Amazon RDS vs vCloud Air comparison

Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Virtustream are both solutions in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is ranked #2 with an average rating of 8.3, while Virtustream is ranked #16. Amazon Web Services (AWS) holds a 25.0% mindshare in DS, compared to Virtustream’s 0.4% mindshare. Additionally, 98% of Amazon Web Services (AWS) users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 100% of Virtustream users who would recommend it.

Amazon RDS

Read 54 Amazon RDS reviews

5,264 Views
4,374 Comparison Views

98% willing to recommend

vCloud Air

Read 3 vCloud Air reviews

89 Views
64 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Amazon RDS

vCloud Air

Comparison Buyer's Guide

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Aug 12, 2024

Amazon RDS and vCloud Air are popular cloud solutions each offering unique benefits in the cloud computing market. Based on user reviews, Amazon RDS is preferred for its pricing and customer support, while vCloud Air is noted for its feature set.

Features: Amazon RDS users value its automatic backups, scalability, and customer support. vCloud Air users appreciate its integration capabilities, flexibility, and robust features for complex environments.

Room for Improvement: Users of Amazon RDS suggest enhancements in performance metrics, query processing speed, and monitoring tools. vCloud Air users point out the steep learning curve, limited documentation, and the need for better customer service resources.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Amazon RDS is recognized for its straightforward deployment and effective customer service. vCloud Air offers a flexible deployment model but has mixed reviews regarding its customer service, with some users finding it less responsive.

Pricing and ROI: Amazon RDS users report satisfaction with the setup cost and overall ROI, making it a cost-effective solution. vCloud Air is seen as premium-priced but justifiable due to the high ROI in complex operational environments.

To learn more, read our detailed Database as a Service (DBaaS) Report (Updated: March 2025).

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2025

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Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:

Categories and Ranking

Amazon RDS

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

2nd

Average Rating

8.2

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

vCloud Air

Ranking in Database as a Service (DBaaS)

16th

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

7.7

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

Infrastructure as a Service Clouds (IaaS) (23rd)

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Database as a Service (DBaaS) category, the mindshare of Amazon RDS is 25.0%, down from 27.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCloud Air is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Featured Reviews

Samuel Ebite

AICE Graduate at alx_africa

Ensure high availability with robust encryption and seamless backups

Amazon RDS provides data encryption using services like KMS, crucial for securing high-sensitive data and meeting compliance requirements such as HIPAA or PCI DSS. The best practices we've employed with RDS help design a well-architected framework, encompassing security, encryption, scalability with multi-availability zone deployment, and operational excellence with automated backups. RDS features, such as reserved instances, storage auto-scaling, monitoring with technologies like CloudWatch, and proxies, contribute to cost optimization. The solution enhances security with IAM authentication and offers high availability to end users.

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Saurabh Chandratre

Director Solutions Architect - EMEA & APAC at Blue Medora

With the VPC, you can run your workloads in an active state, use it for development work and for hosting SQL/Exchange Servers in IaaS; RaaS/DaaS for DR activities.

All three components of the vCloud Air are equally valuable and important, i.e., IaaS, DaaS and RaaS. I like the Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) offering compared to the Dedicated Cloud. It gives me the flexibility to utilize the pay-as-you-go option. You can run your workloads in an active state at reasonable prices. I have seen lots of companies use it for their development work, as well as for hosting SQL and Exchange Servers, i.e., in the active-passive mode instead of Replication (RaaS). Disaster Recovery is also a great feature that is affordable and easy to use. Disaster Recovery is a great component of the vCloud Air, where you can protect the on-premises cloud infrastructure, by providing self-service recovery options using the vSphere Replication. Some of the features that really stand out and I have used in my projects are: * Direct Connect: It provides high speed and private line connectivity. * Offline Data Transfer: For encrypted bulk data transport.

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

Financial Services Firm

14%

Computer Software Company

14%

University

Manufacturing Company

No data available

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon RDS?

The product's installation phase is easy.

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What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon RDS?

The pricing for Amazon RDS is reasonable.

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What needs improvement with Amazon RDS?

One key improvement would be adding support for multi-storage paradigms, including columnar support, as seen in TiDB. The serverless support with Aurora could also be enhanced. Additionally, having...

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Comparisons

MongoDB Atlas vs Amazon RDS

Compared 28% of the time

Google Cloud SQL vs Amazon RDS

Compared 23% of the time

Oracle Database as a Service vs Amazon RDS

Compared 17% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs Amazon RDS

Compared 16% of the time

Google Cloud Spanner vs Amazon RDS

Compared 5% of the time

More Amazon RDS Competitors

Microsoft Azure vs vCloud Air

Compared 64% of the time

Microsoft Azure SQL Database vs vCloud Air

Compared 36% of the time

More vCloud Air Competitors

Product Reports

Buyer's Guide

Amazon RDS

March 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2025

Download vCloud Air product report

Also Known As

RDS

No data available

Overview

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient, resizeable capacity for an industry-standard relational database and manages common database administration tasks.

Amazon Web Services (AWS)

vCloud Air is a public cloud platform built on the trusted foundation of vSphere, compatible with your on-premises data center, that includes infrastructure, disaster recovery, and various applications as service offerings. vCloud Air allows you to extend your workloads into the cloud with ease. You can migrate existing onsite virtual machines (VMs) to the public cloud or start up new application VMs directly in the cloud.

Virtustream

Sample Customers

Edmodo

Lumeta, LifeSite, Clear Tec Solutions, National Physician Services, Queens University of Charlotte, California Natural Resources Agency, Pacific Disaster Center, Seventy Seven Energy Inc., Columbia Sportswear , CSS Corp

Buyer's Guide

Database as a Service (DBaaS)

March 2025

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