Aurora vs RDS: Which AWS Database Solution is Right for My Application?
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) and Amazon Aurora are two widely used database solutions by Amazon Web Services (AWS).
Knowing the difference can help you make a better decision in terms of performance, cost & scalability for your application.
Amazon RDS
Amazon RDS is a general purpose, moderate performant relational database service, which supports 8 database engines: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, OracleDB, SQL Server, Amazon Aurora (MySQL & PostgreSQL Compatible) & IBM Db2. It’s simple to setup, operate & scale.
When your application requires a moderate performance and and has tight budget, you can go with RDS. (+ Bonus point 1 mentioned below)
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora is high performant & scalable relational database service. Offers 5X throughput of standard SQL & 3X of PostgreSQL. It offers high speed, reliability & scalability.
It offers auto scaling of databse storage upto 128 TB without downtime, also some advanced features like Aurora Global Database which allows cross-region replication with very low latency.
It provides high durability & availability, as Aurora automatically divides the DB volume into 10GB segments spread across many disks.
It’s more expensive than RDS.
When your application requires high performance compared to cost, you can go with Aurora. (+ Bonus point 2 mentioned below).
Bonus point 1: Migrating from RDS to Aurora
You can always start with RDS at low cost and moderate performance, and if application demands high performance, scalability and availability of Aurora then you can easily migrate, if you use MySQL or PostgreSQL engines.
You can perform Snapshot Migration or Read Replica Migration for that.
Snapshot Migration: Create a snapshot of existing RDS MySQL/PostgreSQL DB and then use that as Aurora cluster.
Read Replica Migration: AWS allows to make an Aurora read replica of RDS MySQL DB, this minimizes the downtime. Once the replica if synchronized with primary RDS DB, you can promote the Aurora replica to be the primary DB. This makes transition smoother with minimal downtime.
Bonus point 2: Migrating from Aurora to RDS
It’s less common than reverse, however for cost optimization or due to mandates in policy if you want to do that, then you have provision to do so.
Summary
We looked into both RDS and Aurora have their own advantages considering cost, performance, throughput, availability and scalability, we can choose what fits best for our application.
Looking for an AWS expert to well architect your cloud infrastructure? or develop a software for your company? Contact us on: connect@lushbinary.com or visit our website lushbinary.com
Find more related RDS vs Aurora details in below links:
