed in this new model. AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partners (ISVs) such as Sumo Logic who provide cloud-native services play a key role in delivering the capabilities required of Next-Gen MSPs,” says Hartman. “Having an event hosted by an APN Technology Partner with participation from a number of AWS MSPs helps to solidify that message, and the need for the AWS Partner ecosystem to work together in this new model.”

Highlights of the Event

The open discussion and feedback from panelists was valuable for both attendees and the panel themselves. “Events like this are beneficial to us in that we get to hear from some other players in our field as well as from potential customers, and learn and educate [each other] at the same time,” says Jason McKay, SVP and CTO at Logicworks. “And our customers get to hear how we’re adjusting our services to optimize for the cloud.” Paul Beda, Principal Cloud Architect and Strategist at Smartronix, discussed the importance of helping educate customers as a cloud MSP. “For Smartronix, it’s about helping customers help themselves. If we can help them formulate their needs in cloud and MSP terms, then we’re helping to reduce friction in the process and make it easier for them to meet their business needs.”

“I loved hearing the unfiltered ‘lessons learned’ on the journey to the cloud from the panelists and attendees at the panel,” says Aaron Feigin, VP of Corporate Marketing and Communications at Sumo Logic. “There is clearly a tectonic shift underway that is bringing massive disruption, and the conviction of those who are leading is palpable. These next-generation MSPs are embracing continuous intelligence and AWS to help customers transform and thrive in this digital era.”

AWS customer Teresa Brooks, Founder of Quarks & Bits Software LLC, came to the event to learn more about the managed services landscape on AWS. “This type of event gives you a perspective about what to think about,” she says. “One really interesting part to me was the discussion of next-generation monitoring tools built for the cloud.”

Coming Soon: The AWS Managed Service Program Validation 3.0 Checklist 

Our AWS Managed Service team used the event to introduce the upcoming launch of the AWS Managed Service Program Validation 3.0 Checklist, to be posted on the APN Portal on January 1, 2016. All members of the AWS Managed Service Program will be required to undergo their annual AWS MSP audit in 2016 based on the new requirements. This is a significant step in ensuring that AWS MSP Partners are delivering what AWS customers are asking for. Our goal is to continuously raise the bar on AWS MSPs in areas including DevOps, Continuous Compliance and Service Intelligence, and to help MSPs build expertise around the proper use of AWS best practices in areas like security, design, and migration, while at the same time taking advantage of new services and features that AWS has added in the past year.

To learn more about the AWS Managed Service Program, visit the Program’s website.

The past two weeks, we published four new AWS Partner Success stories featuring both Consulting and Technology Partners in our ecosystem. Take a look:

Ayla Networks

All-in APN Technology Partner

Learn more about AWS IoT here.

ClearScale 

AWS Premier Consulting Partner, AWS Managed Service Partner, AWS DevOps, Big Data, Mobile, and Marketing & Commerce Competency holder

ClearScale is a Premier APN Consulting Partner and holds a number of AWS Competencies, including DevOps. Pavel Pragin, CTO of ClearScale, explains how ClearScale achieved its goal of becoming a Premier Partner, and how AWS helps ClearScale continuously innovate. ClearScale has experienced average year-over-year (YoY) growth of 150 percent over the past four and a half years, has completed over 250 customer projects on AWS, and now has 60 referenceable customers on AWS.

Click to learn more about our Premier Consulting Partners, and the AWS Managed Service Program. Want to learn more about the AWS Competency Program? Visit the Competency website.

Cognizant

AWS Premier Consulting Partner, AWS Big Data, Microsoft SharePoint Workload, Life Sciences, and Healthcare Competency holder

Cognizant is a Premier APN Consulting Partner, with 218,000 associates globally who help clients design, deploy, and operate technology to drive business effectiveness, agility, and growth. Sean Middleton, Founder & COO, Emerging Business Accelerator at Cognizant, discusses the benefits Cognizant has gained being an APN Partner. Cognizant has experienced great success taking advantage of AWS Training & Certification, and has participated in APN Partner Funding programs, such as the AWS Proof of Concept (PoC) Program.

