Item: Amazon Aurora
Rating: 9
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Primarily use it in our core payments platform given that we need strong ACID properties but we’re looking to transition to dynamodb soon given that dynamodb also has transaction semantics
It is our de facto database for starting any new microservice

Pros and Cons

Cost effective relational database
High availability in multiple regions
Fully managed

I/O costs are incurred
Not fully MySQL compatible especially if you’re using something very specific to mysql
Might hit the upper limit on max number of connections

Return on Investment

Fully managed letting engineering teams self manage also lessening the burden on platform/devops
Automated backups and ability to restore snasphots of data
Cost effective

Reliability and Availability

Honestly I haven’t quite used other managed solutions so can’t compare apples to apples but since our org is heavy into aws, we’re all invested into it.

Alternatives Considered

Fully managed
cost effective
backups

Key Insights

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

Yes

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

Other Software Used

Amazon DynamoDB, Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS), Amazon Simple Queue Service (SQS)

Likelihood to Recommend

Great for when you need ACID/strong transaction semantics, dealing with financial data or anything structured
As you keep scaling beyond sharding/partitioning particularly for unstructured data it makes sense to start exploring NoSql/DynamoDb for your needs as somethings like scaling are achieved automatically with dynamodb. It’s sort of like have a dial where you can scale up or down based on the needs of your system.

Cost effective

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon Aurora