Your DBA will be glad that you're using RDS
Overall Satisfaction with Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Amazon RDS is our default solution for running databases in the cloud. RDS provides the data layer for our web applications that require data persistence. RDS is widely used by application development teams throughout the company. RDS allows us to rapidly deploy databases, operate them in a manner that is generally hands off, and with extended features like Amazon Aurora, take advantage of capabilities like automatic backups, multi-AZ read replicas, and simple failovers.
Pros
- For engineers with experience managing databases, setup is simple. And for the uninitiated, the RDS console interface becomes intuitive with some practice.
- Not having the maintain the underlying infrastructure is a great benefit of using RDS. Patching and backups can be scheduled from the console and from then on are pretty much automated.
- Right-sizing the DB instance to perform optimally with an application can be a very simple procedure. If a DB instance is not struggling to keep up, the instance size can be scaled up with just a few clicks.
- Baseline configurations are generally sane for most RDS instances. This allows novice developers and engineers to get the most out of the service without being a complete database administrator.
Cons
- Experienced DBAs may find RDS limiting in some areas. There is no direct access to the underlying servers so OS level tweaks may be out of bounds.
- Getting logs from a database can be a challenge. Other services may need to be turned on (CloudWatch, for example) to get access logging, etc.
- While rudimentary logging is included with RDS, users must pay a premium to get more in depth logs (in particular, fine grained logging in terms of events per minute). This is not a bad thing, since you get what you pay for, but some users find it annoying to have to pay extra for metrics with higher fidelity.
- RDS has increased the stability of our applications and the dependability of the database layer in the complete system. In most cases when something is wrong with the app, we know it won't be the database.
- Using the automatic backup and failover capabilities of Aurora RDS, we have more effective high availability and disaster recovery options.
- Amazon Aurora and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
In this response, I'm specifically comparing RDS to running a database on an EC2 server. With EC2, the team owns all of the administrative and operational responsibilities. Patching the operating system patching and database software become another task that developers or system admins have to take on. Running a DB on EC2 does have the benefit of having more access to the server and DB configurations, but the benefit of being able to tweak a DB for a few more milliseconds of performance is usually not worth the effort for most applications.
On the other hand, RDS is a completely managed service. What is lost in access to the database server is gained in dependability and simplified operation.
On the other hand, RDS is a completely managed service. What is lost in access to the database server is gained in dependability and simplified operation.
Do you think Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)'s feature set?
Yes
Did Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) again?
Yes
Amazon RDS Feature Ratings
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