Amazon RDS vs Azure SQL Database
If you're moving your workload to the cloud, you might be wondering which database service to choose: Amazon RDS or Azure SQL Database. Both services are fully managed, scalable, reliable, and offer high availability. Indeed, they look very similar at first glance, but there are differences.
Pricing
Price is a significant factor when it comes to choosing cloud services. In this regard, both Amazon RDS and Azure SQL Database offer a pay-as-you-go pricing model. However, the prices vary depending on the database engine, instance type, and reserved capacity.
For example, for a db.t3.small instance with SQL Server Web edition, Amazon RDS charges $0.017 per hour, while Azure SQL Database charges $0.016 per hour for a similar offering.
Moreover, Amazon RDS charges extra for backup storage based on the provisioned database storage, while Azure SQL Database includes backup storage at no additional cost.
At the end of the day, both Amazon RDS and Azure SQL Database offer competitive pricing plans. The decision depends on the specific needs of your workload.
Performance
When it comes to performance, both services offer highly performant databases. Amazon RDS uses Amazon Aurora, MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, or SQL Server as the database engine, while Azure SQL Database uses SQL Server.
According to industry benchmarks, Amazon Aurora beats Azure SQL Database in terms of performance. However, the results vary depending on the workload types and configurations.
Availability
Both Amazon RDS and Azure SQL Database offer high availability with multiple availability zones. Amazon RDS calls it Multi-AZ, and Azure SQL Database calls it Zone Redundant.
Multi-AZ and Zone Redundant configurations automatically replicate data to a secondary instance in another availability zone for disaster recovery purposes. In case the primary instance becomes unavailable, the secondary instance takes over automatically without any downtime.
Security
Both Amazon RDS and Azure SQL Database offer robust security features to meet the compliance requirements. You can enable secure connections using SSL/TLS, and segment your database from the public internet using a virtual private cloud (VPC) or a virtual network (VNet).
Additionally, both services offer encryption at rest and in transit. Amazon RDS uses AWS Key Management Service (KMS) to manage encryption keys, while Azure SQL Database uses Azure Key Vault.