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CLF-C02 Practice Question 105: Managed Active Directory

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) · Test 11 · question 5 of 10

Security & Compliancemedium

A company is moving .NET applications and Microsoft SQL Server workloads to AWS. They need real Microsoft Active Directory features: joining Windows EC2 instances to a domain, Group Policy, and a trust relationship with the company's on-premises Active Directory. The company does not want to run its own domain controllers. Which option should it use?

Select one answer
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Answer:

  • A. AWS Managed Microsoft AD

AWS Directory Service for Microsoft Active Directory, also called AWS Managed Microsoft AD, is powered by an actual Microsoft Windows Server Active Directory, managed by AWS. It supports joining EC2 instances to the domain, administering Group Policy, and connecting to existing on-premises AD through a trust. AWS handles monitoring, daily snapshots and recovery. AWS recommends it when you need actual Active Directory features for Windows workloads, including Amazon RDS for SQL Server.

Option B, Amazon Cognito, is a user directory and sign-in service for the *customers* of web and mobile apps. It isn't a Windows domain for servers. Option C, IAM Identity Center, gives the workforce single sign-on to AWS accounts and applications, and it can use Managed Microsoft AD as an identity source, but it is not itself a domain that Windows instances can join. Option D, Simple AD, belongs to the same service but is only Active Directory-*compatible* (powered by Samba 4). It doesn't support trust relationships, and AWS says to use Managed Microsoft AD when you need actual Microsoft AD features.

Reference: What is AWS Directory Service?

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