NetApp

AWS Storage Competency Partner, AWS Test Drive Partner

NetApp is an APN Technology Partner and AWS Storage Competency Partner. Phil Brotherton, Vice President of the Data Fabric Group at NetApp, discusses how being an APN Partner differentiates NetApp in the market. NetApp has had great success working with the APN, particularly through engagement with its Partner Managers, and working with and using the AWS Test Drive Program.

Click here to learn more about AWS Test Drive.

Check out all of our Partner Success videos here!

Bitium, an APN Technology Partner, offers an enterprise-grade solution for single sign-on, application and user management, password management, directory integration, and security and compliance.  By utilizing the Bitium software as a service (SaaS) solution, we are going to demonstrate the integration of Microsoft Active Directory (AD) logins with the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Management Console via the Bitium SAML implementation.

A popular request when implementing a new system is, “can we use our existing directory for authentication?” Running independent user lists can become quite a hassle.  For example, when an employee switches departments, when you add a new staff member, or when a staff member takes on additional responsibilities, you can either update the information in your single central source for AAA (authentication, authorization, accounting), or you can maintain independent lists of users with varying settings for items such as password requirements, password aging, and when to audit users.

Wouldn’t it be easier if everything just worked together?

In this post, we are going to run through the process of deploying the Bitium SaaS offering as an authentication solution. Using this application, you’ll be able to administer AWS Management Console access directly from your Active Directory administration console.  Many organizations currently rely upon Active Directory for their corporate directory solution, and while this post focuses on that one form of directory integration, Bitium provides solutions from LDAP integrations to third party SAML integrations. This expands the capabilities to define authentication sources as any IdP (identity provider) that uses standardized SAML, LDAP, Active Directory, or Google Apps methods of authentication.  For example, the Bitium website explains the Bitium features that enable the integration of Google Apps with AWS.

(more…)

Shortly after making Atlassian Bamboo and AWS CodeDeploy integration available to support Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) workflows on AWS, AWS Partner Network (APN) member Atlassian has added another key integration with AWS Code services. The integration of Atlassian products and AWS Code services is a compelling story for companies that deploy software on AWS at every stage of the build, test, and deployment lifecycle.

We’re happy to announce Atlassian Bitbucket support for AWS CodeDeploy, so you can now push code to Amazon EC2 instances directly from the Bitbucket UI. This is a great example of simplifying deployments, especially if you prefer “a-human-presses-a-button” control over your deployments.

As an example, I’m a developer and I want to deploy a change to my PHP website that runs on a cluster of Amazon EC2 web servers. First, I will update my code in my BitBucket repository. Then, to minimize the context switching that would happen from logging into my CI platform, or logging directly into my EC2 hosts to run a manual deployment process, I could now take advantage of CodeDeploy’s flexibility by deploying my code to my EC2 instances directly from the BitBucket UI.

Let’s take a look at how this works!

First, we’ll need a sample application in Bitbucket. Grab our sample application and push it to Bitbucket: https://s3.amazonaws.com/aws-codedeploy-us-east-1/samples/latest/SampleApp_Linux.zip

Next, install the CodeDeploy add-on through the Settings menu in Bitbucket. Then, under my hello-world app’s repository, I can choose CodeDeploy Settings to configure CodeDeploy:

Bitbucket needs the ability to stage your code artifacts in an Amazon S3 bucket for CodeDeploy to pull, so step one of this setup process is to create an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role with the following policy:

{"Version": "2012-10-17","Statement": [{"Effect": "Allow","Action":
["s3:ListAllMyBuckets","s3:PutObject"],"Resource":
"arn:aws:s3:::*"},{"Effect": "Allow","Action":
["codedeploy:*"],"Resource": "*"}]}

The setup will ask for the ARN of the IAM role so Atlassian can assume a role in your account, push code to your S3 bucket on your behalf, and do a deployment using CodeDeploy.

Once you’ve provided the role ARN, you’ll also be able to tell Bitbucket which S3 bucket to use for storing deployment artifacts and which CodeDeploy application to deploy to:

If you haven’t set up CodeDeploy yet, that’s okay—it’s easy to get started. Step one is to make sure you have an EC2 instance running the CodeDeploy Agent. Make sure you tag the instance with something that is identifiable, because tags are one way that CodeDeploy identifies the instances it should add to the deployment group. Once you have an instance running, sign in to the CodeDeploy console and choose Create New Application. In CodeDeploy, an application is a namespace that AWS CodeDeploy uses to correlate attributes, such as what code should be deployed and from where.

