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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 74)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
There were plenty of custom web application running on our customer environment in local DB setup. It required lot of admin efforts and it caused development inefficiency. I researched and proposed the AWS RDS as out customer was having AWS platform already. With AWS RDS we cut down the efforts in managing the softwares and admin tasks. We are able to scale up as per demand for some high usage applications without any heckle.
  • High Availability
  • Easy to scale up
  • security
  • automatic patching and upgrade
  • Recovery is slow if workload is too high after failure
  • Dashboard is little bit confusing for new user
  • DB Replication is sometimes problematic
Almost everything can be achived just by configuration from the dashboard itself. Admin efforts are significantly reduced. Its very easy for upgrade and patching activities. Its very necessary nowadays.
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.
Aman Makwana | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a Relational Database Service we have used AWS RDS because as a Banking and Fintech organisation we are dealing with millions of customer and as AWS provides this Managed service which is fully fledged with lots of feature like High Availability, Fault Tolerance, Security measures, In Depth Monitoring, Resilency, Query Suggestions and Very High Performance. Moreover this all set of features are available as one click solutions so we don't have a external headache to manage the Database we just have to focus on our Application.
  • Multi AZ, EC2 secure instance connect, Read and Write replicas
  • Storage and Database autoscaling is achieved by just one click so that our DB performance is not impacted due to huge number of users
  • In depth monitoring of Database and Database Queries and also the suggestions to improvise the same.
  • Automated and Manual Backup process that reduces our time to setup the Database Backup process
  • Faster DB provisioning speed
  • No room for improvement as of now
You can use AWS RDS when you are specifically on cloud and also you don't want a headache to Setup the Database Availability, Security, Resilency, Monitoring by using RDS you can get all this feature on just one click ( Note: As per the feature you enable it can have add on charges based on that).

If you are a Startup owner and you want to get started with AWS RDS it also provides the Free tier quota where you can get started on RDS and also by applying to AWS startup events you can get Additional Cloud credits.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our company needed a reliable and fast solution for storing our customer data and Amazon Relational Database Service was a good choice because of all the set of features it offers. On top of the relational storage, our company could comply with market standards by easily having replication, backup, patching and user management easily implemented natively in the solution. What is also great about Amazon Relational Database Service is that you can manage everything using terraform, making it easy to reproduce the configurations in multiple environments.
  • Relational data storage
  • Backups
  • Availability
  • Schema management
  • Monitoring
  • DBM
Amazon Relational Database Service is good for real-time transactions with quick immediate response in which the data is stored locally, so might not be the best choice for huge data warehouse or data lake. It also depends a lot on the data type you want to use for your applications, some data types might be better handled by other solutions. For quick out of the box solutions with no complex architecture Amazon Relational Database Service is a great choice.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is used in our company at quite a large scale. We have migrated all of our server infrastructure to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, so making use of the Relational Database Service was a no-brainer for us.
Most of our systems are connected to an RDS instance.
  • Scalability
  • Availability
  • Performance
  • Competitive Pricing
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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
In healthcare, managing patient records and sensitive data securely is crucial. RDS offers encrypted storage, ensuring data security and compliance with regulations like HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act). This encryption extends to data in transit and at rest. With RDS, you can set up multi-AZ (Availability Zone) deployments for high availability. This is vital in healthcare, where database downtime can directly impact patient care. In case of disasters, RDS facilitates quick recovery, minimizing data loss.
  • Automated Backups and Snapshots
  • Easy Scalability
  • Read Replicas for Improved Performance
  • Limited Control Over Underlying Infrastructure
  • Cost Management
  • Complexity in Monitoring and Logging
Electronic Health Records (EHR) Management: RDS is ideal for managing EHR systems due to its high availability, security features, and scalability. It ensures that patient records are always accessible, secure, and can handle increasing loads as more data is added. For telemedicine platforms that require reliable, scalable databases to manage patient appointments, medical histories, and consultation notes, RDS can provide the necessary backend support. Scenarios Where Amazon RDS Might Be Less Appropriate:Highly Customized Database Configurations If your healthcare application requires very specific, fine-tuned database configurations or uses specialized database features not fully supported by RDS a self-managed database might be a better fit. If your healthcare application requires real-time processing of data (e.g., real-time monitoring of patient vitals), you might need a more specialized solution like Amazon Kinesis or a similar real-time data processing service.
Prajwal Shetty | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Amazon Relational Database Service for Databricks Technical Field Telemetry(TFT) Project, which is an internal project for field engineering teams where they manage customer engagement, interactions, feedbacks. This majorly helped to improve our product by managing each team, each individual performances, thus they can set targets for improvement plans. It also displays a hit score which is the benchmark for internal teams. We used Amazon Relational Database Service serverless to deploy the backend database, which is lightening fast, reliable DBMS.
