Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) vs. Db2

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Amazon RDS
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) from Amazon Web Services.N/A
Db2
Score 8.7 out of 10
N/A
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.
$0
Pricing
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Db2
Editions & Modules
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
$0.24 ($0.48)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for MariaDB
$0.25 ($0.50)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for MySQL
$0.29 ($0.58)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for Oracle
$0.482 ($0.964)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Amazon RDS for SQL Server
$1.02 ($1.52)
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)
Db2 on Cloud Lite
$0
Db2 on Cloud Standard
$99
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex One
$898
per month
Db2 on Cloud Enterprise
$946
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex for AWS
2,957
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex
$3,451
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex Performance
13,651
per month
Db2 Warehouse on Cloud Flex Performance for AWS
13,651
per month
Db2 Standard Edition
Contact us
Db2 Advanced Edition
Contact us
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Amazon RDSDb2
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoYes
Entry-level Setup FeeOptionalOptional
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Db2
Considered Both Products
Amazon RDS

No answer on this topic

Db2
Chose Db2
Considering Price, features configurations timelines of the IBM Db2 we found that is very Robust in Scalability, Reliability, Highly Available. also, we are already a IBM products user and we are much satisfied with the overall product as well as customer support from IBM team. …
Chose Db2
I have experience with the above-mentioned similar products but mainly with MySQL. In terms of speed and query optimization capabilities, Db2 is far ahead in comparison to MySQL. Because of various issues like scalability, multiple departments hitting DB together causing …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Best Alternatives
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Db2
Small Businesses
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
SingleStore
SingleStore
Score 9.7 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Db2
Likelihood to Recommend
8.7
(128 ratings)
8.6
(75 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.6
(5 ratings)
8.0
(12 ratings)
Usability
9.0
(5 ratings)
8.7
(7 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.8
(52 ratings)
Performance
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(11 ratings)
Support Rating
9.6
(13 ratings)
6.0
(6 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Online Training
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(2 ratings)
Configurability
-
(0 ratings)
9.1
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
8.7
(52 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
-
(0 ratings)
8.2
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)Db2
Likelihood to Recommend
Amazon AWS
Amazon Relational Database Service is a perfect fit for everyone who is seeking for an high-performance cloud-based database service. No matter if Postgres, Oracle, or any other type of relational database. Amazon RDS is our first choice for any kind of database requirement in the cloud. Especially I like the scalability.
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IBM
I could think of a couple but the obvious is in Fintech and Retail, because of the amount of transactional and event level data for global operations. It is imperative to have a solution that can handle such large scale date, in real-time and batch delivery for inbound and outbound delivery, and ultimately ensuring that workload management is supported in some cases for around the clock SLAs.
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Pros
Amazon AWS
  • Automated Database Management: We use it for streamlining routine tasks like software patching and database backups.
  • Scalability on Demand: we use it to handle traffic spikes, scaling both vertically and horizontally.
  • Database Engine Compatibility: It works amazingly with multiple database engines used by different departments within our organization including MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server, and Oracle.
  • Monitoring: It covers our extensive monitoring and logging, and also has great compatibility with Amazon CloudWatch
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IBM
  • 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.
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Cons
Amazon AWS
  • It is a little difficult to configure and connect to an RDS instance. The integration with ECS can be made more seamless.
  • Exploring features within RDS is not very easy and intuitive. Either a human friendly documentation should be added or the User Interface be made intuitive so that people can explore and find features on their own.
  • There should be tools to analyze cost and minimize it according to the usage.
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IBM
  • The relational model requires a rigid schema that does not necessarily fit with some types of modern development.
  • Proprietary database, requires a lot of Hardware for its good performance and its costs are high.
  • As data grows in production environment, it becomes slow.
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Likelihood to Renew
Amazon AWS
We do renew our use of Amazon Relational Database Service. We don't have any problems faced with RDS in place. RDS has taken away lot of overhead of hosting database, managing the database and keeping a team just to manage database. Even the backup, security and recovery another overhead that has been taken away by RDS. So, we will keep on using RDS.
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IBM
The DB2 database is a solid option for our school. We have been on this journey now for 3-4 years so we are still adapting to what it can do. We will renew our use of DB2 because we don’t see. Major need to change. Also, changing a main database in a school environment is a major project, so we’ll avoid that if possible.
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Usability
Amazon AWS
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).
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IBM
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.
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Reliability and Availability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
I have never had DB2 go down unexpectedly. It just works solidly every day. When I look at the logs, sometimes DB2 has figured out there was a need to build an index. Instead of waiting for me to do it, the database automatically created the index for me. At my current company, we have had zero issues for the past 8 years. We have upgrade the server 3 times and upgraded the OS each time and the only thing we saw was that DB2 got better and faster. It is simply amazing.
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Performance
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
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.
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Support Rating
Amazon AWS
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.
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IBM
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.
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In-Person Training
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
the material was very clear and all subjects have been handled
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Online Training
Amazon AWS
the online training & digital content available on the web from AWS was having sufficient information to deploy and run the service
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Implementation Rating
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
db2 work well with the application, also the replication tool can keep it up
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Alternatives Considered
Amazon AWS
In a few words, we are just to confortable working with oracle and sql server. Using RDS add another layer of distributed database in order to backup everything we have in case of a disaster and also complies with authorities locally and internacionally. All database we use, are local in custom servers that we maintain, but we agree to expand this.
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IBM
DB2 was more scalable and easily configurable than other products we evaluated and short listed in terms of functionality and pricing. IBM also had a good demo on premise and provided us a sandbox experience to test out and play with the product and DB2 at that time came out better than other similar products.
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Scalability
Amazon AWS
No answers on this topic
IBM
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 with small 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 in small bursts
many times a day!!
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Return on Investment
Amazon AWS
  • RDS is costly and thus small business should avoid it as it might not be worthful (in ROI perspective)
  • Downtime is very low and there are automated backups thus we dont have to worry much about technical stuff and can focus more on marketing and sales
  • Due to various automated features such as automated backup etc we dont need a huge technical team thus reducing the cost of maintaining a huge technical team ,
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IBM
  • Fast response time by processing optimization and cost reduction by reduced CPU utilization. Nowadays, good performance is a necessary condition for the survival of a company and its sustained growth
  • SQL enhancements are targeted to improve performance, simplify current and new applications, and reduce the development cycle time to market.
  • A CPU reduction at peak times can immediately reduce our TCO by reducing software costs related to CPU utilization.
  • Impressive reductions in memory requirements, which used to limit the concurrent database activity
  • Out-of-the-box savings without changing the database or application
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ScreenShots

Amazon RDS Screenshots

Screenshot of A look inside the RDS console.