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Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS

Overview

What is Amazon RDS?

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) from Amazon Web Services.

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Recent Reviews

Amazon RDS review

9 out of 10
October 09, 2023
Incentivized
RDS simplifies database management tasks like provisioning, patching, backup, recovery etc. This reduces the administrative burden and …
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Amazon RDS review

9 out of 10
October 07, 2023
Incentivized
In my organization we use Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for storing relational data which is used by our Internal teams for …
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Awards

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Reviewer Pros & Cons

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Pricing

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Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL

$0.24 ($0.48)

Cloud
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)

Amazon RDS for MariaDB

$0.25 ($0.50)

Cloud
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)

Amazon RDS for MySQL

$0.29 ($0.58)

Cloud
per hour, R5 Large (R5 Extra Large)

Entry-level set up fee?

  • Setup fee optional
    Optional
For the latest information on pricing, visithttps://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/?trk…

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Product Details

What is Amazon RDS?

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) allows users to set up, operate, and scale a database in the cloud. The vendor states it provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, setup, patching, and backups. This frees users to focus on applications so they can give them the fast performance, high availability, security, and compatibility they need.

Amazon RDS is available on several database instance types - optimized for memory, performance or I/O - and provides you with six familiar database engines to choose from including Amazon Aurora, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle Database, and SQL Server.

Amazon RDS Screenshots

Screenshot of A look inside the RDS console.

Amazon RDS Videos

What's new in Amazon RDS
Dive deep into RDS new features.

Amazon RDS Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Supported CountriesNAMER, APAC, LATAM, EMEA
Supported LanguagesEnglish, French, Korean, Chinese, Japanese

Frequently Asked Questions

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) from Amazon Web Services.

Oracle Database, Google Cloud SQL, and Microsoft SQL Server are common alternatives for Amazon RDS.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 9.6.

The most common users of Amazon RDS are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(281)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 39)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Alok Pabalkar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon Aurora as one of the databases used for hosting a product in our Edtech SaaS Platform GIDE.AI.
  • Setting-up, Monitoring & Managing DB is super easy.
  • It has automatic backup and in Multi A-Z mode DB can be used in Mirrored mode.
  • Has Point in time recovery, which was super useful, when a team member accidentally updated some entries and we were able to restore it super quickly.
  • On the fly DB Vertical Scaling could be useful.
  • Connection Display & stats can be present to see and improve app design
  • Could have inbuilt service for troubleshooting, locks, slow queries.
1. All Transactional Processes 2. Storage of Structured Data Not suited for applications that have highly changing requirements. Better to use a NoSQL DB as it provides the ability to store unstructured data.
January 16, 2024

AWS RDS a good use case

Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We started using RDS as an alternative to our BE system since, at the beginning, the team did not have experience or knowledge about BE frameworks, but it was necessary to maintain a relationship between the data of the projects being executed and the RDS services of Amazon were of great help, since it is an out of the box solution. As well as it also served as a starting point to understand how our BE system should be structured later.
  • Easy to implement
  • Lots of documentation and tutorials available, from Amazon and third parties
  • Low cost
  • The official documentation needs to be sharped.
  • Tools to move data from one server to another
For people or companies that are starting out and do not have the necessary concepts to implement a database into their Backend system, or that they don't have their on cluster or a backend engineer that can configure it, RDS can fulfill a percentage of this functionality. Also if later is needed the data can be migrated to a database that lives inside the company cluster.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use RDS to manage all of our SQL databases for multiple billing and payment applications. This includes Aurora and PostgreSQL databases with millions of records and several terabytes of data. These databases are accessed in real time by web applications that handle the requests from thousands of users. RDS handles backups, security, and compliance by default.
  • Security
  • Backups and availability.
  • Scalability and managing large amounts of data.
  • Prices are not cheap.
  • Logs could be better.
RDS is a smart way to deploy and maintain databases in production with world-class capabilities such as backups, scalability, security, and compliance. If you are starting a company or launching a new application, why manage your own database servers? RDS helps you get started with a production-quality database right from the start.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using RDS in storing all our products and their information.
We have hundreds of brass products and we have maintained all our product database with RDS.
It is quick and easy also we have assigned to roles to avoid access to unauthorized users.
We have different databases of products depending upon our audience and purpose.
  • RDS is fast
  • All versions of databases engines are already installed
  • Highly secure
  • Takes less time to setup
  • Logs needs to be more visually appealing and detailed in a proper way
  • Cost is high
  • Scaling is an issue, it is tiring and exhausting
I am storing structured data such as product description, SKU, price, dimensions, customers reviews etc due to which i need to have structured data therefore relational database is very appropriate for my use case.
It becomes very fast.
Moreover my setup is in Amazon EC2 thus Amazon RDS has integration for that aswell thus making it a perfect combo.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use RDS as a database service provider for multiple eCommerce and small business websites to deliver configuration and content data to several mainstream service softwares. We use this as a rate-based, scalable alternative to cPaneled phpMyAdmin setups. More control means throughput and service level can be increased instead of being subject to server limitations.
  • Quick deployment via templates or industry standard models.
  • Easy replication and failover.
  • Nuanced cost measurement
  • Availability Zones
  • Costs can scale unpredictably without notice.
  • As with all AWS tools, overly complex interface.
RDS only works if you have access to someone who really knows the product. Don't dabble with RDS - do the full cost-benefit and go all in, if it's what you conclude that you need, including an employee or contractor who has demonstrated rich experience in the product who will actively configure the full product, and deploy monitoring tools to call attention to log alerts, downtime, demand changes and/or cost increases.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
RDS helps us with the management of our database - setup, version upgrades, backups, optimization, configuration management and so on. It saves us a lot of time.
  • Easy spin-up of new database
  • Easy database version upgrade
  • Easy backups
  • Database user management
  • Database restoration from backup
  • Encryption-at-rest of existing database
  • Reserved Instances, as compared to EC2
For a quick, dependable and fairly easy launch of a database instance, with a low-touch (or even almost no-touch) experience - it is just great.
For more advanced situations, it might be a limiting factor, e.g. smart backup and restore, user management, toggling on encryption-at-rest etc.
Rohan Kumar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Adding read replicas or growing our database laterally (by adding instances) or vertically (by increasing instance size) is simple with RDS. This adaptability guarantees that our database can manage rising workloads. RDS offers daily automated backups and lets our specify retention times. Providing choices for data recovery, we can restore our database to any point throughout the retention term.
  • Monitoring and Alerts
  • Good in terms of compatibility
  • High availability configuration
  • Automated Backups
  • Vendor-specific features and configurations
  • AWS RDS can become little expensive
  • Storage limitations
Many administrative duties related to database maintenance, including backups, patching, and monitoring, are handled by AWS. As a result, our team concentrate on application development rather than database upkeep. RDS is appropriate for a variety of applications since it supports a number of database engines, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server, and MariaDB.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We utilize Amazon RDS to host our PostgreSQL database. RDS instance serves as the repository for all our application's data, and it has proven to be highly dependable. One key benefit we found of using RDS is its scalability. We can easily adjust the database capacity to accommodate our growing data needs without significant hassle. This scalability ensures our application can handle increased user demands without compromising performance. Amazon RDS offers convenience in managing database operations. Routine tasks such as backups, software patching, and monitoring are handled seamlessly by the service, freeing up our team to focus on other critical aspects of our application. Also, we've found RDS to be cost-efficient as we pay only for the resources we use; we can effectively manage our database costs and optimize our budget allocation.
  • Automated Backups.
  • Monitoring and Metrics.
  • Scalable Storage.
  • Limited DB Engine Version Support.
  • Limited Control Over Maintenance Windows.
  • Data Portability.
Amazon RDS is a great choice for web apps, e-commerce sites, and content management systems needing a dependable and scalable database. It's perfect for businesses analyzing data and SaaS applications. But if your setup requires ultra-customized databases, or if you frequently switch cloud providers, consider other options. For read-heavy loads, explore NoSQL or caching services.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using it for storing our mysql and postgress database. We are alreardy using the AWS EC2 as compute engine so it makes easy to access it within the internal access and for better security purposes. So any external person cannot access it and our database remains safe. We are owning multiple RDS Engines for different product services.
  • Internal fast and smooth data transmission
  • Disabling the external access improves safety
  • All versions of different db engines are pre-installed available
  • Pricing it a bit too high
  • Not so much user friendly in backup-restores
  • No access to root infra
For long term application and AWS Ecosystem it is good to use. If you are planning to use only the RDS and Engine service from other provider then it is not that much worthful. Encryption, auto-backups and some other services of Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) are very good but this comes with add-on pricing.
September 21, 2023

