Selecting the Appropriate Database Platform

Selecting the right database platform for your workloads can be a challenging aspect at times, considering the fact that AWS provides six different database hosting options to choose from. In this section of the chapter, you will examine these six database categories and learn how to determine which database is particularly suited to handle application-specific workloads.

Relational Databases

Relational databases have been around for a long time now and most organizations rely on commercial-grade databases such as Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle to run mission-critical workloads. AWS provides Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) as a managed service to host commercial-grade as well as open source databases at scale while providing abstraction from complex operational tasks such as managing the underlying database instance, installing and upgrading the database software, and so on.

Migrating to Amazon RDS becomes a de facto choice...