After you’ve created your application, you can specify a deployment group, which is a collection of EC2 instances that CodeDeploy will execute on for each deployment.

Now that the basics for CodeDeploy are configured, we need to tell CodeDeploy how to deploy to our instances by using an appspec.yml file.  Because the instances in my deployment group are just Apache 2.0 web servers, my AppSpec file tells CodeDeploy how to update the default index.html with my new code:

Now we’re ready to push code to my deployment group. From within my repo’s “Production” branch, I can simply choose Deploy to AWS:

Now I can check on the status of the deployment in the CodeDeploy console:

Finally, let’s see if the deployment was successful by viewing the DNS address of my instance in a browser:

So there you have it—a simple mechanism for pushing code directly to EC2 instances by using Atlassian Bitbucket and AWS CodeDeploy. We’re really excited to offer this integration, so check out the new Bitbucket add-on here! I also encourage you to check out Atlassian’s post on the integration.

This is a guest post from David Shurtliff, Enterprise Solutions Architect, AWS, and Gonen Stein, VP Business Development, CloudEndure

Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers who have been using AWS services for a long period may still be using Amazon EC2 instances in the EC2-Classic platform, as well as using instances in Amazon’s newer Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) service. EC2-VPC is your private, isolated portion of the AWS cloud, and became the default network environment on December 4, 2013. Any accounts created after this date support EC2-VPC only, and cannot use EC2-Classic. There are a number of advantages of using EC2-VPC:

• Security—You can control outbound (egress) and inbound (ingress) connectivity to EC2 resources, and you can create network access control lists (network ACLs) on VPC subnets
• Flexibility—You can define IP address ranges (CIDR blocks) and subnets
• Network isolation—You can control internal and external connectivity to EC2 resources
• Features—Certain AWS features and newer instance types, such as C4, M4, and T2 instances, are available only in EC2-VPC. For more information, see the Benefits of Using a VPC

If you want to move your existing workloads from EC2-Classic to EC2-VPC using a manual approach, you would launch new AMIs within your EC2-VPC, install and configure your applications and databases, export the data from your old servers, and import it to the new servers. You would also need to assess the EC2-Classic application stack in advance, and configure your target VPC and servers accordingly, including your networking, instance types, and volume types, to mirror the EC2-Classic environment.

To simplify the journey from EC2-Classic to EC2-VPC, you may want to use AWS Technology Partners such as CloudEndure for an automated, 1-click migration solution.

CloudEndure is an APN Advanced Technology Partner and AWS Storage Competency Partner who provides customers with live workload mobility between data centers, clouds, regions, and networks within a region. You can use CloudEndure’s technology to migrate your live workloads from your old EC2-Classic network into EC2-VPC, while maintaining your existing configuration, including instance types, private IP addresses, and load balancers. In addition to creating the new EC2-VPC configuration automatically and moving the entire workload, CloudEndure lets you select target VPCs that may already exist, as well define specific servers to be migrated.

An automated solution such as CloudEndure significantly reduces the time to complete the migration, without affecting the operation and performance of the current workload while the data migration is in progress. The use of continuous data replication means that no data will be lost during the cutover from EC2-Classic to EC2-VPC.

In addition to EC2-Classic to EC2-VPC migration, you can also use CloudEndure to:

• Migrate physical or virtual servers to AWS
• Use AWS as a dramatically lower-cost disaster recovery site for your on-premises workloads
• Provide cross-region disaster recovery for your cloud-based workloads
• Clone your workloads within or across regions and Availability Zones for dev/test and staging purposes

This blog post walks you through the steps to migrate an EC2 workload from EC2-Classic to EC2-VPC using CloudEndure.

Getting Started

At a high level, the migration process will create instance replicas in a region, VPC, and subnet of your choosing. EC2 security groups are created in the target VPC, and rules from the source security group are copied to the target security group at the time of instance replica creation. The following diagram represents a high-level view of the CloudEndure replication process.

