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Amazon Aurora vs Azure SQL Managed Instance comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Amazon Aurora
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
5th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.1
Number of Reviews
21
Ranking in other categories
Database Management Systems (DBMS) (6th)
Azure SQL Managed Instance
Ranking in Relational Databases Tools
30th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
4.1
Number of Reviews
2
Ranking in other categories
Database as a Service (DBaaS) (19th)
 

Featured Reviews

SivashankarRajaram - PeerSpot reviewer
Principal Engineer at a tech vendor with 10,001+ employees
Cloud database has delivered high performance and cost savings for data recovery and growth
Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora. A cost reduction would support multiple teams to adopt this solution since the cost is currently higher. Comparatively, we have the feature of scaling and everything we need. If you launch PostgreSQL on-premises, you need to have a separate DBA for maintenance and everything. If Amazon reduces the cost of Amazon Aurora, it would support large team adoption. A great feature to see in the next version of Amazon Aurora would be improvements in vectorization. In our PostgreSQL, we have pg_vector that helps with vectorizing many of the tables and that is used for data science projects. If Amazon improves this vectorization, it would be much more useful for data science and AI projects.
FataiAkinwande - PeerSpot reviewer
Chief IT Consultant at d3astech
Managed database service has simplified hybrid integration and strengthened automated backups
The only red flag I could point out is you don't have 100% control of your data. You don't have 100% control of that particular server because it is Microsoft that has access to it. For instance, if you are working with a government organization that doesn't want their data to be resided outside the country, it will not work. You cannot use it because there's no way the data is going to be resided somewhere outside a particular country. Let's say for instance, I'm having an engagement with a Lagos state government with a particular product that need to be deployed and then I can never propose such kind of environment for them because Lagos state will never allow their data to be resided elsewhere except within their data center. In that case, you can't use it. Technology evolves every day and then as technology moves, I move as well. Currently, with what I'm seeing on Azure SQL Managed Instance, it's somewhat perfect, but they still need to do more. But if I'm going to probably figure out what could be the added features within the environment, maybe probably the SA admin should be released to the users within the SQL infrastructure team, SQL team, that is the database team members. Because currently, nobody has access to the SQL admin. The SA admin is one of the greatest accounts. Although Microsoft put a provision for that, your Active Directory account can perform the same function that SA admin can do, because you're not running the SQL within your own VM or physical server. Microsoft controls that. Aside from that, because to me, I don't even see it as a problem because there's a provision for that. In the absence of that SA admin, your Active Directory account can be probably elevated to perform the same function. I don't see anything that's probably against it.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature is that the maintainability is offloaded to the service provider, so I don't have to maintain a database or do any administrative tasks, which comes in handy."
"The solution’s scalability is good since we don’t need to take a maintenance window during unpredictable workloads. I like the solution’s behind-the-scenes happenings. It is a great feature."
"Cost-wise, switching to Amazon Aurora is beneficial, saving me around $60,000 per year."
"We have seen an increase in customer satisfaction and availability with the switch from RDS to Aurora."
"Aurora is the best service within AWS products for our needs."
"Aurora's compatibility with MySQL or PostgreSQL benefited our database management. The migration from on-premise MySQL to Aurora was similar, so we didn't need to change our source code."
"They now offer some really good scaling and limitless versions that are available to me, which I find very impressive."
"Aurora's features that I find the most beneficial include its database backup strategy, performance options, and input-output operations."
"I can tell you categorically that the ROI, the return on investment is very, very high and it's very commendable."
"Security-wise, Azure SQL Managed Instance is absolutely robust, and governance-wise, the manageability of Azure SQL Managed Instance is very good."
 

Cons

"Room for improvement might be in the UI, integrations, or data working capabilities for better user experience."
"I would like to see performance insights on the database based on the queries. Currently, we use SolarWinds as the monitoring tool. I would like to leverage SolarWinds’ performance insights in AWS services. SolarWinds gives larger insights when we run performance issues."
"Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora."
"When using the serverless version of Amazon Aurora, I encountered issues such as the inbuilt query editor not being available."
"In my experience, I didn't see the claimed speed, and when you factor in the cost, or the extra cost of Aurora compared to a normal database, it didn't justify the cost from a performance standpoint, but it did justify the cost because we didn't have to have multiple instances, Redis caches, and other things like that."
"Aurora’s finance aspects could be improved, particularly in reducing the per-hour use cost."
"Sometimes mistakes can be easily made, and people can waste money by mistake if they do not know what they are doing."
"There should be constant changes, which can be challenging to keep up with annually."
"The only red flag I could point out is you don't have 100% control of your data. You don't have 100% control of that particular server because it is Microsoft that has access to it."
"Azure SQL Managed Instance can be improved by adding more scalability options."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It is an expensive solution."
"The tool’s pricing depends on the instance type. For cost optimization purposes, we use the result instance category."
"I would rate the pricing a six out of ten, with ten being expensive."
"It is quite expensive."
"There is no need to buy a license for the product. We can pay as per the use case."
"The price could be lower compared to its competitors."
Information not available
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
12%
Healthcare Company
11%
University
11%
Manufacturing Company
8%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business5
Midsize Enterprise4
Large Enterprise14
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Amazon Aurora?
The pricing for Amazon Aurora is different from DocumentDB because DocumentDB is cheaper. However, when you manage the administration more closely, you can control costs better with Amazon Aurora. ...
What needs improvement with Amazon Aurora?
Amazon can make better access levels and reduce costs for Amazon Aurora. A cost reduction would support multiple teams to adopt this solution since the cost is currently higher. Comparatively, we h...
What is your primary use case for Amazon Aurora?
Amazon Aurora is a service provided by AWS, and we received support from AWS for our implementation. The direction we are moving toward is specifically Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL.
What needs improvement with Azure SQL Managed Instance?
Azure SQL Managed Instance can be improved by adding more scalability options. I need to have more flexibility in terms of scalability with Azure SQL Managed Instance. In sizing, I need some option...
What is your primary use case for Azure SQL Managed Instance?
My main use case for Azure SQL Managed Instance is for storing information related to insurance and claims in the staging database to avoid using Dataverse because it is more expensive. I use Azure...
What advice do you have for others considering Azure SQL Managed Instance?
My advice for others looking into using Azure SQL Managed Instance is that if they have some SaaS applications such as Dataverse or any other SaaS applications like BPM or ServiceNow, wherein their...
 

Comparisons

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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Dow Jones, Arizona State University, Verizon, Capital One, United Nations, Nielsen, Autodesk, Fanduel
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