# Use Case 6: Share your directory to seamlessly join Amazon EC2 instances to a domain across Amazon accounts
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Sharing your directory across multiple Amazon accounts enables you to manage Amazon services such as [Amazon EC2](http://www.amazonaws.cn/ec2/) easily without the need to operate a directory for each account and each VPC. You can use your directory from any Amazon account and from any [Amazon VPC](http://www.amazonaws.cn/vpc/) within an Amazon 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](http://www.amazonaws.cn/windows/) deployed in EC2 instances across multiple accounts and VPCs easily by using a single Amazon Managed Microsoft AD directory. 

When you share your Amazon Managed Microsoft AD directory with another Amazon account, you can use the Amazon EC2 console or [Amazon Systems Manager](https://www.amazonaws.cn/systems-manager/) to seamlessly join your instances from any Amazon VPC within the account and Amazon 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 Amazon Managed Microsoft AD](ms_ad_directory_sharing.md).