Step 1. Configure Your Account

The first step is to sign up for an account at cloudendure.com. Go to the signup page to create an account, and then log in to the CloudEndure dashboard to connect your CloudEndure account with your AWS account. You will need to enter your account credentials associated with the appropriate IAM policy, and set your source/target regions for the instance migration. You may migrate your EC2-Classic instances either to a VPC in the same region or to a VPC in a different region. You should then select a subnet that will be dedicated as a staging ground to replicate your source instances’ data. This subnet is used to maintain continuous replication of the data until you decide to cut over into the EC2-VPC and stop replication.

Step 2. Install the CloudEndure Agents

Download and install the CloudEndure agents on Microsoft Windows and Linux instances running in your EC2-Classic network. In this example, we will install the agent on these two EC2-Classic Windows and Linux instances:

As shown here in the Amazon EC2 console, the instance is outside a VPC:

The agent installation takes about 1 minute. The agent installation does not require a reboot, nor does it impact the source machine’s performance in any way. After connecting to the source machine, download and execute the appropriate Linux or Windows operating system CloudEndure agent. The following command line sequence shows a successful agent installation.

Step 3. Start Continuous Replication

Once the agent installation completes, the instance name will appear in the CloudEndure dashboard, and replication of the data will begin. During replication, you will see the percentage completion of each replicated instance. When replication reaches 100% for an instance, its status will change to a green checkmark.

Note: While CloudEndure agents are replicating data, either during the initial sync phase or during continuous sync, you should see CloudEndure replicator instance(s) with their attached volumes located within the replication server subnet as defined earlier in step 1.

Step 4. Create the Replicas in the Target VPC

When all servers show a green checkmark, select the instances that you want to migrate into the target VPC and click Create Replica.

Note: Before you create a replica, ensure that the status field for all instances shows a green checkmark, and pay attention to the last update time. Your replica(s) created in the new VPC will be as up-to-date as the time shown. The screenshot below shows the instance selection check boxes, replication status, last update time, and replica creation button.

The replica creation process takes several minutes. Once it is complete, the replica instances will appear on the right side of the dashboard:

Note: The replica instances in the new VPC will carry over any security group configuration, Elastic Load Balancing configuration, etc. In your AWS console, you will now be able to see both your old EC2-Classic instances and the new instances within the target VPC. In this example, the instances outlined in red are the newly created instances within the target VPC.

In the Amazon EC2 console, you can confirm that the instances are now in a VPC.

That’s it! Once you have confirmed that your application is behaving as expected in the target VPC, you may redirect your users to the new EC2-VPC based instances via public DNS redirection.

Note: This replication methodology will not impact your source server, and you can test your target replica servers in the EC2-VPC without any system disruption, so go ahead and test away.

Should you wish to make corrections to the application and spin up a newer version of your replica instances, you may delete the current replica by using the Delete Replica button, make the appropriate changes to the source instances, and repeat step 4.

When the cutover is complete and replication from your old EC2-Classic environment is no longer needed, you may uninstall the agents by right clicking the instances in the CloudEndure dashboard and selecting Stop Replication. This will stop all replication and remove the agent.

To find out more about CloudEndure, visit AWS Marketplace, or email info@cloudendure.com.

We like to think of the APN Portal as a central hub for APN Partners. Through the Portal, you have exclusive access to a wealth of resources: business and technical content, on-demand videos, AWS Training & Certification resources, marketing resources, the Customer Opportunity Submission tool, AWS Partner Program-specific resources, and more. Any member of your firm can register for Portal access (click here!), and can take advantage of all of that’s available.

We want to ensure we’re continuously developing and pushing out new written and video resources for you to reference as you build on AWS and work with the APN. Today, I’d like to highlight some of the new content we’ve recently published for you that covers a wide range of topics.

New APN Portal Content – AWS MSP, SaaS, and Direct Connect Resources

AWS Managed Service Program Getting Started Guide

Are you thinking about applying for the AWS Managed Service Partner Program? Do you want more information on what it takes to become an AWS MSP? The AWS Managed Service Program Getting Started Guide provides an overview of the Program, and answers questions on how to apply, prepare for, and schedule the third-party audit. Download the Guide to learn more.

