Why do people recommend using Amazon RDS?

Question

We are currently running MySQL on EC2, and we have been for a while. I like the idea of ​​simplified backups, recovery, and failure, and I'm really tempted by the apparent ease of using RDS instead of EC2. I started migrating from EC2 to RDS, but as I migrate, I continue to wonder if I am doing the right thing.

I read people alluding to using Amazon RDS databases for MySQL, but I did not find a brief explanation of the disadvantages of RDS.

Can someone help me understand why I should not switch to RDS, but instead save my data in EC2?

Our database is about 30 GB of data, which basically consists of an 18 million row table and a 40 million row table in one InnoDB database.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. Thanks!

Answer 1

This is mainly a problem with the database administrator.

RDS aims to eliminate most of the repetitive and boring DBA tasks (mostly multitask replication, backup, restore, repair ...). This part can make up even 70% of the time spent by database administrators.

On the other hand, some tasks that the DBA can perform if they start the database on their instance (for example, on EC2) are not available with RDS, because they do not have ROOT in the RDS instance.

If your database administrator (and your use case) can benefit from a difficult climb and not suffer from reduced privileges, you should definitely consider RDS.

Answer 2

We manage a 200 GB database in twenty tables in RDS. In my experience, using RDS saves a ton of time, and the flaws that exist are minor and can be handled. The total time that RDS saved was significantly longer than with any headaches. However, the two I came across are the following:

• You cannot set global variables as the root user in RDS — you must set them in the parameter group and then apply this to the database, which is more complex than "SET GLOBAL", but offers other advantages.

• You cannot upload to a file because you do not have access to the RDS file system. See this question . However, as noted in this question, there are workarounds.

Answer 3

The only thing that you have refused to use RDS are logs, unfortunately, RDS does not provide a full set of logs, which are sometimes vital for debugging. If you can live without them, and you have strong testing before going to production, then RDS is the way to go.