  • Serverless
  • Performance
  • Scalability
  • Reliability
  • AWS instance downtimes
  • Ease of use
  • End user installation
It's best suited for serverless computing, really fast, least downtime. But when the Ec2 instance is down it's directly proportional, also we could see a connection issue when Ec2 instance wasn't open.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Storing relational auditing data for our digital ecosystem which includes desktop website, mobile website and mobile apps to get meaningful insights so as to take next steps.
  • Upgrade
  • Scaling
  • Up to date with Oracle
  • Upgrade
  • Replication across regions
  • Scalability
For storing relational data in a single region across multiple AZ. we can use RDS for any relational data as a matter of fact and it behaves quite well in regards to keeping itself upgrade, salability and in fact availability.
Ejaz Hussain | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We utilize Amazon Relational Database Service to host MySQL RDBS to store the data related to custom apps for our dev environment. It's super easy & fast to set up the database instances in a few clicks from the AWS management console. A lot of times, the developers in our team aren't that expert when it comes to managing the database administration, & hence for this very reason, Amazon Relational Database Service is our preferred DB service as it simplifies time-consuming admin tasks.
  • Monitoring of metrics performance via AWS CloudWatch.
  • Read replicas to maintain data integrity & High availability.
  • Minimal need of maintaining the Database.
  • Serverless DB.
  • Somewhat costly.
  • Migrating from RDS to other DB service is complex.
  • Horizontal scaling can be improved.
It will suit & fit in almost all the user cases where there is a need for RDBMS. Given its seamless & minimal effort to set it up & run along with a wide variety of DB engines to choose from, it is a robust DB Service.
Vishwa Ratna | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We at Publicis Sapient has been delivering software solutions to many of our clients regularly. There is often the need to persistent data storage and we recommend to use Amazon RDS because it is easy to set up, the dev team don't have to dig deep in understanding about how to connect the Amazon RDS to the backend or how to invoke a request. The Amazon RDS has low learning curve which means the new dev team can work on it from day 1 without good deeper in terms of learning.
  • We used to store persistent data of clients
  • Sales and user data is stored and the manipulation is done at the backend side using CRUD operations.
  • The improvement in terms of blockchain native could be introduced
  • The Amazon RDS should have it's standalone client so that we don't need to download the specific software in our system when we want to use it from our desktop.
Amazon Relational Database Service is well suited when you want a rapid development as the learning curve is minimal for this and the new development team can start building from day 1.

The capabilities in terms of storing blockchain native data could be introduced, currently we can use it for fast paced data but the retrieval and flexibility of storage is not as good as other blockchain leger storages.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I utilize Amazon RDS as the backbone for content management and stored user information for our corporate web presence. I was looking for a scalable relational database that would be an easy transition with my background in MySQL. I didn't want to spend a lot of time setting up and managing replication and backup, and I didn't want daily maintenance tasks. RDS fit the bill nicely, and coupled with my EC2-based web hosting, provides a easy-to-implement security.
  • Simplicity
  • Security
  • Monitoring
  • Properly implementing security can be challenging for new users
  • Administrative tools are not always intuitive
Well suited for system administrators looking to incorporate a highly available RDBMS into their AWS-hosted web site. Not well suited for WYSIWYG web site developers.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
At our organization, we use it for our revenue management and some publisher application database services. It is also a component of our performance goals and SLA improvements, and is tied to our CI/CD processes and is a foundation for expansion because of its ease of use, low learning curve to implement, and backup services it can link to.
  • Database backups and restoration processing
  • Security group management for access management
  • Blue green deployment features
  • Did not seem to allow for segmented RDS backup instances, you had to backup the full instance
  • Console commands and controls could be improved
I honestly can't think of any use cases where it is not appropriate. The RDS service is well suited when tied to almost any 3rd party database engines. I say almost any because I have not used them all and tested! It is a very low cost to run solution, and even in scenarios where backups are considered. This is an important fact when coming to thinking about a full architecture plan. Great for situations in need of Scale, Failover, and Backup and Recovery.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it as our main Mysql database repository. It is used to run our hub system which is accessed by retailers and applicants
  • Great Backup process
  • Great performance reports
  • No root access to mange the instance
  • Patching requires down time
If a user needs to spin up a mysql server quickly this is a good option, however if you need to customize the instance it might be better to spin up an EC2 instance and run your own Mysql db.
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.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
A certain business school have several data bases that are permanently updated with data coming from various sources. The challenge is that these data have several formats and templates, making it compliex to manage in an efficient and economic way. The need for a tool such as Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) was imperative to improve management.
