Amazon Aurora and SQL Server compete in the database management system category. Amazon Aurora appears to have the upper hand due to its seamless AWS integration, scalability, and modern features, while SQL Server is notable for its robust resource allocation and familiar Microsoft environment.
Features: Amazon Aurora offers compatibility with MySQL and PostgreSQL, automatic backups, and flexible scalability. It features advanced performance optimization and seamless AWS integration. SQL Server provides dynamic resource allocation, extensive tooling, and a familiar ecosystem for Microsoft users, enhancing ease of installation and comprehensive support.
Room for Improvement: SQL Server needs better cross-platform compatibility and a more affordable licensing model, addressing high costs that impact small businesses. Improvements in user interface design and cloud integration are also recommended. Amazon Aurora could improve pricing transparency and performance insights. Enhanced developer tools, tuning options for various database sizes, and more frequent updates are suggested to keep pace with PostgreSQL developments.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: SQL Server offers versatile deployment options including on-premises, private, hybrid, and public clouds, catering to various organizational needs. It supports a strong customer service community, though response times vary. Amazon Aurora, cloud-focused, facilitates private and public cloud deployments, integrates well with AWS services, and promotes ease of use and scalability. However, its support is mainly within the AWS ecosystem, which may limit broader enterprise environments not fully invested in AWS.
Pricing and ROI: SQL Server is recognized for its performance but is hampered by high licensing costs, affecting affordability for smaller businesses despite yielding significant ROI through productivity enhancements. Amazon Aurora offers a cost-effective, pay-as-you-go pricing model ideal for scalable, cloud-based architectures, ensuring predictable billing and strong ROI. However, performance-driven expenses may rise, impacting overall cost efficiency.
Using Amazon Aurora has saved us significantly in terms of manpower costs, with nearly fifty percent savings compared to an on-premises solution.
All applications need our repository to provide services for our online business or our customers, so the return is good.
Technical support from Amazon is rated very highly.
The initial support could improve by having engineers familiarize themselves with the issue content to provide more specialized assistance from the start.
This scalability is critical as it allows for runtime expansion, which is essential for businesses moving from on-premises to the cloud.
It offers a stable environment, ensuring consistent performance.
There are technical challenges, such as the inability to provision the database using a PostgreSQL snapshot directly.
Keeping extensions up-to-date with PostgreSQL releases would enhance Aurora's functionality.
I used the backup options in Amazon Aurora for cloning databases. It's very common.
I would appreciate using Microsoft Pro as it can integrate with Excel or, with a simple query, consume information from the database using Microsoft Excel.
The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper.
The pricing is reasonable and not overly expensive.
Amazon Aurora is not very expensive as other solutions with similar features from other vendors come at almost the same cost.
It replicates data across multiple Availability Zones, ensuring high availability and geographical redundancy, which can be considered a GR instead of a DR.
Amazon Aurora offers a 99.9% SLA compared to PostgreSQL. This ensures a high level of availability for our applications.
I have been working with SQL Server for a long time, and it works well for me as I am using it in different applications, such as web applications, Windows applications, or the data warehouse reporting.
Amazon Aurora is a MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, that combines the performance and availability of traditional enterprise databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.
Amazon Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases. It provides the security, availability, and reliability of commercial databases at 1/10th the cost. Amazon Aurora is fully managed by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), which automates time-consuming administration tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.
Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 64TB per database instance. It delivers high performance and availability with up to 15 low-latency read replicas, point-in-time recovery, continuous backup to Amazon S3, and replication across three Availability Zones (AZs).
Visit the Amazon RDS Management Console to create your first Aurora database instance and start migrating your MySQL and PostgreSQL databases.
SQL Server is a relational database management system (RDBMS) by Microsoft. The product's main purposes are to store data and retrieve it as requested by other software applications - on the same computer or on another computer across a shared network. The solution is built on top of Structured Query Language (SQL), which is a standardized programming language used for relational database management.
The product is tied to Transact-SQL (T-SQL), which is an implementation of SQL from Microsoft that adds several proprietary programming extensions to the standard language. SQL Server is built similarly to other RDBMS products, as its structure is a row-based table that connects related data elements in different tables to one another. One of its most important components is the SQL Server Database Engine, as it controls data processing, storage, and security. Beneath the Database Engine is the SQL Server Operating System, which is used for memory and I/O management, locking data to avoid unneeded upgrades, and job scheduling.
The solution has four editions with different sets of services and tools. They include:
The first two are available for free and are typically utilized by smaller companies, as they work with fewer functions and storage. The second two editions are generally used by bigger organizations and enterprises and offer more features.
The solution has several functions through which users can facilitate different data-related processes. These include:
SQL Server Services
SQL Server has a wide range of add-on services that provide additional benefits beyond database management. These services include:
SQL Server Benefits
The solution has many benefits for users. These include the following:
Reviews from Real Users
A president at a consultancy evaluates SQL Server as a veteran solution with critical log shipping feature.
Harkamal S., a user at a manufacturing company, rates SQL Server with a high mark because it is a stable, scalable, and easy-to-deploy solution that pretty much covers everything.
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