Migrating an Active Directory domain controller to AWS

active-directoryamazon-web-servicesmigration

I am required to migrate a Active Directory server into AWS with a couple other servers (SQL and IIS) to create a dev and test environment for our network / development.

My plan at this time is to simply rebuild the Active Directory server in AWS from scratch – which is quite time consuming indeed!

I was wondering if anyone had a recommendation as to a better and more efficient approach of migrating a copy of a physical Active Directory server to the cloud?

The server is Windows Server 2012.

Thank you!

Best Answer

Simple:

  1. Start up a Windows Server 2012 VM in AWS.
  2. VPN from that server back to your corporate network.
  3. Configure the new VM as an additional domain controller on your domain, ensuring that you also specify that it should be a global catalog.
  4. Wait for replication to complete successfully.
  5. Disconnect the VPN and uninstall/unconfigure the software to prevent inadvertent re-connection.
  6. Use ntdsutil to clean up from the now-missing domain controllers.
  7. On the AWS DC, seize all of the various FSMO roles.
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