Oh no, you're thinking, yet another cookie pop-up. Well, sorry, it's the law. We measure how many people read us, and ensure you see relevant ads, by storing cookies on your device. If you're cool with that, hit “Accept all Cookies”. For more info and to customize your settings, hit “Customize Settings”.

Review and manage your consent

Here's an overview of our use of cookies, similar technologies and how to manage them. You can also change your choices at any time, by hitting the “Your Consent Options” link on the site's footer.

Manage Cookie Preferences
  • These cookies are strictly necessary so that you can navigate the site as normal and use all features. Without these cookies we cannot provide you with the service that you expect.

  • These cookies are used to make advertising messages more relevant to you. They perform functions like preventing the same ad from continuously reappearing, ensuring that ads are properly displayed for advertisers, and in some cases selecting advertisements that are based on your interests.

  • These cookies collect information in aggregate form to help us understand how our websites are being used. They allow us to count visits and traffic sources so that we can measure and improve the performance of our sites. If people say no to these cookies, we do not know how many people have visited and we cannot monitor performance.

See also our Cookie policy and Privacy policy.

This article is more than 1 year old

Amazon rolls cloud and on-prem into single sign-on service

ActiveDirectory and Samba AWS bridge

Amazon has revealed plans to tie AWS to customers’ Earth-bound Microsoft IT estates and infrastructure using a directory service.

The cloud giant Wednesday unveiled the AWS Directory Service, which it said connects portions of its cloud to customers’ “existing, on-premises” directories.

Amazon didn’t name Microsoft, but it didn’t need to – Microsoft’s ActiveDirectory manages rolling estates of business PCs, servers, devices and software.

AWS Directory Service lets users re-use existing credentials like passwords for access to on-prem Windows systems to access EC2 instances running Windows.

Also, they can log into Amazon’s Workspaces, Zocalo and AWS management console.

Workspaces is Amazon’s virtual desktop running a Windows 7 “experience” supposed to free business of the drudgery of owning Windows end points.

Zocalo is the cloudy firm’s "enterprise" take on Microsoft’s OneDrive and Google’s Drive.

AWS Directory Service connects to your existing directory using something called an AD Connector directory type, which serves as a cloud proxy.

Amazon said this does away with the need for complex synchronisation technology or federated sign-in.

Communication between the AWS Cloud and an on-prem directory is via AWS Direct Connect or via a secure VPN within Amazon's Virtual Private Cloud.

AD Connector comes in two flavours – one for up to 10,000 and the second serving up to 100,000 users, computers, groups and other objects.

For directory newbies, AWS Directory Service also comes with an open-source Samba option that runs Unix and Linux systems and connects them to the ActiveDirectory management empire.

The AWS Samba service offers most of the Active Directory features, Amazon said, including the ability to join Windows domains and manage group policies, adding that this is all via a single sign-on. ®

Similar topics

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like