# Use Case 6: Share your directory to seamlessly join Amazon EC2 instances to a domain across AWS accounts
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Sharing your directory across multiple AWS accounts enables you to manage AWS services such as [Amazon EC2](https://aws.amazon.com/ec2/) easily without the need to operate a directory for each account and each VPC. You can use your directory from any AWS account and from any [Amazon VPC](https://aws.amazon.com/vpc/) within an AWS Region. This capability makes it easier and more cost effective to manage directory-aware workloads with a single directory across accounts and VPCs. For example, you can now manage your [Windows workloads](https://aws.amazon.com/windows/) deployed in EC2 instances across multiple accounts and VPCs easily by using a single AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory. 

When you share your AWS Managed Microsoft AD directory with another AWS account, you can use the Amazon EC2 console or [AWS Systems Manager](https://aws.amazon.com/systems-manager/) to seamlessly join your instances from any Amazon VPC within the account and AWS Region. You can quickly deploy your directory-aware workloads on EC2 instances by eliminating the need to manually join your instances to a domain or to deploy directories in each account and VPC. For more information, see [Share your AWS Managed Microsoft AD](ms_ad_directory_sharing.md).