Amazon Aurora vs. Amazon RDS

Difference between Amazon Aurora and Amazon RDS

Amazon Aurora: A fully managed relational database service designed for high performance and scalability. It is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL but offers better performance, availability, and fault tolerance.
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service): A managed database service that supports multiple database engines (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora) with automated maintenance, backups, and scaling.

1. Performance

Aurora: Offers up to **5x MySQL performance and 3x PostgreSQL **performance due to optimized architecture.

RDS: Provides native performance of the chosen engine (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.) without enhancements.

2. Storage & Scaling

Aurora:Auto-scales storage from 10GB up to 128TB per database instance.
Supports 15 read replicas with sub-10ms replication lag.

RDS:Manual storage scaling up to 64TB (varies by engine).
Supports 5 read replicas with higher replication lag.

3. High Availability & Failover

Aurora:Replicates data across 6 copies in 3 Availability Zones (AZs).
Automated failover in ~30 seconds.

RDS:Uses Single-AZ or Multi-AZ deployment (2 copies in 2 AZs).
Failover time is 60-120 seconds.

4. Replication

Aurora:15 read replicas with fast replication.
Supports cross-region replication.

RDS:5 read replicas with slower replication.
Cross-region replication only for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

5. Pricing & Cost Efficiency

Aurora:More expensive than RDS due to enhanced features.
Pay-as-you-go model with storage auto-scaling.

RDS:Cheaper for small-to-medium workloads.Fixed storage allocation, requiring manual scaling.

6. Backup & Restore

Aurora: Continuous, incremental backups to S3, with point-in-time recovery.

RDS: Daily snapshots and transaction logs for point-in-time recovery.

7. Use Case Suitability

Aurora: Best for high-performance, high-availability applications that require scalability and fast replication.

RDS: Suitable for standard workloads that don’t require Aurora’s high throughput or storage flexibility.