AWS Direct Connect – Partner Process

APN Direct Connect Partners help customers use the AWS Direct Connect service. These APN Partners can establish network circuits between an AWS Direct Connect location and a customer’s data center, office, or colocation environment; or, the APN Partner can assist in constructing a hybrid environment. This document explains the steps required to become an AWS Direct Connect Partner.

SaaS Solutions on AWS: Tenant Isolation Architectures

Written by one of our Partner Solutions Architects (SAs), this whitepaper covers the different SaaS deployment models and the combination of AWS services and APN Partner solutions that can be used to achieve a scalable, available, secure, performant, and cost-effective SaaS offering. Though there is a lot of variety in terms of solutions that can be deployed in a SaaS model, there are a number of similarities and common patterns across solutions that can be applied. I wrote about this paper immediately after it was released, and I want to highlight it again for those of you who haven’t yet had a chance to check it out. You can download the paper by clicking here.

You should expect to see a wealth of additional SaaS content coming at you from the APN throughout 2016.

New APN Webcasts – re:Invent Global Partner Summit, Amazon Aurora, and Trend Micro Deep Security on the AWS Cloud

AWS re:Invent 2015 – Global Partner Summit Keynote and Breakouts

The Global Partner Summit Keynote and most of the Breakout Sessions have been posted to the APN Portal! Whether you missed a session, or would like to revisit what you learned at the re:Invent 2015 Global Partner Summit, click here to check out videos of breakout sessions that cover a wide range of business and technical topics, including: Getting Started on AWS, Building a Big Data Practice on AWS, Security Best Practices and Compliance, and more.

Amazon RDS for Aurora 

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL-compatible, relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. Learn more about how you can leverage Amazon Aurora through this APN Webcast.

Trend Micro Deep Security on the AWS Cloud 

Trend Micro Deep Security is a host-based security product that provides intrusion detection and prevention, anti-malware, host firewall, file and system integrity monitoring, and log inspection modules in a single agent running in the guest operating system. With the Trend Micro Deep Security Quick Start, you can automatically deploy Trend Micro Deep Security on the AWS cloud in 45 minutes. Watch the webcast to learn more.

Check back at the end of the month for news on upcoming APN Webcasts, including two new APN Webcasts on Healthcare.

Through the end of 2015, we’ll be publishing a number of new AWS Partner Success videos that highlight the success that some of our top Consulting and Technology Partners have found working with the AWS Partner Network. You can find all of our AWS Partner videos here, and today I’m excited to highlight the videos we’ve released this week, featuring Competency Partners, Premier Consulting Partners, and all-in Technology Partners.

Chef

AWS DevOps Competency Partner 

Chef, an Advanced AWS Partner Network (APN) Technology Partner, specializes in turning Enterprise infrastructure into code. Soo Choi, Senior Director of Business Development at Chef, discusses how the concept of DevOps has matured due to the efforts of AWS, and discusses how working as an APN Partner helps the Chef team focus its resources on developing best-in-breed products for its Enterprise customers.

Visit our AWS DevOps Partner solutions page to learn more.

Datapipe 

AWS Premier Consulting Partner, AWS Managed Service Partner, AWS Microsoft Competency Partner

Datapipe is a Premier APN Consulting Partner, and provides customers with managed hosting, security, and IT services. Karl Reeves, Director of Professional Services at Datapipe, discusses why the company chose to work with AWS. Datapipe works with a number of customers with a need for hybrid IT solutions, and found AWS to be the perfect choice for the firm to engage because of AWS Direct Connect, and because AWS provides Datapipe with the ability to meet complex customer demands.

Click to learn more about our Premier Consulting Partners, and the AWS Managed Service Program. To learn more about hybrid architectures with AWS, click here.

Pegasystems

AWS Healthcare Competency Partner, All-in Technology Partner 

Willy Fox, VP of Cloud Product & Commercialization at Pegasystems, an Advanced Technology Partner, discusses why the company chose to go all-in with AWS, and the benefits Pegasystems has realized by going all-in. He also discusses how working with the APN has driven innovation into Pegasystems, through both go-to-market (GTM) models and technology capabilities.

Visit our AWS Healthcare Competency Partner page to learn more. What does it mean for Technology Partners to be ‘all-in’ with AWS? Learn all about the significance of being ‘all-in’ here.

