Aurora is a great managed sql service by AWS
Updated March 22, 2023

Aurora is a great managed sql service by AWS

James Hilton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon Aurora

Aurora is our SQL solution for users, events, articles, and more. Aurora provides convenient scaling and availability in different physical locations.. The security and scaling are automated to support peaks in traffic and save money when it's quiet. The integration with other AWS services makes it convenient for us to use in all applications. The SQL language support made the migration from a dedicated MySQL server seamless in our codebase.

Pros

  • Automatic scaling of read replicas
  • Quick vertical scaling of server size
  • Scaling metrics to determine the right time to scale for cost efficiency
  • Self updates

Cons

  • Better explanations of configuration settings
  • Easier error logging when failovers are required
  • More information on best practices for common scenarios like when database size gets too big or queries slow down
  • Auto scaling read replicas
  • Multi AZ with little effort required
  • Easily upgrade server size within minutes
  • Aurora allowed us to produce events that support 5000 users on our website within a matter of minutes.
  • Aurora saves us time by auto-scaling daily based on concurrent requests or CPU usage.
  • Aurora storage space expands automatically as our database size grows so we don't have to spend time monitoring it.
Aurora exists to provide the convenience of a MySQL style language with as many automated features as possible where AWS can manage them independently or provide a user interface or CLI to easily allow us as administrators and developers to configure the settings beyond the defaults to customize our performance, availability, and cost-efficiency.

Do you think Amazon Aurora delivers good value for the price?

Not sure

Are you happy with Amazon Aurora's feature set?

Yes

Did Amazon Aurora live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Amazon Aurora go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Amazon Aurora again?

Yes

It is best suited when you need an easily manageable auto-scaling relational database cluster in different secure locations on Amazon Web Services and not best suited when you're not using Amazon Web Services or you are seeking a cheaper option for testing only or for low traffic sites, or you require a NoSQL database instead.

Using Amazon Aurora

5 - Developers run the website which stores the data for most of the company.
5 - There's 5 developers who work with the database. They need to understand SQL and basic navigation of AWS
  • Storing data
  • Scaling for changes in traffic
  • Providing CLI access
  • Providing an easy way to upgrade to larger servers
  • The simplicity of scaling has made it easy to support gradual growth in traffic with just a few clicks to scale in a new size server and perform a failover swap.
  • The blue/green deployment was also very simple for upgrading the MySQL version.
  • It's definitely going to be our main SQL database for the future and we have no plans to shift from it.
  • I'd like to see cheaper serverless options so that I can prototype new apps without costing a fortune. Right now the serverless is pretty expensive.
It does the job so I'll keep using it.

Evaluating Amazon Aurora and Competitors

Yes - MYSQL on a standard server. We wanted something managed.
  • Product Usability
We just wanted something with more automation and third party management so we didn't have to do as much work.
I think Aurora is still good and I wouldn't change it. But if starting again I might take some non-relational parts of the data off and use DynamoDB for them instead. I'd have to investigate how querying it would work if there's no relational mapping though. Maybe MySQL is still best.

Amazon Aurora Implementation

Amazon Aurora Support

Using Amazon Aurora

It's got a lot of settings with limited explanations so I find it pretty complex and complicated without spending hours reading the documentation and trying to find up to date documentation.
ProsCons
Like to use
Technical support not required
Unnecessarily complex
Slow to learn
Cumbersome
Lots to learn
  • Scaling the databases
  • Creating the databases
  • Upgrading the server size or software version
  • Viewing real time queries
  • Viewing real time stats because they're delayed by what seems like a minute
  • Figuring out why the database crashes if it gets to cpu usage of 99%+

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