AWS Directory Service Reviews

Generally, the primary use case is for our users and people in our company to access the cloud infrastructure. We're managing the ACL permissions through directory services and providing the credentials to the users so they can log into the VMs or in cloud infrastructure using that directory services. It's also for the MFA enabled, to secure the access connection from users who are able to log into the servers.

It's on cloud infrastructure. In its current role, we are using it as Azure infrastructure. Previously, I worked on AWS infrastructure and did my certification based on AWS and Azure Solutions Architect.

Directory Services basically manages all of our business network connections as the central point of authority. It ensures that all IT resources are connected to the right users. Let's suppose that an employee is terminated or somebody leaves the company. A directory service automatically turns off all access to every resource or device in that individual's library.

The most valuable feature is that because it's all in the cloud, you don't need to manage the infrastructure. You don't need to install the hardware cost. The primary benefit with implementing the AWS Directory Service is that the organization can now extend AD identity and management capabilities to AWS resources. Without the AWS Directory Services, both AD and Active Directory and AWS would have to be managed separately.

The main function of Active Directory is that it runs in the cloud. It's run on virtual Windows servers. The main function is to enable administrators to manage permissions and control access to our network resources. There are a lot of things that could be improved: services like the schema master, domain naming master, PDC emulator infrastructure masters. These are the things that we can manage and make changes to so that they work more efficiently.

Something I would like to see added is a main domain controller that you can use and implement for managers for access users and PC servers on the network.

I have worked with AWS Directory Service for more than three and a half years in my previous work.

We had a problem with the schema uploading and setting up the directory when we are migrating our users from on-premises to cloud infrastructure. But then we opened a case and involved the AWS support team. That really helped with the issues that we are facing, and that was fixed. It was a challenge for us.

That's the beauty of AWS infrastructure because when you run on AWS cloud infrastructure, you just keep an eye on the maintenance, like updating the Windows server's patching and adding the users and managing their permission as administrator.

This is on the Windows servers. With Windows servers, we can use the load balancer, which is going to be a scale up and scale high. AWS Directory Service provides enough storage capacity, approximately 30,000 directory objects. "Objects" refers to users, groups, and computers. They have a different edition. AWS Managed Microsoft AD enterprise edition is designed to support organizations with up to 500,000 directory objects. It's a lot of capacity.

We do have a global infrastructure with approximately 700-800 people using that infrastructure. We also set it up with the AD connector. It simply connects our existing infrastructure, on-premise infrastructure, to AWS.

We can definitely increase usage in the future. As I mentioned, the normal one can support up to 30,000 directory objects, which is a lot. We are creating users, groups, and computers. It's all together. With 700 users, 300 groups, and approximately 700-800 computers, that's all together around 2,000-3,000, but we still have enough space.

Tech support is pretty good and they're helpful. They will contact you through email or phone. They're available 24/7.

Everything was previously on-premises, including hardware maintenance and cooling system power. We needed to upgrade the hardware, the end of life of the hardware, so that's why we switched from on-premises to low capacity to AWS Directory Services.

AWS Directory Service has a control navigation plan. From there, as per our requirement, we can choose the directories and then choose to set up the directory. Then it's just a simple, straightforward process. From the one I created in the past, I followed the AWS documentation, and they have a very decent and straightforward documentation to build the AWS Directory Services.

In my previous company, where I set up the AWS Directory Services, we had three or four people that worked on the project. I was part of that project. We were basically migrating our on-premises directory service to our cloud infrastructure directory services. It took us around three to four weeks to establish that whole infrastructure.

The pricing depends because with AWS there are two types of directory objects: 30,000 and 500,000. It varies. AWS provides the pricing calculators so we can get an estimate from there as per the company requirement of how many users and objects that we need to create. So we can go to that portal, put in the data, and get the quotation.

There are no extra licensing fees. It's all included.

I would rate this solution 9 out of 10. I have no complaints with the product. It's pretty predefined and user-friendly.

AWS is very helpful and very useful for the infrastructure because that's how you can manage your Microsoft Office 365 user accounts with AWS-managed Microsoft Active Directory Services. That is the secure way for users to log in. As a big organization, it is very important to keep the Directory Services in the cloud and manage the Directory Services for the whole infrastructure.

My client uses it as a VMware host.

