Amazon RDS

4.7 (211)
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Relational database service software

About Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS is a relational database service software designed to help users set up, operate and scale databases such as Amazon Aurora, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL in the cloud. With Amazon RDS, users can manage routine database tasks like patching, provisioning, backups, failure detection, recovery, and repair.

Amazon RDS enables users to launch database instances and connect applications quickly and easily. The platform supports automatic software patching, and offers best practice guidance through configuration analysis and usage metrics. Amazon RDS provides recommendations for areas like database engine versions, storage, networking, instance types, and storage. Users can search and perform recommended actions instantly, or schedule them for later.

Amazon RDS facilitates general purpose (SSD) and provisioned IOPS (SSD) storage, as well as push-button compute scaling, storage scaling, and read replicas. Other Amazon RDS features include automated backups, database snapshots, multi-AZ deployments, and automatic host replacement. The platform ensures database security with at rest and in transit encryption, network isolation, and resource-level permissions. Amazon RDS also supports event notifications, monitoring and metrics, and configuration governance.


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Amazon RDS Software - Amazon RDS database snapshot
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Amazon RDS

4.7 (211)
VS.
Most reviewed

Starting Price

US$0.01
month
US$1.00
month

Pricing Options

Free version
Free trial
Free version
Free trial

Features

19
72

Integrations

2
5

Ease of Use

4.4 (211)
4.1 (1,873)

Value for Money

4.3 (211)
4.2 (1,873)

Customer Service

4.4 (211)
4.2 (1,873)
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MariaDB

4.7
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Reviews

Overall rating

4.7 /5
(211)
Value for Money
4.3/5
Features
4.6/5
Ease of Use
4.4/5
Customer Support
4.4/5

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Showing 5 reviews of 211
Ana
Ana
Overall rating
  • Industry: Banking
  • Company size: 10,000+ Employees
  • Used Daily for 1+ year
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

High availability even for database beginners

Reviewed on 18/07/2022

I am using it as a MySQL server. With a managed database server, almost everything can be configured...

I am using it as a MySQL server. With a managed database server, almost everything can be configured by just operating the configuration screen, so it is recommended that even members with little knowledge of MySQL can create a high availability database infrastructure, such as creating a Master-Slave configuration. It was possible to significantly reduce the man-hours required to install and configure the DB supports in EC2 and the upgrade procedure for maintenance, and dedicate the man-hours to other design and construction work. Including a BD license, it has freed us from license management. In addition, by not needing a physical space, we are freed from the whole flow of purchasing it.

Pros

It is a pay-per-use system where you are only charged for the number of transactions that occur. Still, there is also a subscription system called Reserved Instances (RI), so instances that generate transactions frequently use this system to reduce costs significantly. There are three types to choose from: one-year prepayment, one-year prepayment, monthly payment, and no prepayment, depending on the kind of discount. Pay-per-use is basically cheaper for cases where transactions do not occur frequently, depending on the situation, so you can optimize the charge by using different payment methods depending on the application.

Cons

I would like you to provide a concrete fault test solution. If you do not have a high level of knowledge about RDS, you cannot be relieved that you cannot perform useful failure tests assuming a failure occurs.

Alternatives Considered

Quickbase

Reasons for Choosing Amazon RDS

I migrated to RDS from a database server with MySQL installed on a LINUX server. When creating a master-slave configuration, it was necessary to configure MySQL for two servers, but with the switch to RDS, only a few clicks are needed. In addition, the Availability Zone automatically becomes redundant, which makes it easier to manage.

Switched From

PostgreSQL

Reasons for Switching to Amazon RDS

It is necessary to stop updating the specifications, but it is easy and simple to update.
David
David
Overall rating
  • Industry: Computer Software
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

High quality, bulletproof managed database service

Reviewed on 20/04/2022

We use Amazon RDS to manage our key production/transactional databases for our customer-facing...

We use Amazon RDS to manage our key production/transactional databases for our customer-facing applications as well as our development environment, internal ERP, etc.

We definitely gain value and efficiency from not having to deal with the management of yet another server - and its operating system, patches, uptime, etc. - it is a real boon to simply have a database-as-a-service that we spin up, connect to, and work with, letting AWS deal with all the management.

Pros

AWS RDS allows us to deploy databases easily and efficiently with great resilience, scalability, and security - but without having to deal with managing a server. RDS makes it easy to spin up a new database, have multi-availability zone replicas, back it up, and do many other things. It's also dead easy to upgrade software versions - simply let AWS look after it.

Cons

Being a managed database service there are restrictions; for instance, with SQL Server you don't have the sysadmin role and you can't set any trace flag you want. You can adjust a number of parameters in the RDS console but only those which AWS have explicitly added support for. There are other caveats and restrictions for other DBMS products too.

