SQL Server and Amazon Aurora are leading contenders in database management solutions. Based on the data comparisons, Amazon Aurora seems to have the upper hand, thanks to its high availability, scalability, and cost-efficiency for cloud deployments.
Features:SQL Server offers dynamic resource allocation, graphical query analysis, and business intelligence support. User reviews commend its solid performance, flexibility, and user-friendly features such as AlwaysOn for availability. Amazon Aurora is distinguished for high availability, scalability, and serverless options. It is praised for speed and cost-efficiency in cloud deployment, making it ideal for dynamic workloads.
Room for Improvement:SQL Server could improve in reducing high licensing costs and simplifying installation and maintenance. Users have highlighted the challenges in integrating with non-Microsoft platforms and scalability on a global scale. Amazon Aurora users suggest enhancements in performance insights and support for complex workloads. Improvements in pricing and support for diverse database engines are also recommended.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service:SQL Server supports various deployment environments including on-premises and hybrid cloud. While Microsoft has extensive resources and community support, direct help can sometimes be inconsistent. Amazon Aurora, being cloud-native, integrates well with AWS services and is suited for public and private cloud setups. Its technical support is responsive, though some users seek more streamlined service offerings.
Pricing and ROI:SQL Server is considered cost-effective for small databases but can become expensive for enterprise editions. Users acknowledge its feature set justifies the cost but feel pricing could be more competitive. Amazon Aurora offers a more cost-efficient pay-as-you-go pricing model, aligning better with elastic cloud workloads and providing favorable overall cost structure compared to traditional on-premises databases.
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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