Amazing RDS

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use RDS to host our database with ECS. All our data goes into RDS, which is easy to maintain and scale. RDS solves our main problem, which is cost. It is cost-efficient and faster, giving our product a seamless database service.
  • Auto scaling.
  • Cost efficient.
  • Fast processing.
  • Write performance.
  • No native support of read replica.
  • CPU and storage performance is not guaranteed.
For someone looking for a cost-efficient, easily scalable, and maintainable solution, RDS is the best choice for a database solution given by Amazon. Some of its best features are its automatic failover capability with multi-az read replica and its support database clusters for maximizing the availability of the product.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using it as a managed service for our Postgres database management. It is easy to use, maintain, and configure, with no administration headache, logging and monitoring come out of the box. It also supports backups and recovery. It has all the security considerations that we need for production-scale database.
  • security
  • Backup and recovery
  • Monitoring and logging
  • Scalability
  • Hight availability
  • Extensions and Plugins
  • Maintenance Windows
  • Lot's of advance configurations
If you want managed service then it is the best use case for you. You get lots of things out of the box compared to managing you data base your yourself. For people who are actual DB admins and want to control everything on their own or need on-premises deployment should not go for this service.
Anthony Aziz | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use RDS to manage multiple MySQL instances across our environments for production, toolsets, replication, and backup.
  • Replication
  • Updates
  • Redundancy
  • Performance Insights has a pretty small limit on its query reporting, which can make it difficult to track down the queries it reports.
  • RDS Console UI can be clunky and inconsistent in some areas. New versions are not always better than previous versions.
  • Metrics are not always descriptive at a glance and require some digging through documentation. Ie. BurstBalance vs CPUBurstBalance.
RDS should be able to cover the vast majority of DB use cases for various applications. We have used MySQL and MSSQL clusters, and have investigated Aurora, but the depth of options, configurations, and features go much deeper.
Osama Khan | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We used the Amazon RDS to connect to our WordPress site. We wanted minimize the support and maintenance of our database server. Backups and one hundered percent uptime were the main priorities. Speed is important but it was not the main concern. Sometimes we would see the MySQL server crash in our VPS so we wanted to have a seperate database service. We wanted to isiolate any crashes.
  • Easy setup
  • Free tier
  • Public access option
  • Scalable
  • More competitive pricing
  • Easier to understand documentation
  • predictable pricing
If you the technical background and skills, then I would recommend setting up the Amazon RDS. It takes some time, and I ran into hurdles like importing the database into Amazon RDS. The IP has to be whitelisted inside the AWS control panel in security group. The main dificulty is in setting up the database properly. Then, the automated backups and snapshots give peace of mind.
September 18, 2023

Fantastic option!