Another thing I don't like is when you change your instance size it takes a long time - but at least there's no downtime. Also, tooling is restricted.

A lot of great tools to dig into performance and query tracing won't work with the AWS caveats so you have to use the AWS RDS console and logs and it can be more tedious to really drill into application performance bottlenecks.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Azure

Reasons for Choosing Amazon RDS

We wanted to move from on-premises to the cloud.

Switched From

Microsoft SQL Server

Reasons for Switching to Amazon RDS

Ultimately, despite being a Microsoft environment historically, our developers felt AWS provided superior tooling and functionality.
Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Government Administration
  • Company size: 5,001–10,000 Employees
  • Used Monthly for 1-5 months
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 8.0 /10

Amazon RDS how is useful

Reviewed on 11/02/2023

Its can be scaled a push of button. So i prefer this.

Its can be scaled a push of button. So i prefer this.

Pros

Its saves time of their employees, productivity increased and cost of data management is reduced

Cons

Their cost is high, because they make monopoly and less competitive.

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Publishing
  • Company size: 51–200 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Value for Money
  • Ease of Use
  • Customer Support
  • Likelihood to recommend 10.0 /10

Amazon RDS - the backbone of your AWS stack

Reviewed on 06/05/2022

Waaaay back in the day, we owned and managed huge machines on which we ran our database software. ...

Waaaay back in the day, we owned and managed huge machines on which we ran our database software. It was Oracle for a while, then we moved to mySQL. But the machine and the software were our problem to handle. Most of the time (because these are not new technologies), there were no problems. But when there were problems, there were huge problems. Because like many websites/apps, data is at the core of what we do. No database, and everything goes poof. Since switching to RDS, this has become a thing of the past. We tell RDS what kind of beefy setup we want, and they do the rest. The mySQL patching. The upgrades. If we want to move to a bigger instance, that's pretty straightforward, too. Database hosting at pretty large scale, with just a few clicks. And no machines to worry about. You get decent (but not amazing) visibility into the instance at any time. But, basically, what you really get is peace of mind, not having to worry that your system's most critical layer will flake out on you. That's worth a lot. Also: AWS's Aurora is a very nice port of mySQL. We've had no issues there either.

Pros

Aurora is a great port of mySQL - very compatible and super fast
Prices are always going one direction: down
Scalable way huge with just a few clicks
Automated backups, patching, upgrades
You can still do a lot of customization using PL/MYSQL
The instances just stay up and running - becomes one less thing to worry about
You have options: both mySQL and Postgres

Cons

It's not amazingly easy to update the various variables that enable you to configure your mySQL instance.
I wish it was a bit easier to get monitoring that would give you more granular insight into what's causing issues.
You don't have quite as much flexibility and control over special packages you might install to do special stuff (calculating the Levenschtein distance between words, for example).

Verified Reviewer
Overall rating
  • Industry: Logistics & Supply Chain
  • Company size: 201–500 Employees
  • Used Daily for 2+ years
  • Review Source

Overall rating

  • Ease of Use
  • Likelihood to recommend 9.0 /10

Simplifies a lot of database management work

Reviewed on 14/04/2022

Overall, Amazon RDS has been very useful to us. It has saved us tremendous amounts of time just in...

Overall, Amazon RDS has been very useful to us. It has saved us tremendous amounts of time just in the provisioning, scaling, and maintenance activities alone.

Pros

I like how easy it is to scale RDS up and down alongside its monitoring features which can be conveniently accessed via AWS console.

Cons

The burst balance limit for the underlying EBS disk gave us lots of problems. I wish this feature was more user-friendly.

Alternatives Considered

Microsoft Azure

Reasons for Choosing Amazon RDS

In my previous companies, we used to self-host databases (postgres, MySQL/MariaDB) in VMs. This was more expensive in the long run in terms of time spent. We also used Google Cloud SQL for some projects but eventually switched to RDS since our main tech infra runs on AWS.

Reasons for Switching to Amazon RDS

Our main tech infra runs on AWS already.
Showing 5 reviews of 211 Read all reviews

Amazon RDS FAQs

Below are some frequently asked questions for Amazon RDS.

Amazon RDS offers the following pricing plans:

  • Starting from: US$0.01/month
  • Pricing model: Free Version, Subscription
  • Free Trial: Available

Amazon RDS is free to try, and users only pay for what they use.

Amazon RDS has the following typical customers:

Self Employed, 2–10, 11–50, 51–200, 201–500, 501–1,000, 1,001–5,000

Amazon RDS supports the following languages:

English

Amazon RDS supports the following devices:

Amazon RDS integrates with the following applications:

Amazon Aurora, Amazon EC2

Amazon RDS offers the following support options:

Email/Help Desk, Chat

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