  • management of students data base
  • management of courses data base
  • management of lecturers
  • ways of access - a more direct way would be beneficial
  • management of the first screen
  • administrator function
it is a great tool when you are looking for a data base that provides security in terms of availability, cyber security and features. The possibility to manage various DB with significant size provides a confidence to both, the tool and the provider. The control of the accesses of the users is important and it is well managed.
Harshal Sanap | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
During one of our recent e-commerce projects, we encountered a significant database infrastructure challenge. The rapid growth in product listings and customer data led to frustratingly slow response times and concerns about data integrity. To address these issues, we made a strategic decision to migrate our database to Amazon RDS, which proved to be highly effective in bringing about remarkable improvements. Amazon RDS became the cornerstone of our database management strategy, offering enhanced reliability and high availability through automated backups and multi-AZ deployments. These RDS features ensured that our database remained up-to-date, secure, and consistently accessible for seamless operations. In particular, Amazon RDS played a pivotal role in significantly boosting website performance, elevating data reliability, and establishing a cost-efficient approach to database management. These contributions were instrumental in the overall success of our project, highlighting the transformative impact of Amazon RDS on our e-commerce venture.
  • Amazon RDS handles most of the database administration such as patching and backups, enabling users to focus on development rather than too bureaucratic processes. Such a level of automation reduces the operational complexity together with eliminating human errors while applying patches; ensuring that databases are always in good state for operations running across all engines.
  • In AWS Amazon RDS, automated Multi-AZ deployments automatically replicate the database across numerous Availability Zones (AZ). Applications are provided with very little downtime and no data loss due to primary instance failure. Applications for mission-critical applications can be offered if they have this availability and fault tolerance.
  • Both horizontal and vertical scaling options are available with Amazon RDS. Users can simply change the size of their database instances without much interruption in order to suit shifting workloads. The service also offers read replicas, providing horizontal scaling for workloads that involve a lot of reading. Due to its flexibility and scalability, databases may expand and change as needed without causing severe disruptions to corporate operations.
  • Although Amazon RDS offers a variety of pricing options, controlling expenses might be difficult. Users can discover that costs increase as their database storage and computing requirements increase. Monitoring resource usage is essential to prevent unforeseen costs.
  • It's possible that RDS won't always support a specific database engine's most recent version right away. Users who demand the most recent features and enhancements might have to wait until AWS adds support for future versions, which can be a restriction.
  • It might be challenging to move your database to a different platform once you start utilizing Amazon RDS. This is due to the fact that Amazon RDS makes use of exclusive data management software and formats.
With the rapid growth of product offerings and increasing customer demand, managing inventory efficiently has become a complex challenge for many businesses. Traditional self-hosted databases are often struggling to keep up with the scale and complexity of modern inventory management operations. Businesses face issues with data consistency, performance bottlenecks, and inventory tracking accuracy. where the AWS RDS comes into picture to minimise our problems such as scalability , High Availability , Data Integrity, and Security.
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 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is simple to setup and makes scaling database in cloud a very easy task during high load scenarios. It supports backup and recovery. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) offers identity management that ensures people with assigned roles can only access the data. Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) ensures availability of the workloads at all times and hence suited for production. It offers third party integrations also.
  • Auto Scalability
  • Security
  • Automatic backup
  • Downtime can be reduced whenever scaling operation is done
  • In my opinion, Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is costly
  • I think improvements to monitoring and logs is a must
I think Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is suited for running production loads since it is highly available and can be auto scaled. With few clicks a fully managed database is spun up and hence setup is very easy. It offers AWS management console, RDS api calls and the command line interface for interacting with the data.
Salam Mohammed | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon RDS is easier to configure for any application that has structured data. Use cases such as User profiling, referencing, Indexing for filters & dashboard reporting are easier to handle with Amazon RDS.
Scope of the RDS has broader spectrum but it includes adding/Editing/handling Use case history, audit log, and rational Data in flat tables.

  • User Profiling Case: Where you can map multiple types of profiles to one user or multiple users. Just by mapping data based on foreign keys
  • Preference: based on user selection and behavior, user preference can be locked in the tables and by default, same feature or details can be populated every time whenever user log in
  • Table indexing could be done from code level based on Tenancy modle
  • API data/Jason data could be stored as graphQL doing
-No need to install on Server
-Easy to scale up and define config
-Easy to connect just passing the config url
-Easy to see the logs compared to any RDS logs in the server.
Mohammad Aarif | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Amazon RDS helps set up, run, and grow relational databases in the cloud with the aid of Amazon RDS, a managed relational database service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS). There are several, but I'd want to focus on the most significant ones.
a)global Scope
b)cost-effectiveness
c)Security and many more
  • Global Reach can be possible because of this
  • Cost saving, not too much expensive.
