Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) Reviews & Product Details

- Broke a massive Oracle 11g/12c backed monolith application into 25 microservice‑aligned schemas and migrated everything to Oracle 19c on RDS, giving each service its own performance and scaling boundary.

- What I like most about RDS is that we no longer need to spend a lot of time on manual heavy lifting — patching, automated backups, point-in-time restores (to the second), and even provisioning. Tasks like these used to take weeks, involve multiple meetings, and require approval cycles, but are now fully automated and happen in the background with just a simple configuration.

- The recovery and failover challenges we previously faced with our monolith have been completely eliminated. By leveraging Amazon RDS’s automated, synchronous replication and Multi-AZ failover capabilities, we’ve gained a level of resilience that promises our application stays online even during a full Availability Zone outage. With 99.95% uptime, we are far more than just resilient (In a worst-case failover scenario, the transition happens in roughly 2 minutes, which is well within our acceptable RTO).

- Managing 25 microservices and their rapidly expanding data sets doesn't seem to be a challenge to us, and our operations have been simplified with its configuration-based implementation. With RDS, we have the option to seamlessly scale storage, upgrade instance types, and leverage read replicas to offload traffic. This flexibility has been a cornerstone of our migration journey, delivering significant cost savings and operational efficiency.

- We have the option to stop RDS instances of lower environments during weekends or when not in use, saving additional costs.

- AWS, as usual, has top-notch customer support for RDS. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

- Moving from on-prem to RDS broke our deep New Relic integration; because we no longer have OS-level access to install custom agents, we lost the ability to perform granular, table-level monitoring that we relied on for legacy performance tuning.

- We observed that DB gets stuck in the Upgrading/Modifying state during modifications and we really don't have any way to check the actual issue other than just waiting. Sometimes, we are left with just to restart the same, which is quite tedious at times. This really needs some focus from AWS; we, users, need visibility on the progress.

- SYSDBA permissions are restricted, but that's not a blocker. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Well, RDS is a must as per me if your project is in AWS and you are working on relational databases, Few things I personally liked about Amazon RDS are that most of the operations like patching, backups, scalings etc are automatic so a lot of less effort needed from the operations side, and I don't think any other RDS works as good as Amazon RDS works with AWS. I also found all the operations being performed very smoothly, and I personally never faced any failures while using this, so definitely quite robust too. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

There are a few downside too here, first the cost of using this I feel is too high, initially the cost might seem normal but as your application scales cost increases a lot. Also I felt there is very less control over the database server which didn't let me customize a few things I wanted to. Also If a few more monitoring tools can definitely help the user to troubleshoot. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like Amazon RDS because it handles backups, scaling, and high availability without any maintenance hassle, making it incredibly reliable for my apps. The automated backups provide a constant safety net, allowing me to focus on building my applications rather than worrying about losing data. I also enjoy the effortless scaling that keeps performance smooth during unexpected spikes. Additionally, the built-in reliability with Multi-AZ deployments and automatic failover protects against outages, giving me peace of mind. The initial setup was surprisingly easy for our team, and we had a production-ready database running within minutes, removing much of the complexity usually faced with manual deployments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

While Amazon RDS is excellent overall, a few areas could be improved. The cost escalates quickly as storage and instance sizes grow, and more transparent pricing would help. Fine-grained control over server configuration is also limited compared to self-managed databases. Additionally, maintenance windows and failover times can occasionally feel longer than expected. Better visibility and faster transitions would make the service even stronger. Limited fine-grained control compared to self-managed databases. Restricted parameter tuning. No access to the operating system. Limited support for custom plugins and extensions. Storage and I/O behavior not fully customizable. Maintenance processes are controlled by AWS. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It's a worry free tool. Your life would be easier with this, You would not need to take backup and it would scale automatically your databases. And it's very easy to integrate and use. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

If you are technical and know little bit more regarding database and it's management. I would suggest don't go with it, just go with traditional database. As because it's gonna be very expensive while scaling your project. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The automatic management of backups, patches, and updates greatly reduces the operational load.

Scalability is immediate: you can move from small workloads to enterprise databases without interruptions.

Perfect integration with the AWS ecosystem (CloudWatch, IAM, Elastic Beanstalk). Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The initial learning curve can be steep for those unfamiliar with AWS.

Costs can quickly escalate if resource usage is not well monitored.

Some advanced features (e.g., fine-tuning performance) still require manual intervention. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like best about Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) is how it removes operational complexity while still giving strong security, scalability, and reliability. Which is critical in real world production environments. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Since RDS is a managed service, you don’t get full OS-level access, custom kernel tweaks, ability to install arbitrary agents or extensions. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

I like that RDS makes database management simple by handling backups, updates, and scaling automatically. It saves a lot of time and effort compared to managing databases on our own.The best part is how it reduces the manual work for maintenance and lets us focus more on development instead of infrastructure. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

Sometimes the cost can add up quickly, especially for larger workloads, so budgeting needs extra attention. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

High availability and reliability, security. Support for almost all relational databases like mysql, postgre,maria and all. Fully managed, allows me complete provisioning and recovery, alongwith backups & scalability. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The charges are really very high. An instance if left open, and unused might cost a fortune. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The best thing about AWS Databases is the ease of usage and implementation. It is very easy to create a new database in seconds. It has a lot of database options such as Postgres, MySQL, Aurora, etc.

I personally like Aurora the best, with its serverless capabilities standing out from all other cloud providers.

I have been using Amazon Databases every day. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The UI is slightly not up to the mark for the Databases. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

It is perfect for production loads where uptime and stability are crucial. It makes the DB management super easy because you dont have to worry about backups or scaling manually. Also, it is very smooth to integrate with other AWS services. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.

The pricing can get a bit steep once you enable Multi AZ. Review collected by and hosted on G2.com.