Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) from Amazon Web Services.
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Db2
Score 8.6 out of 10
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DB2 is a family of relational database software solutions offered by IBM. It includes standard Db2 and Db2 Warehouse editions, either deployable on-cloud, or on-premise.
Whether your organization is [an] early startup or large company AWS RDS fits in most of the cases such as 1. Easy to start, setup, used by [a] few or large developers team. 2. You can easily scale DB [instances] when your business required scaling as a startup or pay only for [users] to optimize cost as [a] large organization. 3. If your application requires SQL Server, Oracle, or Maria DB then you should use AWS RDS instance. 4. Your application requires better availability and security of data you can use AWS RDS instance. When AWS RDS is not recommended: 1. You need automatic scaling or capacity flexibility as request load gradually increases, better to use Amazon Aurora DB in this case.
The company has been using it for many years and I have been using it for just over 2 years. I feel the ease in obtaining the data. The solution can fit scenarios where there is quite a high workload and a low response time. Queries and transactions occur in milliseconds. Other backup/restore, replication and other features are fundamental and work exceptionally well. IBM is one of the most reliable companies and has been in the market for years in this segment and has helped us with support whenever we need it.
DB2 maintains itself very well. The Task Scheduler component of DB2 allows for statistics gathering and reorganization of indexes and tables without user interaction or without specific knowledge of cron or Windows Task Scheduler / Scheduled jobs.
Its use of ASYNC, NEARSYNC, and SYNC HADR (High Availability Disaster Recovery ) models gives you a range of options for maintaining a very high uptime ratio. Failover from PRIMARY to SECONDARY becomes very easy with just a single command or windowed mouse click.
Task Scheduler ( DB2 9.7 and earlier ) allows for jobs to be run within other jobs, and exit and error codes can define what other jobs are run. This allows for ease of maintenance without third party softwares.
Tablespace usage and automatic storage help keep your data segmented while at rest, making partitioning easier.
Ability to run commands via CLI (Command Line Interface) or via Control Center / Data Studio ( DB2 10.x+) makes administration a breeze.
You don't have os-level or hardware-level access to the system, so all your performance tuning needs to be done within your application or within the parameters of the database engine that amazon allows you to customize.
Customizations/Extensions to the database engines are impossible, as you don't have OS-level access.
Migrating in/out of RDS with zero down time can be relatively challenging from a configuration and execution perspective, depending on your infrastructure.
It has worked reliably in the past, we have not had any problems that would have been caused because of using RDS. Also it's future-proof, it will scale easily if user base of the application that relies on it is going to increase rapidly. Our application deployments also rely on it so renewing it is essential for business & switching to different provider would cause costs without any apparent benefit.
Since our services are running in IBM Kubernetes, using IBM Cloud Databases seem to be the best option. It may provide better performance than other vendors as everything is running in the same cloud. The overall experience so far is good as well.
I've been using AWS Relational Database Services in several projects in different environments and from the AWS products, maybe this one together to EC2 are my favourite. They deliver what they promise. Reliable, fast, easy and with a fair price (in comparison to commercial products which have obscure license agreements).
You have to be well versed in using the technology, not only from a GUI interface but from a command line interface to successfully use this software to its fullest.
Any issues related to DB2's availability are usually resolved easily and fast. We also have a team of dedicated analysts and admins to support the database technically. Once in a while we do request support from IBM for some complex issues that the on premise team can't resolve and the response is usually pretty fast and support is amazing!
The performances are exceptional if you take care to maintain the database. It is a very powerful tool and at the same time very easy to use. In our installation, we expect a DB machine on the mainframe with access to the database through ODBC connectors directly from branch servers, with fabulous end users experience.
I have only had good experiences in working with AWS support. I will admit that my experience comes from the benefit of having a premium tier of support but even working with free-tier accounts I have not had problems getting help with AWS products when needed. And most often, the docs do a pretty good job of explaining how to operate a service so a quick spin through the docs has been useful in solving problems.
Easily the best product support team. :) Whenever we have questions, they have answered those in a timely manner and we like how they go above and beyond to help.
[Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)] is much better to have everything in the cloud instead of having it on-premise once you can get all the benefits from Cloud. Of course, it can be a bit expensive if your company it's not growing anymore but if you check it in detail, you can see that the scalability of Cloud makes a lot of sense and also the reliability.
Db2 is one of the best relational databases I’ve used. It has the ability to maintain large amount of data and execution of million transactions in fraction of a second. If you use it properly, an organization can build a database with thousands of tables, and it can provide the exact information for the applications within a short amount of time
By using DB2 only to support my IzPCA activities, my knowledge here is somewhat limited.
Anyway, from what I was able to understand, DB2 is extremely scallable.
Maybe the information below could serve as an example of scalability.
Customer have an huge mainframe environment, 13x z15 CECs, around 80 LPARs, and maybe more than 50 Sysplexes (I am not totally sure about this last figure...)
Today we have 7 IzPCA databases, each one in a distinct Syplex.
Plans are underway to have, at the end, an small LPAR, with only one DB2 sub-system, and with only one database, then transmit the data from a lot of other LPARs, and then process all the data in this only one database.
The IzPCA collect process (read the data received, manipulate it, and insert rows in the tables) today is a huge process, demanding many elapsed hours, and lots of CPU.
Almost 100% of the tables are PBR type, insert jobs run in parallel, but in 4 of the 7 database, it is a really a huge and long process.
Combining the INSERTs loads from the 7 databases in only one will be impossible.......,,,,
But, IzPCA recently introduced a new feature, called "Continuous Collector".
By using that feature, small amounts of data will be transmited to the central LPAR at every 5 minutes (or even less), processed immediately,in a short period of time, and withsmall use of CPU, instead of one or two transmissions by day, of very large amounts of data and the corresponding collect jobs occurring only once or twice a day, with long elapsed times, and huge comsumption of CPU
I suspect the total CPU seconds consumed will be more or less the same in both cases, but in the new method it will occur insmall bursts many times a day!!
RDS has made sure that we don't spend a lot of time resolving issues that are not even remotely relevant to our business use-cases. It has thus made the life of DB administrators easy which allows them to explore other avenues as well.
Using RDS for around 10 years now, we have never had an issue BECAUSE of RDS. It is a very reliable service.
