Aws Windows Server Remote Desktop

Microsoft Remote Desktop: macOS application to remote desktop connect (RDP) to EC2 Amazon EC2 Launching a Windows Server EC2 Instance Sign in to your AWS Management Console.

Both Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS offer a variety of instance types and sizes, allowing you to select the optimal configuration for your target workload. Amazon EC2 AMIs with Windows Server require no Client Access Licenses (CALs). They also include two Microsoft Remote Desktop Services licenses for administrative purposes.
Remote Desktop Gateway uses Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) over HTTPS to establish a secure, encrypted connection between remote users on the internet and Windows-based EC2 instances, without needing to configure a virtual private network (VPN) connection.

Access your desktop anywhere, anytime, from any device

Amazon WorkSpaces is a managed, secure Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS) solution. You can use Amazon WorkSpaces to provision either Windows or Linux desktops in just a few minutes and quickly scale to provide thousands of desktops to workers across the globe. You can pay either monthly or hourly, just for the WorkSpaces you launch, which helps you save money when compared to traditional desktops and on-premises VDI solutions. Amazon WorkSpaces helps you eliminate the complexity in managing hardware inventory, OS versions and patches, and Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI), which helps simplify your desktop delivery strategy. With Amazon WorkSpaces, your users get a fast, responsive desktop of their choice that they can access anywhere, anytime, from any supported device.

through July 31st, 2021 with the AWS Free Tier

Simplify Desktop Delivery

Amazon WorkSpaces helps you eliminate many administrative tasks associated with managing your desktop lifecycle including provisioning, deploying, maintaining, and recycling desktops. There is less hardware inventory to manage and no need for complex virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments that don’t scale.

Reduce Costs

Amazon WorkSpaces eliminates the need to over-buy desktop and laptop resources by providing on-demand access to cloud desktops that include a range of compute, memory, and storage resources to meet your users' performance needs.

Keep Your Data Secure

Amazon WorkSpaces is deployed within an Amazon Virtual Private Network (VPC), provide each user with access to persistent, encrypted storage volumes in the AWS Cloud, and integrate with AWS Key Management Service (KMS). No user data is stored on the local device. This helps improve the security of user data and reduces your overall risk surface area.

Centrally Manage and Scale Your Global Desktop Deployment

Amazon WorkSpaces is available in 13 AWS Regions and provides access to high performance cloud desktops wherever your teams get work done. You can manage a global deployment of many thousands of WorkSpaces from the AWS console. And you can rapidly provision and de-provision desktops as the needs of your workforce change.

Use cases

Provide secure cloud desktops for remote, mobile, and contract employees

The rapid growth of remote and mobile workers is placing pressure on IT to provide fast, easy access to corporate applications and data from the device of their choice. Amazon WorkSpaces helps mobile and remote employees access the applications users need by delivering a cloud desktop accessible anywhere with an internet connection using any supported device.

Enable bring your own device

To deliver on the promise of Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) initiatives, IT must ensure employees can easily and securely access their applications and data across a large and constantly changing number of devices. Amazon WorkSpaces lets you run a cloud desktop directly on a wide range of devices like PC, Mac, iPad, Kindle Fire, Android tablet, Chromebook, and web browsers like Firefox, and Chrome. This gives you the tools to deliver a secure, responsive desktop experience that will delight your users and help make your BYOD initiative a reality.

Rapidly provision and scale desktops for software test and development

Developers and test teams need access to a secure, high-performance WorkSpace for completing tasks without the expense and inventory that comes with a lot of over-provisioned physical hardware. You can provision Amazon WorkSpaces that includes all the tools your developers need to build applications quickly. Your source code is not stored on developers’ devices helping ensure the safety of your intellectual property.

Quickly provision persistent desktops for classroom and lab settings

Amazon WorkSpaces provides a full, persistent desktop that students can use throughout their education while Amazon AppStream 2.0 lets course instructors quickly deliver specific applications for the unique needs for their class. Used together, you can easily build the learning environment your students need and ensure students have what they need for your class from day one.

Rapid integration during mergers and acquisitions

Companies going through M&A activity must support quickly on-boarding or off-loading large numbers of employees with fast, easy, secure access to company applications and data. They must do so across a diverse set of devices without spending much money or going through lengthy complex integrations. With Amazon WorkSpaces, IT teams quickly can provision and decommission secure WorkSpaces to keep up with changing organizational structures.

Customer stories

Windows Server Remote Desktop App

The Amazon Client Engineering team manages and supports IT services within Amazon and is responsible for managing the company's devices. As Amazon brings on new subsidiaries, it saves money that would previously have been used for physical infrastructure.

“We save millions of dollars for every subsidiary we onboard, because Amazon WorkSpaces can be deployed in many different regions and the solution circumvents the need for physical logistics like shipping hardware and the buildout of network connections. Overall, Amazon WorkSpaces is expected to contribute to an annual savings of more than $17 million for Amazon across all use cases.”

– Andrew Blackard, Manager, Client Engineering, Amazon IT

GrubHub, Inc. is a billion dollar food-service online and mobile platform featuring the largest and most comprehensive network of restaurant partners in the US. As an essential business to support local restaurants, GrubHub leveraged Amazon WorkSpaces to ensure business continuity and support the safety of our employees by moving all departments to a Work From Home (WFH) model.

'Amazon WorkSpaces easily accommodated our real-time customer communication and contact channels allowing 100% of our workforce and new employees to be WFH, accelerating our BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) strategy. GrubHub now has the flexibility to control cost and scale this virtual desktop environment to meet the current needs and future needs of our customers, restaurant partners, and drivers for whatever comes next.'

- Justinian Fortenberry, Chief Information Security Officer

MAXIMUS partners with state, federal, and local governments to provide communities with critical health and human service programs. MAXIMUS used Amazon WorkSpaces to replace their on-premises VDI infrastructure and accelerate their adoption to the cloud.

“MAXIMUS uses VDI for several different types of projects, including call centers and for remote users. MAXIMUS is currently going through a move to AWS for all IT services, so it was natural that we utilize WorkSpaces to replace our VDI infrastructure. We were having many issues with VDI backend server support, workstations, and many complaints from users about software configurations. With WorkSpaces, we were able to release ourselves from all of the backend maintenance and concentrate on the user experience.”

- Jason Winters, Principal Architect, MAXIMUS, IT.

Blog posts & articles

1……

Aws windows server remote desktop connections

Get started with AWS

Begin building with step-by-step guides to help you launch your AWS project.

Get started with Amazon WorkSpaces

Have more questions?

Quick post explaining how to connect Windows EC2 AWS server using RDP.

Step 1. Get windows password in AWS

Retrieve administrator password from the Windows EC2 server. Login to the EC2 dashboard from the AWS console. Select your Windows server EC2 instance and choose ‘Get Windows password‘ from the Actions menu.

Sometimes you may see below error complaining that Windows password is not available –

Error is self explanatory. You are seeing it because –

You need to wait for your server to properly boot and module to start which decrypt windows password and share with you.
You spun windows server from AMI which does not have a module which could retrieve administrator password from Windows.

In the case of the first situation wait for few minutes and again try to ‘Get Windows Password‘. In the case of the second situation, you need to spin up EC2 with proper AMI.

Also read : How to deploy Linux server in AWS

Once the above issue is resolved, you will see the next window which asks for key pair you used while deploying the Windows server. This is AWS authenticating you again before it releases administrator password to you.

Browse key pair on your local machine and then hit the ‘Decrypt Password‘ button. If you have supplied proper key pair you will be presented with a password window like below –

That’s it. You have the administrator password for your Windows server on AWS.