We like the fact that it's got such great redundancy. We don't have to worry about power or any of the CapEx costs.

The initial setup is very simple.

The solution is stable.

The scalability is great.

The cost for support's a little high.

AWS could improve the number of regions. Azure has passed them. The ned more consistency, as far as the Northeast is concerned. They need to put in some more resources, more bandwidth into that area in particular. We have to keep putting our stuff in the central east or the central regions due to the fact that the Northeast is always so overloaded.

The stability of the product is very good. Very nice. It's much more stable in the containerized enclosure inside of a privatized data center - other than the issues with being on the cloud and hackers bringing down the entire environment. Other than that, there are very few problems.

We have around 600,000 users currently.

We do plan to increase usage.

Our clients are gradually walking off instances from VMware to containerized instances. We're walking away from VMware mainly due to the fact that we're paying three times. They're running a Citrix environment in a VMware instance on the cloud. I told them, we're just going to containerize the instances for the application and work on more of a software model instead of an instance model. 

You do need to pay for support, which comes at a rather high cost.

I don't deal with them. We don't deal with tech support. We do it ourselves.

I'm also familiar with Azure. AWS is easy to use, however, Azure is way easier to use when it comes to migration as all the tools are already in place. All the integration is already there. Microsoft did that on purpose.

That said, when it comes to the Linux environment, AWS is awesome. When you are running Oracle, AWS is very nice.

The implementation process is quite straightforward. It's not difficult at all. We create instances with JSON scripts, which means it's instantaneous. There's no problem.

We have five people that maintain the solution.

As you pay monthly, I'd say the toughest part is getting management to understand the differences in cost. When they start seeing that monthly cost, they start to freak out. You have to remind them that they didn't put out millions for the CapEx cost. It's harder for them to grasp the cost.

It's pretty pricey. There's no doubt about it. However, in enclosed containerized instances in, for example, an HPE GreenLake framework with the frame internalized inside of the client environment, it's not nearly as expensive.

The pricing is convoluted. I would prefer it if all cloud solutions come up with better modeling. I know it's difficult to come up with an all-in-one cost, mainly due to the variance in the environments. I understand that. However, they need to centralize their cost a whole lot more.

We are an AWS partner. 

I'd advise new users to take accounting classes. Take cloud accounting and costing classes to help you understand and explain what you mean. That way, when the accounting group from the existing CapEx IT group balks, you can explain the breakdown to them. There's very little training involved, however, you need to get trained in that aspect.

I'd rate the solution at a six out of ten, simply based on the cost. It's very expensive. However, I'd give it a nine for ease of use, as it is intuitive.

This directory service was used for domain authentication and policy implementation. These features were easily available and configurable.

This is a managed directory service (by AWS) that offers a hands-free solution for our team as we are not required to hire or train people to manage Active Directory features and/or high availability backups. There is also no security patching required on an operating system level or Active Directory malware attack. Additionally, we are able to easily integrate other AWS services.

AWS handles everything on the backend requiring minimal legwork from our team. We only require a dedicated database administrator while depending on Amazon for RDS.

Our only complaint is that you cannot integrate your Exchange server. Or, if you are planning to install an Exchange server on your Amazon EC2 instance, then you need to configure Active Directory on EC2 instance. We would like for this limitation to be lifted.

I did not find any performance issues, likely since this is a managed service that does not take a lot of CPU resources.

This solution is scalable and does not require any maintenance on our end. 

We did not require their assistance while using the AWS Directory Service.

We switched because my company is the only core partner to Amazon in Pakistan and we have more than 300 certified people with predefined training.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The process required only one person to deploy and took just one day as it was easy to configure and implement AWS.

We were able to see some return on investment thanks to this being a managed service only requiring us to hire two to three people to manage backup/disaster solutions.

It is important to note that there are no hidden fees following initial purchase.

I highly recommend any AWS Managed Service. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten.

We primarily use the solution for accessing purposes for our Lambda and when we want to use services internally or across accounts. So we use Identity and Access Management (IAM) to provide that special access.

We find the access management system valuable. It provides access to our needs, and we don't need to give any extra access to our employees because everyone doesn't need access. So we can provide specific access to people based on what they need from our accounts.

The solution can be improved by including on-premises access for services through IAM.

We have been using this solution for more than four years.

The solution is stable. I rate it a nine out of ten.

