We compared SQL Server and Amazon Aurora based on our user's reviews in several parameters.
In summary, SQL Server is praised for its robustness, reliability, security, and user-friendly interface, with reasonable pricing and satisfactory ROI. On the other hand, Amazon Aurora stands out for its scalability, performance, and user-friendly interface, with varying user experiences in terms of pricing and setup. Users highlight the need for enhancements in both products, such as performance optimization and improved usability.
Features: SQL Server stands out for its robustness, reliable handling of large data, seamless integration with Microsoft products, comprehensive security measures, and user-friendly graphical interface. In comparison, Amazon Aurora excels in seamless scalability, easy-to-use interface, and impressive speed, allowing for efficient and smooth operations.
Pricing and ROI: The setup cost for SQL Server has been praised as straightforward and efficient, with flexible licensing options. In contrast, the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing of Amazon Aurora is more varied. While some find the pricing competitive and appreciate the lack of upfront setup costs, others find the licensing terms complicated. Individual perspectives and requirements play a significant role in determining the experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing., SQL Server offers significant improvements in efficiency, data management, and cost savings, with seamless integration, robust security, and superior performance. On the other hand, Amazon Aurora provides a valuable ROI for its users.
Room for Improvement: The SQL Server product could benefit from improvements in usability, performance optimization, compatibility with other platforms, handling of complex queries, security features, and efficient handling of large datasets. On the other hand, Amazon Aurora could improve in terms of performance, scalability, backup and restoration processes, user interface usability, and pricing structure.
Deployment and customer support: The reviews indicate that the time required for establishing a new tech solution with SQL Server can range from a week to three months, with deployment and setup phases possibly being separate. The feedback for Amazon Aurora also varies, with deployment taking anywhere from a week to three months, and setup being completed in the same timeframe or an additional week. Considering the context is essential for understanding the duration of these phases., Customers have praised the reliability and efficiency of SQL Server's customer service, while Amazon Aurora's support team has been commended for their prompt assistance and knowledge. Differences lie in specific areas of support provided.
The summary above is based on 42 interviews we conducted recently with SQL Server and Amazon Aurora users. To access the review's full transcripts, download our report.
"The most valuable feature is that the maintainability is offloaded to the service provider. I don't have to maintain a database or do any administrative tasks, which comes in handy."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to do multiple-read and single-write. These are the kinds of features that we were interested in, and Aurora takes care of that natively."
"The most valuable feature of Amazon Aurora is SQL standardization, it doesn't have its own syntax which is good. It has a lot of hands-off self-management type of activities, such as log rolling and auto-scaling."
"The provision of custom read and write endpoints eliminates the need for managing a separate proxy load balancer."
"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."
"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."
"We had better control over the parameters that we could tweak in terms of intermediate storage and better indexing capabilities."
"The solution has proven to be very stable."
"SQL is very easy to manage."
"It is quite reliable in cluster configurations and has helped me to reduce downtime and improve SLAs."
"I have found the most valuable features to be the flexibility and the vast amount of features available."
"SQL Server is very good, it can be used as a transactional database and used to support the data warehouse. Additionally, the ANSI-compliant satisfies our database properties."
"The tool helps us by being available always."
"I value the ability it gives me to test on small machines and easily scale up to larger devices for live applications."
"The scalability of the product is great."
"The product's distributed query process for MySQL needs improvement."
"I would like to see more AI-related features in future releases."
"The pricing could improve. It should be reduced."
"It would have been helpful if they had provided some benchmarking numbers."
"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."
"It is a bit costly. The features are quite good, and I wouldn't say it requires any technical improvements. But from a cost perspective, some clients wouldn't go for Aurora because of that."
"There is improvement needed to have more developer focus. Additionally, it would be helpful to have a stand-alone solution outside of Amazon. Amazon has a tendency to favor developing web-based clients, which may not always provide the fastest or most responsive solution as desired."
"The scalability is adequate but could improve."
"There is room for improvement in performance when managing a large quality of data and a high number of active users."
"There are a lot of improvements in the cloud space about which we open a case with Microsoft every now and then. These improvements are not in terms of features or functionality. They are more related to their own compatibility or connectivity on which they keep on working to improve the product."
"In terms of exceptionally large databases, it doesn't scale as well as Oracle."
"SQL could be improved by making all features available on the on-premise version of the product as well as the cloud version. When you buy the on-premise version, it's sort of an inferior product compared to the cloud version, which seems to get most of the latest and greatest features."
"We have had problems implementing a data warehouse using SQL Server."
"The only item which I can list is application failure during Integration Services debugging, when restarting a process flow. In a number of instances the solutions fails. I have not given this much thought and simply stop and start the debugging service rather than restarting."
"It would be better if it had more integration with other systems."
Amazon Aurora is ranked 11th in Relational Databases Tools with 7 reviews while SQL Server is ranked 1st in Relational Databases Tools with 260 reviews. Amazon Aurora is rated 7.8, while SQL Server is rated 8.4. The top reviewer of Amazon Aurora writes "Easy-to-manage platform with a valuable auto-scaling feature ". On the other hand, the top reviewer of SQL Server writes "Easy to use and provides good speed and data recovery". Amazon Aurora is most compared with Oracle Database, MariaDB, CockroachDB, MySQL and SAP HANA, whereas SQL Server is most compared with MariaDB, SAP HANA, Oracle Database, LocalDB and MySQL. See our Amazon Aurora vs. SQL Server report.
See our list of best Relational Databases Tools vendors.
We monitor all Relational Databases Tools reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.