Amazon EC2 Running Microsoft Windows Server & SQL Server

Amazon EC2 running Microsoft Windows Server® (2003 R2, 2008, 2008 R2 and 2012) is a fast and dependable environment for deploying applications using the Microsoft Web Platform, including ASP.NET, ASP.NET AJAX, Silverlight™, and Internet Information Server (IIS). Amazon EC2 enables you to run any compatible Windows-based solution on AWS’ high-performance, reliable, cost-effective, cloud computing platform. Common Windows use cases include Enterprise Windows-based application hosting, website and web-service hosting, data processing, media transcoding, distributed testing, ASP.NET application hosting, and any other application requiring Windows software. Amazon EC2 also supports the SQL Server® Express, SQL Web, and SQL Standard databases, and makes those offerings available to customers on an hourly basis.

Using Amazon EC2 with Windows Server is similar to using Amazon EC2 with any other operating system. Amazon EC2 running Windows Server provides seamless integration with existing Amazon EC2 features like Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic-Load Balancing, and Elastic IPs. Windows instances are available in multiple Availability Zones in all Regions.

The AWS Free Usage Tier includes Amazon EC2 instances running Microsoft Windows Server. Customers eligible for the AWS Free Usage tier can use up to 750 hours per month of t1.micro instances running Microsoft Windows Server for free. For more information about the AWS Free Usage Tier, please visit the page AWS Free Usage Tier page.

To get started with an Amazon EC2 Instance running Windows Server, see the EC2 Windows Guide. To learn more about using Windows on AWS, see the AWS Microsoft Solution Provider site.

Managing your Amazon EC2 with Windows Environment

Amazon EC2 makes it easy to start and manage your Windows-based instances. Amazon EC2 provides you with several pre-configured AMIs that allow you to start running instances in minutes. To find the most up-to-date listing of these images and their contents, please visit the AMI catalog.

Once you choose your AMI, you can use the AWS Management Console to configure, launch, terminate, and even bundle your Amazon EC2 Windows instances. Moreover, you can employ a graphical interface to utilize all of the features of Amazon EC2, including Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS), Amazon CloudWatch, Elastic Load Balancing, Auto Scaling, and Elastic IPs. To learn more about the AWS Management Console, please visit the AWS Management Console page. A set of command line tools (API Tools) are also available for those interested in implementing management scripts.

For more advanced topics about managing Windows-based instances, including tutorials, technical articles, and other resources available to help you manage your Windows-based instances, please visit the Windows and .Net Developer Center.

Developing for the Windows Environment

You can manage your Amazon EC2 resources using our web service APIs. We provide the AWS SDK for .NET that enables you to call AWS infrastructure services (e.g., Amazon EC2, Amazon S3, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon SQS, and more) programmatically, so that you can build and deploy your applications within .NET.

AWS also provides a set of publicly available AMIs that are pre-bundled with SQL Server Express, Internet Information Services (IIS) and ASP.NET to help you get started quickly. These AMIs may be used with Amazon EC2 running Windows Server at no additional cost. Many customers use one or more of these AMIs for their Web 2.0 and ASP.NET applications.

To learn more about the resources available to AWS Developers developing in and for Windows-based environments, please visit the Windows and .NET Developer Center.

Amazon EC2 running Microsoft SQL Server

Amazon EC2 running Windows Server with SQL Server offers you the flexibility to run a database server for as much or as little time as you need. We offer Amazon EC2 with several versions of Microsoft SQL Server.

SQL Server Express Edition 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012: An entry-level database product that enables small database applications. The maximum size of a database supported is 10 GB. This product is offered at no-additional cost over the base Microsoft Windows Server instance price on EC2.

SQL Server Web Edition 2008 R2 and 2012: A mid-level database product that is restricted to Web facing applications, and available at a low cost over the base Windows Server instance price on EC2. This product offers unlimited database size, easy manageability, and is suitable for small to large-scale Web applications.

SQL Server Standard Edition 2005, 2008, 2008 R2, and 2012: A higher-end database product that allows unrestricted use for building enterprise-scale Windows-based applications, and massively scalable websites. SQL Server Standard includes support for Mirroring, and is suitable for applications with High Availability needs.

All versions of SQL Server integrate with Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), enabling you to take advantage of the persistence, performance, and reliability of Amazon EBS for all your databases. Click here to learn more about all the database options with AWS. To find details on available AMIs please visit the AMI Catalog.