The solution is scalable, and we can scale according to our needs. I rate the scalability a nine out of ten. In our organization, our access to our AWS comes from IAM. We use AWS consoles using our credentials and don't have route access, so each person will log in through our IAM programmatic access, and everyone on our team can work on cloud. Over 10,000 people in our organization utilize the solution.

We have not had experience with customer service and support.

The setup is very user-friendly and straightforward. It is understandable for everyone, and a beginner can easily understand and come up with that particular process. It takes less than five minutes to set up the solution for specific users and groups on cloud. I rate the initial setup process a ten out of ten.

The solution is priced reasonably.

I rate the solution a nine out of ten. The solution is good but can be improved by including on-premises access for services through IAM

I use this solution to create servers to host our application.

AWS has eliminated the downtime we waste when our on-premises resources go down. It also means we can work remotely and that if there's an issue, it can be resolved without going into the office or data center.

The most valuable feature is disaster recovery.

An area for improvement would be that in order to get CloudWatch to monitor your memory and storage, you have to do some configuration within your server, which sometimes results in errors. Another improvement would be to make it easier to migrate from one instance to a larger one.

I've been using this solution for three years.

I would say AWS is 99.99% stable and well-performing, as long as you know what you're doing with it.

In general, AWS' scalability is good, but if you want to move your instances from M5 large to M5 Xlarge, it's not so straightforward.

I think AWS' technical support is top-notch.

The initial setup was straightforward, taking around a day, with the exception of the DB, where we lost some of the data.

AWS' pricing is fair, and costs can be cut if you look carefully at when you're using it. They accept upfront and non-upfront payments, with upfront payments being lower. However, it can be a little difficult to figure out pricing if you're working with an exchange rate.

AWS is cost-friendly, support-friendly, and its system is 99.99% reliable. I would give this solution a score of ten out of ten.

AWS Directory Service is very useful. It is a role-based mechanism, similar to identity management. It is one of the most useful AWS features.

AWS Directory Service is secure.

The AWS Directory Service should be easier to integrate.

I have been working with AWS Directory Service for two years.

AWS Directory Service is a stable solution.

AWS Directory Service is scalable. 

We have only two people who are using this solution.

We have plans to increase our usage.

We have not contacted technical support.

When we started the inter-platform migration, we also migrated the identity management from Amazon AWS to Microsoft Azure.

The initial setup can be simple. 

Most of our Active Directories, as well as previous engagements, have been straightforward with other Active Directories, but some of the directories are not directly straightforward when we bring this to AWS. 

It is straightforward if we use AWS identity services. However, it is somewhat critical in the case of migration.

It took one week to complete the installation.

We have a core team of four who maintain and support this solution. 

We had a consultant assist us in the installation.

We pay an annual subscription fee.

I would rate AWS Directory Service an eight out of ten.

Our company uses the solution as a security layer for adding users to the AWS and managing user permissions. We currently have 1,000 users but are increasing usage every day. 

Two-step authentication is very useful and important. 

The availability rates are high at 99.99% because there are two concurrent data centers that protect against failures. 

I would like to grant partial access to a table contained in a database without having to provide full access to the whole database. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

The solution is stable and has a 99.99% availability rate across two concurrent data centers. 

The solution is scalable. 

Technical support is very knowledgeable and responds very quickly. 

I rate support a ten out of ten. 

Positive

Our company had the solution in place when I joined the team. I have not used other tools. 

The setup is quite easy because the documentation provided includes step-by-step instructions. If you understand the documentation, then you will have no setup or deployment issues. 

I rate setup an eight out of ten. 

We implemented the solution in-house. 

I am fully satisfied with the solution so I rate it a ten out of ten. 

I implement this solution for financial services customers based in Mexico. They connect to banks and other providers and interact with information, so I implement the solution using best practices for security.

The most valuable feature of this solution is the security of my customers and my customers' customers. The final users are putting their trust in my customers, so they need security that is implemented perfectly.

Some of the security protocols are difficult to understand. 

I have been working with this solution for two years.

The scalability of the solution is good. 

I have three technicians working with me to deploy the solution.

The support is very good. I would rate the technical support as a nine out of ten.

The initial setup was somewhat difficult. It requires knowledge of the solution. 

I would rate this solution as a nine out of ten.