Item: Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

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.

Pros and Cons

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.

Return on Investment

Less overhead to manage.
Cutting costs in order not to hire someone taking care of database setup, updates, backups, and managing.
High performance and availability that leads to high available application.

Alternatives Considered

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)

We used to deploy database engines like MySQL or PostgreSQL on EC2 for instance. We have to take care of everything including updates, security patches, backups, and scaling. RDS provides first classes to choose from based on your load and performance. It provides also a maintenance window to make sure that patches are done not at peak times when many users are operating. The automation of this really helps so a DevOps can be sleeping and the update will be running smoothly. Scaling is like a click and each class has its own characteristics.

Key Insights

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?

I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process

Did implementation of Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) again?

Yes

Other Software Used

AWS VPN, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon CloudWatch

Likelihood to Recommend

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.

Users and Roles

4 - Developers and System Administrators

RDS helped me a lot!

Overall Satisfaction with Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS)