Oracle Database Cloud Service vs Amazon Relational Database Service

How to compare Oracle’s Database Public Cloud with Amazon’s Relational Database Service (RDS) for enterprise usage? Let us have a look.

Oracle’s Database has 4 editions: Personal Edition, Express Edition (XE): free of charge and used by very small businesses and students, Standard Edition (SE): light version of Enterprise Edition and purpose designed to lack most features needed for running production grade workloads and Enterprise Edition (EE): provides the performance, availability, scalability, and security required for mission-critical applications.

In the comparison in this post, we will evaluate Oracle and Amazon in relation to the Enterprise Edition of Oracle’s database.

Oracle Public Database Cloud consists of 4 DB Cloud offerings: DBaaS, Virtual Image, Schema Service and Exadata Service. Here are few characterizations:

– Oracle supports Exadata, RAC & all DB options
– Simple pricing structure with published costs representing actual costs (unlimited I/Os, etc.)
– Hourly, Monthly & Annual pricing options
– Lowest cloud storage pricing across all major IaaS vendors

Amazon RDS for Oracle Database supports two different licensing models – “License Included” and “Bring-Your-Own-License (BYOL)”. In the “License Included” service model, you do not need separately purchased Oracle licenses. Here are few characterizations:

– Enterprise Edition supports only db.r3.large and larger instance classes, up to db.r3.8xlarge
– Need to choose between Single-AZ (= Availability Zone) Deployment and Multi-AZ Deployment
– For Multi-AZ Deployment, Amazon RDS will automatically provision and manage a “standby” replica in a different Availability Zone (prior to failover you cannot directly access the standby, and it cannot be used to serve read traffic)
– Only 2 instance types support 10 Gigabit network: db.m4.10xlarge and db.r3.8xlarge
– Amazon RDS for Oracle is an exciting option for small to medium-sized clients and includes Oracle Database Standard Edition in it’s pricing
– Several application with limited requirements might find Amazon RDS to be a suitable platform for hosting a database
– As the enterprise requirements and resulting degree of complexity of the database solution increase, RDS is gradually ruled out as an option

So, here is high level comparison:

Notes:

– Oracle’s price includes the EE license with all options
– Amazon AWS is BYOL for EE
– Prices above are based on the EU (Frankfurt) region
– Amazon’s Oracle database hour prices vary from $0.290 to $4.555 for Single AZ Deplyoments and from $0.575 to $9.105 for Multi-AZ Deployments
– Oracle’s database hour prices vary from $0.672 to $8.569

Sources:

– Oracle Archive Storage Pricing
– Amazon Glacier Storage Pricing
– Amazon Database Pricing
– Oracle Database Pricing
– Amazon Options for Oracle Database Engine
– Oracle on Amazon RDS Support & Limitations

So, Amazon RDS is not an option if you need any of the following: Real Application Clusters (RAC), Real Application Testing, Data Guard / Active Data Guard, Oracle Enterprise Manager Grid Control, Automated Storage Management, Database Vault, Streams, Java Support, Locator, Oracle Label Security, Spatial, Oracle XML DB Protocol Server or Network access utilities such as utl_http, utl_tcp, utl_smtp, and utl_mail.

Interesting articles related to this topic:

1. Burning question for Oracle: What’s your response to Amazon? by Barb Darrow
2. Shootout: Oracle DB Cloud vs. Amazon RDS by Jan Navratil
3. The Oracle Database Cloud Service vs Oracle on Amazon RDS by Ranko Mosic
4. A Most Simple Cloud: Is Amazon RDS for Oracle Right for you? by by Jeremiah Wilton
5. Oracle RAC and AWS: A Hybrid Cloud Solution by Lindsay Van Thoen
6. How Much Does It Cost to Run Relational Database (RDS) Options on AWS by Yoav Mor
7. Oracle vs. Amazon: The Cloud Wars by Chris Lawless