  • Data backup and recovery
  • High availability
  • It can add more advanced security auditing.
  • Transfer from RDS to another database is complex, it can be improves.
  • Frequent UI changes make daily work a little more challenging until we become accustomed to the New UI. However, there is always a choice to return to the previous user interface.
  • Must support all types of famous databases.
#It is most suitable and proper for web applications where we use RDBMS(Relational database). #E-Commerce Platforms: Because RDS is scalable and can handle changing workloads during sales events or seasonal traffic spikes, e-commerce platforms, and online retailers can profit from it. #RDS can offer a safe and scalable alternative for mobile apps that frequently need a backend database for user data.

*Not well managed on the migration of databases.
*RDS does not support advanced features that are unique to some database engines.
David Williams | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) as a back-end database for our applications, both those we consume (as on-prem apps, not SaaS) and those we create for our customers (as a SaaS organisation ourselves). Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) allows us to manage our databases in a serverless way, with scalability and with Amazon recommendations and management, without the overhead of running a server.
  • Serverless database
  • Recommendations and tuning
  • Scalability
  • Scaling up takes a long time; it needs to be much faster
  • Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) has a limit on the number of databases you have, unlike Azure SQL Server
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is well-suited to running your relational databases in a serverless way, without having to manage a VM to run them. It makes licensing and scalability easier, and also comes with recommendations and automated version upgrades. However, by the same token, there are some limitations; e.g., you can't edit or manage all SQL Server parameter options; you have a limit on the number of databases you can have; and you don't get sysadmin access to the underlying SQL Server.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We have many uses for RDS in our organisation. My particular current use case is to hold a copy of an operational system's database for reporting purposes
  • ease of setup & management
  • easy to scale up/down
  • monitoring
  • ability to leave an RDS off for more than 7 days
RDS is an excellent cloud based managed database platform that has all the features you would expect from a major cloud provider. It is well accepted in the community for any use case where a relational database is required. It supports a wide variety of database engines to choose from.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
A group of managed services known as Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it simple to set up, run, and scale databases in the cloud. We required a dependable and scalable database service because we run some highly trafficked websites. Our issue is that we run at least two database engines concurrently. then we use Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
  • high availability
  • scale the relational database engines
  • Access to specific features, like as the local path in serve, is restricted in RDS.
It is ideal for a new application built with cutting-edge technologies and a microservices architecture that calls for a HA RDMS database. RDS is a fantastic fit and performs admirably for a general-purpose job.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
we used AWS Rational Database as we needed to migrate a PostreSql database from another cloud provider to AWS. We needed a database that was reliable and high performance but at the same time also cost effective and configurable to my company's high security standards. The Database also had to be connected to the Backend inside a VPC with no possibility of being exposed to the public.
  • Cheaper
  • Reliable
  • Customizable
  • Complex and non-intuitive configuration
  • Possibility of connection from the outside only through a Tunnel with EC2
  • Lacks ability to consult the DB form the console
With Amazon Rational Database, DBs are configurable in every aspect. You can configure it according to your needs moreover AWS also says best practices that would be best to implement, for example to set up Multi-AZ Database or create an autoscaling function.On the other hand, I find RDS less suitable for the less experienced. The configuration is complex and if you do not know beve where and what to configure.
Tung Vu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My team built a new app from scratch, & when we need to select a relational database, AWS RDS came naturally. The majority of the company's infrastructure are on AWS already. Needless to say, we setup a new RDS cluster from scratch, discover new requirements to our need, then upscale / upgrade the cluster multiple times already. Not having to get our hands dirty with all the configuration & operation specifics of MySQL is just pure bliss.
  • Fully managed relational database, complete with comprehensive IAM
  • Ability to choose between PostgreSQL & MySQL flavors
  • Resizing & upgrade are handled completely by AWS
  • The whole snapshot backup & restore feature could be more informative to let users know clearly that restoring a snapshot means creating a whole new cluster
  • As usual, AWS documentations need time to get used to
  • Pricing & scaling could be more transparent
If you need a relational database without the know-how or the proclivity to setup, configure, & operate it, then a managed database service is your best choice. Not just the DB itself, but using managed service also gives you the comprehensive IAM, auto scaling, managed upgrade, basically all the bells & whistles that you are paying for when using a managed cloud service.

Of course, using managed service is more expensive than doing everything yourself. Using RDS costs more than setting up PostgreSQL/MySQL on a cloud VM yourself, which in turn costs more than using your own on-premise VM. If you are not using cloud service for other things and/or just need a simple database without any HA/SLA then naturally you should not start using AWS just for RDS.
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