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) to make it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the AWS Cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks. I've really enjoyed this product so far and would recommend it to others for a variety of reasons.
  • Ease of use.
  • Quick deployment.
  • Customer service.
  • Better UI for smaller companies.
  • Scaled-down pricing for smaller operations.
Amazon RDS supports an array of database engines to store and organize data. It also helps with relational database management tasks, such as data migration, backup, recovery, and patching. Amazon RDS facilitates the deployment and maintenance of relational databases in the cloud. On the flip side, it is definitely geared more towards an enterprise business, so smaller shops might struggle to see the value in the service.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to store information for internal applications and public-facing information that will be dynamically pulled to render pages.
  • Managed DB.
  • Centralization
  • Private Endpoint.
  • Cost
  • Compatibility
  • Cost Scalability.
This is well suited if you would like to keep everything under one roof with AWS, but it also could be a problem if you do not have region redundancy in place. This does cause costs to increase dramatically, and as the DB scales, it can get costly very quickly with a lot of the nickel and dime charges AWS is famous for.
Manthan Dhola | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We need 100% uptime and scalable database which RDS provides us with read/write replicas. Moreover it offers security features such as encryption at rest and in transit, authentication, and access control. This helps us meet our security and compliance needs. We store and manage product catalogs, customer data, order histories, and more. RDS ensures data consistency and reliability, which are vital for e-commerce operations
  • Point in Time Restore
  • Read/Write Replicas
  • Automated Backups
  • 100% Uptime
  • Multiple Write Replicas
  • Latency
  • Cross-region failover
We use it for high demands queries for our ecommerce website where fast response is very much important with query caching as well. It provides built-in security features like encryption at rest and in transit, making it suitable for applications that require compliance with data security regulations.
it has a low latency model with aurora database base which is serverless and can be used upon the needs.
April 04, 2023

Best in class service

Giuseppe Nucifora | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have a Kubernetes cluster and we use RDS to provide a relational database to each application deployed on the cluster. We take advantage of the multi-zone potential that RDS offers and the possibility of autoscale that RDS offers us.
  • Availability
  • Point in time restore
  • Scalability
  • Point in time needs a lot of time
  • A way to restore from pointing in time backup selected database instead of full machine
Offers a secure way to implement a database cluster that can be adapted on every usage requirement, thanks to multiple engines you can choose everything you need.
Rahul Chhajed | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have been using Amazon RDS as our production database. Even with all our products we have been using RDS. RDS is a highly managed database and easy to setup other things like monitoring and auto scaling of database. A managed database reduces a lot of the headache of managing, maintaining, and other tasks related to database.
  • Setting up and managing a new RDS is just a matter of few clicks.
  • Maintaining different version of backup is just like a matter of turning on and off.
  • Automatic minor update of database.
  • Best restore:- You can even restore to 1 second before time.
  • RDS has everything that can be configured, but when you need efficient configuration we need little bit more knowledge about Dev Ops things.
  • Although restoration is available, when you need to do it it's pretty tricky. A new instance will be created and you will face some downtime.
  • Understanding which configuration and pricing would be suitable for startups as well [as] enterprise needs more reading and research.
RDS is well suited for faster deployments and when you don't have a dedicated Database Administrator to manage your database environment. With RDS it will be so easy to manage your production and development environment [with] a few clicks and a little bit of research. Both enterprise and startups can use RDS with a reasonable pricing plan. If you [are] already using some other cloud platform, then the migration is pretty simple to RDS also.
Tom Blazek | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use RDS because we are migrating from MySQL on-prem to the cloud. This will result in less work and maintenance for us in the long run. We have moved almost all our on-prem workloads and are pretty happy so far. The interface for AWS is a bit hard to learn but we are getting used it to.
  • Easy to scale
  • Simple to setup
  • Lots of online examples
  • Not always easy to understand the access controls
  • Interface could be more modern
  • Not always easy to understand the actual cost
RDS is well suited for people who are too busy to host or manage Linux servers themselves. If you are growing rapidly it's much easier to spin up more servers in AWS or to increase capacity on your RDS instance. I don't think its cheaper, but its definitely less work and hopefully less worry about your data
November 29, 2021