Smartronix 

AWS Premier Consulting Partner, AWS Managed Service Partner, AWS DevOps and Microsoft Competency Partner

Smartronix is a Premier APN Consulting Partner and an AWS Managed Service Partner. Sean McCarron, VP of Sales at Smartronix, discusses how using AWS has allowed Smartronix to innovate across a number of offerings, and touch a larger base of customers with automated services. McCarron also discusses how Smartronix has leveraged the APN Acceleration and POC Program, and the benefits of being a Premier APN Consulting Partner.

Visit our AWS DevOps Partner Solutions and AWS Microsoft Competency pages to learn more. Read more about Smartronix through the company’s AWS Partner Story.

Software AG 

All-in Technology Partner 

Jeffrey Weiner, VP, Business Development, North American Partners for Software AG, discusses why the company chose to become an APN Technology Partner and go all-in with AWS. As an Advanced APN Partner, Software AG has been able to increase its operational efficiency and has been able to pursue a number of joint go-to-market opportunities.

Software AG also participates in the AWS SaaS Partner Program. Learn more about the SaaS Partner Program here.

Scott Zimmerman is a Partner Solutions Architect with AWS.

In this post, I’ll demonstrate how to set up SQL Server linked servers on Microsoft Windows Server in Amazon EC2. Linked servers allow you to join tables between database servers and distribute queries through stored procedures and views across servers, without even needing to change your application source code or manage multiple connection strings in your web tier. Please see technet.com for details about SQL Server linked servers. Note: Linked servers are not currently supported in Amazon RDS for SQL Server, hence this article is about Amazon EC2.

Step-by-Step: Set up Linked Servers

To keep this brief, let’s deploy two Amazon EC2 instances with SQL Server and skip the details of setting up web or application tiers. Also, although we’d typically use Amazon Route 53 or Active Directory for DNS, or Windows Authentication in SQL Server, today we’re going to focus only on linked servers. For a smoke test, we’ll just run a simple query from one server against the other.

Note: Amazon EC2 offers a free tier for t2.micro instances, but running SQL Server requires a minimum of the m3.medium instance type. You can purchase these instances on an hourly basis from AWS, and even get them with SQL Server Standard Edition pre-installed (license cost included). If you choose to follow along with this article, you are responsible for any charges your account may incur.

Now let’s build a couple of linked servers in AWS:

1. Log in to your AWS Management Console and click EC2. Click Launch Instance and select the AMI for Windows Server 2012 R2 with SQL Server Standard. If you plan to bring your own license for SQL Server Enterprise and install it yourself, you could instead pick the AMI for Windows Server 2012 R2 Base.
2. In Step 2 of the wizard, Choose an Instance Type, select m3.medium.
3. In Step 3 of the wizard, Configure Instance Details, change the number of instances from 1 to 2.
4. Accept the defaults in Steps 4 and 5 of the wizard.
5. In Step 6 of the wizard, Configure Security Group, leave the Create a new security group option selected, and you will see that an RDP rule has already been added. If you chose the SQL Server Standard AMI in Step 1, a rule is also added for SQL Server TCP port 1433, but if you chose the AMI without SQL Server Standard, then you need to click Add Rule here and choose MS SQL in the dropdown. You could also add a rule for All ICMP if you would like to test connectivity between servers with ping.
6. Click Review and Launch, then click Launch. When you’re prompted for a key pair, either create one and download it to your workstation, or use a key pair you already have in AWS and on your workstation.
7. After you launch the instances, it’s a very good idea to edit the Name column in the EC2 Dashboard to tag the instances as SQL1 and SQL2. The instructions below refer to the servers by those names.
8. After a couple of minutes, the Instance State will change to running. Select only SQL1, and click Connect. Save the Remote Desktop file to your desktop as SQL1.rdp. Click Get Password (you may need to wait another minute for Windows to finish booting up). Browse to the key pair (.pem) file you saved earlier (this is probably in your downloads folder). Click Decrypt Password. Select the text of the password, copy it, paste it into a scratch text file, and save it on your desktop. If the text file includes a spurious space character after the password, delete that character.
9. Repeat the above step for SQL2. You can save both administrator passwords in the same scratch text file.
10. Open SQL1.rdp. (In Windows, it launches Remote Desktop Connection, hereafter called RDC. Alternative RDP client programs are available for Mac systems.) Log in as administrator using the SQL1 password you saved in the scratch file. Click Yes to connect without a remote certificate. Minimize that RDC window and launch another RDC window for SQL2, and log in as administrator using the second password you saved.
11. If you plan to use your own SQL Server license and chose the AMI for Windows Server 2012 R2 Base in step 1, install SQL Server Enterprise now.
12. SQL1 needs to be able to get the IP address of SQL2, but in this example, to keep our focus on SQL Server, we aren’t using Amazon Route 53 or Active Directory. On SQL1, open the file c:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts in Notepad. Add the IP address and NetBIOS name of the SQL2 instance. To get the IP address, you can copy/paste the Public IP from the EC2 Dashboard (or run the ipconfig command in a Windows Command Prompt window on SQL2). Usually, you would want to list the actual NetBIOS name in the hosts file, found by running the hostname command on SQL2. But for this exercise you can simply list it as sql2, which will be a handy alias to use on sql1 when referring to the sql2 instance.
13. On SQL2, start SQL Server Management Studio. You can find it by typing “sql server 2014 man” on the Start screen. In SSMS Object Explorer, right-click the server name and choose Properties. On the Security tab, change Server authentication to SQL Server and Windows Authentication mode (aka “mixed mode”). Right-click the server name again and restart the MSSQLSERVER service.
14. In SQL2 SSMS Object Explorer, click Security. Right-click Logins | New Login. Since we’re not using Active Directory, let’s change the login type from Windows authentication to SQL Server authentication. Type a login name and password for the linked server to use. Clear the User must change password at next login check box. Don’t click OK yet. See Figure 1.
    

