Step 1: Set up your AWS environment for AWS Managed Microsoft AD Active Directory

Before you can create AWS Managed Microsoft AD in your AWS test lab, you first need to set up your Amazon EC2 key pair so that all login data is encrypted.

Create a key pair

If you already have a key pair, you can skip this step. For more information about Amazon EC2 key pairs, see Create key pairs.

Create, configure, and peer two Amazon VPCs

As shown in the following illustration, by the time you finish this multi-step process you will have created and configured two public VPCs, two public subnets per VPC, one Internet Gateway per VPC, and one VPC Peering connection between the VPCs. We chose to use public VPCs and subnets for the purpose of simplicity and cost. For production workloads, we recommend that you use private VPCs. For more information about improving VPC Security, see Security in Amazon Virtual Private Cloud.

All of the AWS CLI and PowerShell examples use the VPC information from below and are built in us-west-2. You may choose any supported Region to build you environment in. For general information, see What is Amazon VPC?.

Step 1: Create two VPCs

In this step, you need to create two VPCs in the same account using the specified parameters in the following table. AWS Managed Microsoft AD supports the use of separate accounts with the Share your AWS Managed Microsoft AD feature. The first VPC will be used for AWS Managed Microsoft AD. The second VPC will be used for resources that can be used later in Tutorial: Creating a trust from AWS Managed Microsoft AD to a self-managed Active Directory installation on Amazon EC2.

For detailed instructions, see Creating a VPC.

Step 2: Create two subnets per VPC

After you have created the VPCs you will need to create two subnets per VPC using the specified parameters in the following table. For this test lab each subnet will be a /24. This will allows up to 256 addresses to be issued per subnet. Each subnet must be a in a separate AZ. Putting each subnet in a separate in AZ is one of the Prerequisites for creating a AWS Managed Microsoft AD.

For detailed instructions, see Creating a subnet in your VPC.

Step 3: Create and attach an Internet Gateway to your VPCs

Since we are using public VPCs you will need to create and attach an Internet gateway to your VPCs using the specified parameters in the following table. This will allow you to be able to connect to and manage your EC2 instances.

For detailed instructions, see Internet gateways.

Step 4: Configure a VPC peering connection between AWS-DS-VPC01 and AWS-OnPrem-VPC01

Since you already created two VPCs earlier, you will need to network them together using VPC peering using the specified parameters in the following table. While there are many ways to connect your VPCs, this tutorial will use VPC Peering. AWS Managed Microsoft AD supports many solutions to connect your VPCs, some of these include VPC peering, Transit Gateway, and VPN.

For instructions on how to create a VPC Peering Connection with another VPC from with in your account, see Creating a VPC peering connection with another VPC in your account.

Step 5: Add two routes to each VPC’s main route table

In order for the Internet Gateways and VPC Peering Connection created in the previous steps to be functional you will need to update the main route table of both VPCs using the specified parameters in the following table. You will be adding two routes; 0.0.0.0/0 which will route to all destinations not explicitly known to the route table and 10.0.0.0/16 or 10.100.0.0/16 which will route to each VPC over the VPC Peering Connection established above.

You can easily find the correct route table for each VPC by filtering on the VPC name tag (AWS-DS-VPC01 or AWS-OnPrem-VPC01).

For instructions on how to add routes to a VPC route table, see Adding and removing routes from a route table.

Create security groups for Amazon EC2 instances

By default, AWS Managed Microsoft AD creates a security group to manage traffic between its domain controllers. In this section, you will need to create 2 security groups (one for each VPC) which will be used to manage traffic within your VPC for your EC2 instances using the specified parameters in the following tables. You also add a rule that allows RDP (3389) inbound from anywhere and for all traffic types inbound from the local VPC. For more information, see Amazon EC2 security groups for Windows instances.

Security Group Inbound Rules for AWS-DS-VPC01

Security Group Outbound Rules for AWS-DS-VPC01

Security Group Inbound Rules for AWS-OnPrem-VPC01

Security Group Outbound Rules for AWS-OnPrem-VPC01

For detailed instructions on how to create and add rules to your security groups, see Working with security groups.