AWS Quick Starts and SQL Server Deployment

Summary

Matt from AWS interviewed Santiago from the AWS Quick Start team to discuss how Quick Starts are used to deploy complex workloads on AWS using automated, modular, best-practice architectures.
The session focused on the Quick Start for deploying SQL Server 2017 on EC2, highlighting its flexibility, high availability, and the advantages of modular, nested CloudFormation templates.
The discussion covered the available components, high availability strategies, multi-AZ and multi-region capabilities, and the modular nature that allows using existing infrastructure.
Key insights included the value of automation in reducing manual effort and errors, and the flexibility provided by Quick Starts for different customer needs.

(no specific action items or follow-up tasks were mentioned in the transcript)

AWS Quick Starts are reference deployments for key workloads built using CloudFormation templates, scripts, and deployment guides.
Quick Starts are designed in collaboration with AWS partners and solution architects, providing automated, best-practice architectures for both enterprise and open-source workloads.
They allow customers to deploy complex solutions quickly, consistently, and with reduced risk of manual error.

This Quick Start provides an Always On Availability Group configuration for SQL Server 2017 on EC2, using Windows Server Failover Clustering.
Distinct from RDS, this solution offers direct instance and file system access, giving customers greater flexibility and administrative control.
The solution is built with modular, nested CloudFormation templates, allowing deployment on either new or existing VPCs and enabling a building-block approach for infrastructure.

The deployment includes two availability zones, each with public and private subnets.
Public subnets host Remote Desktop Gateways (acting as Bastion hosts) and NAT Gateways for secure traffic management.
Private subnets host two SQL Server EC2 instances (SQL1 and SQL2) configured in a Windows Server failover cluster, enabling synchronous commits and automatic failover for high availability.
The architecture supports expansion to additional availability zones and multi-region deployments by adjusting template parameters and switching to asynchronous commits and manual failover as needed.

The architecture is highly modular, leveraging nested CloudFormation stacks for components like VPC, Directory Services, and Remote Desktop Gateways.
Customers can opt to use their own domain infrastructure or leverage the provided AWS Directory Services deployment.
The modular approach allows customers to select only the components they need, promoting reusability and flexibility.

Adopt a modular, nested CloudFormation approach for Quick Starts — This was chosen to maximize flexibility, reusability, and ease of customization for different customer scenarios.