Amazon RDS vs Google Cloud SQL

Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service is great when you need a Database solution that can work for you very fast. It is also a great solution when you need a system that can scale to handle very large amounts of data. You can get set up with a complex, large database eco-system in minutes/hours, and have the best security and backups scheduled. The alternative to doing this would typically be hiring one or more very experienced database professionals for not just the implementation, but also on staff to handle the periodic maintenance necessary.

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Gabriel Samaroo

Senior Software Engineer

RocketripComputer Software, 11-50 employees

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Google Cloud SQL

When you need relational storage.Not when you need warehousing.

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Kristian Hareland

CTO (Chief Technical Officer)

Ekstern AvdelingFinancial Services, 1-10 employees

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Feature Rating Comparison

Amazon RDS

—

Google Cloud SQL

8.0

Automatic software patching

—

9.2

Database scalability

—

7.6

Automated backups

—

10.0

Database security provisions

—

8.4

Monitoring and metrics

—

7.6

Automatic host deployment

—

5.0

Pros

Security... being in the AWS stack, you get all the "warm and fuzzies" that come with knowing your data is secure. And user management couldn't be easier.
Flexibility... Aurora, PostreSQL, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server--RDS can run any of them.
Scalability... when all else fails, add more hardware! To a point... and there is a point (see: petabytes) at which you might consider bumping up to RedShift, but for the other 99.99%, RDS is the place to be.

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Kyle Reichelt

Senior Project Manager

OnMetricInternet, 11-50 employees

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Super easy to set up: new instance -> Authorization -> play
Automatic backup every night! (Keeps past 7 days as copy as well)
Automatic failover, in case your main SQL instance fails, they automatically switch you over.

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Kristian Hareland

CTO (Chief Technical Officer)

Ekstern AvdelingFinancial Services, 1-10 employees

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Cons

My engineers would be able to speak more thoroughly to the cons. I have only benefited from the fruit of their labor. I can say that, from a Project Management standpoint (interfacing with RDS via a PostgreSQL client and my dashboards), it has only performed well so far.

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Kyle Reichelt

Senior Project Manager

OnMetricInternet, 11-50 employees

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It could be cheaper. Definitely cheaper.
It could provide more information about failovers.
It could allow you to customize more.

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Kristian Hareland

CTO (Chief Technical Officer)

Ekstern AvdelingFinancial Services, 1-10 employees

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Alternatives Considered

Running our database on RDS has been a good option as we originally thought most of our database would be running on EC2 instances and they we needed root access to the machine. We found out that wasn't the case and just needed to change our mindset.

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Verified User

Vice-President in Information Technology

Higher Education Company, 10,001+ employees

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I don't know to be honest, but I think ease of use is their #1 feature.

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Kristian Hareland

CTO (Chief Technical Officer)

Ekstern AvdelingFinancial Services, 1-10 employees

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Return on Investment

Very positive. It has reduced our need to have IT Operations and DBA resources, and with Aurora we have been able to get better performance with less compute power required (that is, with a lower monthly spend).

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