Amazon today announced that they released the AWS Directory Service, allowing customers to either connect their on-premise Microsoft Active Directory based directory to the Samba based directory in the cloud, or to only use the Samba based directory in the cloud which Amazon calls the Simple AD directory type.
In order to link the on-premise AD to AWS Directory Service, AD connectors are provided. The connectors are provided in two flavors, the small (for up to 10,000 objects) and the Large (for up to 100,000 objects).
The AWS Directory Service supports most of the common Active Directory features including joins to Windows domains, management of Group Policies, and single sign-on to directory- powered apps. EC2 instances that run Windows can join domains and can be administered en masse using Group Policies for consistency. Also Amazon Workspaces and Amazon Zocalo can make use of the directory.
Prices start at $0.05 per hour for Small directories of either type and $0.15 per hour for Large directories.