What's New?

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We are excited to announce the launch of Amazon RDS for SQL Server and .NET support for AWS Elastic Beanstalk. You can now take advantage of these managed database and application services to deploy, manage and scale SQL Server databases and ASP.NET applications using familiar Microsoft tools.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server: Deploying and managing databases is one of the most complex, time-consuming, and expensive activities in IT. Amazon RDS removes this complexity and makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud, fully managing database administration tasks such as software installation and patching, database and log back-ups for disaster recovery, and monitoring. Businesses of all sizes have taken advantage of Amazon RDS to offload the operational responsibilities of their MySQL and Oracle databases. With this launch, Amazon RDS brings the same benefits to all SQL Server customers. Below are the key highlights of the service:

• Free Usage Tier: If you are new to Amazon RDS, you can get started with Amazon RDS for SQL Server with a Free Usage Tier, which includes 750 hours per month of Amazon RDS micro instances with SQL Server Express Edition, 20GB of database storage and 10 million I/O requests per month for a full year.
• Multiple Editions: Amazon RDS supports Express, Web, Standard and Enterprise Editions of SQL Server 2008 R2, and plans to add support for SQL Server 2012 later this year.
• Flexible pricing options: Beyond the Free Usage Tier, you can run SQL Server on Amazon RDS using the “License Included” or the “Bring Your Own License” service models, with prices starting at $0.035/hour. Refer to Amazon RDS for SQL Server pricing for more details.

ASP.NET Support for Elastic Beanstalk: AWS Elastic Beanstalk gives you an easy way to quickly deploy and manage your Java, PHP and as of today, ASP.NET applications in the AWS cloud. Below are the key highlights of the service:

• Easy to Begin: You simply upload your ASP.NET application, and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring.
• Compatible and Inexpensive: Because Elastic Beanstalk leverages the familiar IIS 7.5 software stack, existing applications can be deployed with minimal changes to the underlying code. There is no additional charge for Elastic Beanstalk, and you pay only for the AWS resources needed to run your applications.

You can use the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio to get started, and create applications, environments and database instances directly from your Visual Studio environment. For a hands-on demo on how to deploy an ASP.NET application on Beanstalk with Amazon RDS for SQL Server, visit the AWS Elastic Beanstalk Developer Guide. To learn more about getting started with Amazon RDS, visit the Amazon RDS Getting Started Guide.