Amazon EC2 running Microsoft SharePoint Server

Amazon EC2 running Windows Server is a secure and dependable environment for customers to quickly and cost effectively deploy Microsoft SharePoint. The Microsoft License Mobility through Software Assurance program allows Microsoft volume license customers to use their existing Windows Server applications licenses, including SharePoint Server, on AWS without paying any additional Microsoft licensing fees.

To learn more information about Microsoft SharePoint, including how to download the Microsoft SharePoint on AWS Reference Architecture White Paper, which discusses general concepts, as well as detailed technical guidance on how to configure, deploy, and run a SharePoint Server farm on AWS, please visit http://aws.amazon.com/windows/sharepoint/.

Pricing

Pay only for what you use. There is no minimum fee. Estimate your monthly bill using the AWS Simple Monthly Calculator.

On-Demand Instances

SQL Server Express Edition, Microsoft IIS and ASP.NET can be used on any Amazon EC2 instance running Windows Server for no additional cost.

Pricing is per instance-hour of Amazon EC2 consumed for each instance type. Partial instance-hours consumed are billed as full hours.

Reserved Instances for Windows

Reserved Instances give you the option to make a low, one-time payment for each instance you want to reserve and in turn receive a significant discount on the hourly charge for that instance.There are three Reserved Instance types (Light, Medium, and Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances) that enable you to balance the amount you pay upfront with your effective hourly price.

Reserved Instances can be purchased for 1 or 3 year terms, and the one-time fee per instance is non-refundable. Light and Medium Utilization Reserved Instances also are billed by the instance-hour for the time that instances are in a running state; if you do not run the instance in an hour, there is zero usage charge. Partial instance-hours consumed are billed as full hours. Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances are billed for every hour during the entire Reserved Instance term (which means you’re charged the hourly fee regardless of whether any usage has occurred during an hour). Reserved Instances are currently available for Amazon EC2 running Linux/UNIX, SUSE Linux, Microsoft Windows Server, and Microsoft SQL Server. Click here to learn more about Reserved Instances.

If Microsoft chooses to increase the license fees that it charges for Windows or SQL Server, we may correspondingly increase the per-hour usage rate for previously purchased Reserved Instances with Windows or Windows and SQL Server. The initial one-time payment for a Reserved Instance will be unaffected in this situation. Any such changes would be made between Dec 1 – Jan 31, with at least 30 days’ notice. If the per-hour usage price does increase, you may continue to use your Reserved Instance with Windows or Windows and SQL Server with the new per-hour usage price, convert your Reserved Instance to a Reserved Instance with Linux, or request a pro rata refund of the upfront fee you paid for the Reserved Instance with Windows.

Reserved Instance Volume Discounts

When you have purchased a sufficient number of Reserved Instances in an AWS Region, you will automatically receive discounts on your upfront fees and usage fees for future purchases of Reserved Instances in that AWS Region. Reserved Instance Tiers are determined based on the total list price (non-discounted price) of upfront fees for the active Reserved Instances you have per AWS Region. A complete list of the Reserved Instance Tiers is shown below:

For example, as soon as you have active Reserved Instances with total list price of upfront fees totaling more than $250,000 in a single AWS Region, you will automatically receive a 10% discount on both upfront and hourly fees for all future Reserved Instance purchases in that AWS Region, and those discounts will continue to apply to new Reserved Instances as long as you continue to qualify for the discount tier.

To illustrate, let's assume you currently have $200,000 worth of active Reserved Instances in us-east-1. You purchase 75 Reserved Instances at $1000 each. That's a total of $75,000. The first $50,000 of this purchase would be discounted at 0 percent. The remaining $25,000 of your purchase will be discounted by 10 percent, so you will only be charged $22,500 for it, and you will pay discounted hourly fees on those Reserved Instances.

To learn more about Reserved Instance Tiers, please visit the “Understanding Reserved Instance Tiers” portion of the Amazon EC2 User Guide.

Please note that Reserved Instance purchases of Windows with SQL Server Standard or Web are not included in the computation of volume tier discounts. Also, no volume tier discounts are available for Windows with SQL Server Standard or Web Reserved Instances.

AWS GovCloud Region

AWS GovCloud is an AWS Region designed to allow U.S. government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. For pricing and more information on the new AWS GovCloud Region, please visit the AWS GovCloud Web Page.

Resources

• Microsoft Windows AMIs on AWS Marketplace
• Microsoft Global Solution Provider Page
• Reserved Instances Page
• Microsoft Windows machine images published by Amazon
• Optimized Microsoft Windows machine images published by Microsoft
• Windows .NET Development Center

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