    Figure 1: SQL Server Login Properties Dialog Box

15. There are many ways you should lock this down for tighter security, but for our quick experiment, let’s give this user permission to access the master database. Click the User Mapping page in the left navigation pane. Check the box for master. Click OK to save the user.
16. Switch over to SQL1. In SSMS Object Explorer, click Server Objects. Right-click Linked Servers | New Linked Server. On the General tab, in the Linked server text box at the top, type the NetBIOS name of the SQL2 server. Remember, in the hosts file we simply used an alias name of “sql2” rather than the actual NetBIOS name. For Server type, check SQL Server. On the Security tab, check the Be made using this security context. Enter the user name/password that you created on SQL2 (see figure below). We could be more granular about impersonating local accounts as remote users, but this suffices without adding any rows in the upper grid. Note: If you plan to call stored procedures on SQL2, change RPC Out to true on the Server Options page.
    

    Figure 2: SQL Server Linked Server Properties Dialog Box

17. Click OK to create the linked server. If you get an error here, on the Security tab, ensure the Security Context name/password on sql1 match with the SQL user you created on sql2. On the General tab, ensure you checked the radio button for SQL Server for the Server type. Ensure that both instances are in the same EC2 security group with a rule that opens TCP 1433. Also, ensure that you can ping the NetBIOS name of SQL2 from a command prompt on SQL1. To verify that your new user login works on SQL2, you could disconnect your login in SSMS on SQL2 via your administrator account (using Windows Authentication) and then try to connect again in SSMS using your linked user name/password with SQL Server Authentication.
18. On SQL1, open a query window and execute the query below. Note that the FROM clause uses a four-part syntax: computer.database.schema.table. Remember, in this exercise, we simply created an alias for SQL2 in the hosts file, so you don’t need to enter the actual NetBIOS name between the square brackets. If you do use the actual NetBIOS names, note that AWS defaults to NetBIOS names like Win-xxxx, and SQL Server requires square brackets for names with dashes.

SELECT name "SQL2 databases" FROM [sql2].master.sys.databases

You should see the list of tables in SQL2. Now that you’ve setup linked servers, and seen how the query syntax works, you should have an idea how to set up linked servers in your real applications. One advantage of doing this is that you could offload long-running queries to back-end databases without impacting the CPU on the primary server.

You can find many more resources for running Windows workloads in AWS, including whitepapers and Quick Starts, at this page: http://aws.amazon.com/windows/resources/.