Accelerate SQL Server Always On Deployments with AWS Launch Wizard

Customers sometimes tell us that while they are experts in their domain, their unfamiliarity with the cloud can make getting started more challenging and take more time. They want to be able to quickly and easily deploy enterprise applications on AWS without needing prior tribal knowledge of the AWS platform and best practices, so as to accelerate their journey to the cloud.

Announcing AWS Launch Wizard
AWS Launch Wizard is a simple, intuitive and free to use wizard-based experience that enables quick and easy deployment of high availability SQL solutions on AWS. The wizard walks you through an end-to-end deployment experience of Always On Availability Groups using prescriptive guidance. By answering a few high-level questions about the application such as required performance characteristics the wizard will then take care of identifying, provisioning, and configuring matching AWS resources such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances, Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) volumes, and an Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC). Based on your selections the wizard presents you with a dynamically generated estimated cost of deployment – as you modify your resource selections, you can see an updated cost assessment to help you match your budget.

Once you approve, AWS Launch Wizard provisions these resources and configures them to create a fully functioning production-ready SQL Server Always On deployment in just a few hours. The created resources are tagged making it easy to identity and work with them and the wizard also creates AWS CloudFormation templates, providing you with a baseline for repeatable and consistent application deployments.

Subsequent SQL Server Always On deployments become faster and easier as AWS Launch Wizard takes care of dealing with the required infrastructure on your behalf, determining the resources to match your application’s requirements such as performance, memory, bandwidth etc (you can modify the recommended defaults if you wish). If you want to bring your own SQL Server licenses, or have other custom requirements for the instances, you can also select to use your own custom AMIs provided they meet certain requirements (noted in the service documentation).

Using AWS Launch Wizard
To get started with my deployment, in the Launch Wizard Console I click the Create deployment button to start the wizard and select SQL Server Always On.

The wizard requires an AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role granting it permissions to deploy and access resources in my account. The wizard will check to see if a role named AmazonEC2RoleForLaunchWizard exists in my account. If so it will be used, otherwise a new role will be created. The new role will have two AWS managed policies, AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore and AmazonEC2RolePolicyforLaunchWizard, attached to it. Note that this one time setup process will be typically performed by an IAM Administrator for your organization. However, the IAM user does not have to be an Administrator and CreateRole, AttachRolePolicy, and GetRole permissions are sufficient to perform these operations. After the role is created, the IAM Administrator can delegate the application deployment process to another IAM user who, in turn, must have the AWS Launch Wizard IAM managed policy called AmazonLaunchWizardFullaccess attached to it.

With the application type selected I can proceed by clicking Next to start configuring my application settings, beginning with setting a deployment name and optionally an Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS) topic that AWS Launch Wizard can use for notifications and alerts. In the connectivity options I can choose to use an existing Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) or have a new one created. I can also specify the name of an existing key pair (or create one). The key pair will be used if I want to RDP into my instances or obtain the administrator password. For a new Amazon VPC I can also configure the IP address or range to which remote desktop access will be permitted:
Instances launched by AWS Launch Wizard will be domain joined to an Active Directory. I can select either an existing AWS Managed AD, or an on-premises AD, or have the wizard create a new AWS Managed Directory for my deployment:

The final application settings relate to SQL Server. This is also where I can specify a custom AMI to be used if I want to bring my own SQL Server licenses or have other customization requirements. Here I’m just going to create a new SQL Server Service account and use an Amazon-provided image with license included. Note that if I choose to use an existing service account it should be part of the Managed AD in which you are deploying:

Clicking Next takes me to a page to define the infrastructure requirements of my application, in terms of CPU and network performance and memory. I can also select the type of storage (solid state vs magnetic) and required SQL Server throughput. The wizard will recommend the resource types to be launched but I can also override and select specific instance and volume types, and I can also set custom tags to apply to the resources that will be created:

The final section of this page shows me the cost estimate based on my selections. This data in this panel is dynamically generated based on my prior selections and I can go back and forth in the wizard, tuning my selections to match my budget:

When I am happy with my selections, clicking Next takes me to wizard’s final Review page where I can view a summary of my selections and acknowledge that AWS resources and AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) permissions will be created on my behalf, along with the estimated cost as was shown in the estimator on the previous page. My final step is to click Deploy to start the deployment process. Status updates during deployment can be viewed on the Deployments page with a final notification to inform me on completion.

Post-deployment Management
Once my application has been deployed I can manage its resources easily. Firstly I can navigate to Deployments on the AWS Launch Wizard dashboard and using the Actions dropdown I can jump to the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) console where I can manage the EC2 instances, EBS volumes, Active Directory etc. Or, using the same Actions dropdown, I can access SQL Server via the remote desktop gateway instance. If I want to manage future updates and patches to my application using AWS Systems Manager another Actions option takes me to the Systems Manager dashboard for managing my application. I can also use the AWS Launch Wizard to delete deployments performed using the wizard and it will perform a roll-back of all AWS CloudFormation stacks that the service created.

Now Available
AWS Launch Wizard is generally available and you can use it in the following AWS Regions: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (N. California), US West (Oregon), Canada (Central), South America (Sao Paulo), Asia Pacific (Mumbai), Asia Pacific (Singapore), Asia Pacific (Sydney), Asia Pacific (Seoul), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), EU (Frankfurt), EU (Ireland), EU (London), and EU (Stockholm). Support for the AWS regions in China, and for the GovCloud Region, is in the works. There is no additional charge for using AWS Launch Wizard, only for the resources it creates.