RDS helped me a lot!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used it for both PostgreSQL and MySQL databases. It was a way to host our database services when we were utilising the AWS services. So we had one for the staging-development environment and one for production. It was fast and functional so we were happy working with it. It is managed by AWS so we don't need to take care of updates. It's helpful to set a maintenance window. It has also snapshots that helps to keep our data safe.
  • Updates (patching).
  • Backups.
  • Scaling.
  • Handling Load and serving.
  • Performance Monitor should be better and show more metrics.
  • A super admin who can tune up some mysql innodb values.
  • Migration Tool.
I have used it for PostgreSQL and MySQL and it worked perfectly fine for both. They were different applications but there was no significant high load. Running a single instance was fine. I would like to run a cluster and see how will it be but have not tested it yet. So far I would recommend it for a single point of failure DB.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using it to create database instances for dev and using Aurora for making our effort of managing database, backup with zero effect. It helps us to scale our application in all regions.
  • Scaling.
  • Give options to create backup.
  • Easy setup.
  • Different way to login securely from username/password to IAM.
  • Making AWS Aurora accessible from localhost.
Good for scaling your application in multiple regions, storage issue fix as with config it can grow, easy to set up from console or using AWS CLI.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As we have many customers in different countries we are creating one [Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)] instance for each country and then splitting it by usage. Nowadays, all our data it's being created and stored in RDS and moved to Redshift afterward. The main purpose to have it on RDS is trustability and easy maintenance once we can connect from a client directly to our instance.
  • Scalable - If you need more space or more processing, it's really easy to choose another instance.
  • Reliable - One of the main benefit it's reliability once the availability it's close to 100%
  • Integration - Everything can be connected to RDS
  • Honestly, I think RDS enough for my all purposes.
If you want to store your data in the cloud you must check [Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)] once it's perfect in terms of integration, it's really nice to store your live data (from web applications mainly), the performance is also cool and you can use many of the advantages like scalability, reliability, performance.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon [Relational Database Services (RDS)] is deployed as a primary datastore for a number of applications within our infrastructure. It allows us to offload the typical Database Server Maintenance/Configuration and even System Management to Amazon, which ultimately reduces the cost of our System Administration overhead. Amazon makes it very easy to customize the configuration for each RDS deployment with a number of database engines, as well as set up automatic fail over, automated backups, and the ability to resize your database deployment seamlessly, should your application requirements call for additional resources.
  • Removes the burden of host OS maintenance
  • Simple configuration and management
  • Automatic, easy to restore, backups
  • 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.
If you're operating within the Amazon universe of cloud computing, it's almost a no-brainer to utilize [Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)]. RDS is well suited for probably a majority of applications that are candidates to host on a cloud computing platform as it reduces overall management and complexity of your system.

However, if you're doing a lot of data exporting/importing using tools that write to/read from the disk on the server, you may have challenges integrating RDS, as you have no access to the underlying host.
Mike Narumiya | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon Relational Database Service is used for spinning up test scenarios or alpha test of products. In addition, it's utilized for creating environments that may or may not be used in the long term. Excellent product for its flexibility, and lack of need for long term capital expenditures or commitments. Easy to utilize and purchase. It's a very friendly platform to use in agile environments, or in organizations that are in either an early startup mode, or rapid growth/expansion phase.
  • Ease of use.
  • Flexibility without excessive commitment.
  • Slightly pricier than some options.
  • Name brand of Amazon is good in some industries, less positive in others.
A growing organization that was already stretched financially and infrastructure wise, was looking for ways to further test and build out product environments for evaluation were looking for quick, easier ways to spin up new environments. Amazon Relational Database Service could certainly be used for long term use, but for this nimble use/business case, it was a great option.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I have used the Amazon Relational Database Service on behalf of a customer that was creating a mobile game that had elements of e-commerce. We needed something that was scalable, easy to implement, only charged us for the resources that we used, and had excellent customer service as this was a new project for our agency. ARDS checked every box.
  • Database server monitoring.
  • Security.
  • Admin tools were confusing.
  • Trial and error based learning.
My agency took on a client that required a mobile game build from scratch that had e-commerce baked into the final product. We needed to keep the user information safe and organized on both a game perspective but also from a financial perspective. Amazon Rational Database Service does all of that. They monitor the database so we don’t have to spend time and resources doing so.
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