Amazon Aurora vs Google Cloud Spanner: A Battle for Big Data
When it comes to Big Data management, choosing the right database management system can make or break your project. Two of the most popular options on the market are Amazon Aurora and Google Cloud Spanner. But which one is really the best?
What are Amazon Aurora and Google Cloud Spanner?
Before we dive into the comparison, let's take a quick look at what Aurora and Spanner are:
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Amazon Aurora: Aurora is a relational database service created by Amazon Web Services (AWS). It is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL and is designed to provide high performance, availability, and durability. It uses a cluster volume storage architecture, which allows for faster read and write times.
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Google Cloud Spanner: Spanner is a globally distributed relational database service created by Google Cloud. It is designed to provide strong consistency, horizontal scalability, and high availability. It also offers transaction support across regions and continents.
Now that we know the basics let's start comparing.
Performance
When it comes to performance, Aurora and Spanner have their own strengths and weaknesses.
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Amazon Aurora: Aurora provides fast write and read I/O operations, thanks to its use of SSD technology. It can also automatically scale up or down your database based on traffic.
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Google Cloud Spanner: Spanner’s strength is its horizontal scalability, being able to support a vast amount of data and create regional replicas. It also has better latency than Aurora, especially for read-heavy applications.
Results
According to a recent benchmarking test by Jepsen, Google Cloud Spanner proved to have better throughput and lower latency for write-heavy and concurrent workloads. However, Aurora showed better performance for read-heavy workloads.
Pricing
Both Aurora and Spanner offer different pricing models based on usage and capacity.
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Amazon Aurora: With Aurora, you pay for capacity per instance hour, and you also have the option to pay upfront for reserved capacity. Aurora also offers a free tier with limited features.
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Google Cloud Spanner: With Spanner, you pay for storage and network egress. There’s no upfront payment or particular allocated capacity. It offers a limited free tier of database use.
Results
It is difficult to compare pricing between Aurora and Spanner as it is largely dependent on usage patterns and customer requirements. In general, Aurora is more cost-effective for smaller database workloads, while Spanner offers a more flexible pricing model for larger workloads.
Security
Data protection is always critical and both Aurora and Spanner offer robust security features.
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Amazon Aurora: Aurora provides various security protocols such as encryption, network isolation, and security groups. It also has the option to use AWS Key Management Service (KMS) for data encryption.
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Google Cloud Spanner: Spanner is built with several security measures, such as encryption of data at rest and in transit, firewalls, and access controls. Google Cloud offers Identity and Access Management (IAM) for user and application authentication.
Results
Both Aurora and Spanner provide top of the line security features that can protect data against breaches and other security incidents.
Conclusion
So, which one should you choose for your Big Data project? It depends on your specific use case and requirements.
If you need a relational database service that has high availability, durability, and scalability, and you are willing to pay a little extra or have larger-scale workloads, Spanner might be your best bet. But, If you have a smaller budget and only require regional scaling, Aurora could be the right choice for you.
At the end of the day, both services provide great performance, security and reliability, so the choice is ultimately down to your specific needs.