Microsoft SQL Server on AWS
AWS has helped hundreds of thousands of customers transition their SQL Server workloads to the cloud since 2008, longer than any other cloud provider. Customers continue to choose AWS for migrating and modernizing SQL Server for best price performance, license flexibility, ease of use, and innovations to manage, access, and scale their data.
With our proven expertise, we can help you easily rehost to SQL Server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), replatform to Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for SQL Server, or refactor to purpose-built databases such as Amazon Aurora.
Read the infographic: Finding the best pathway for migrating and modernizing your SQL Server workloads.
Why SQL Server on AWS
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From licensing to infrastructure, AWS is focused on driving down your costs for running SQL Server workloads. For example, customers save 45% on SQL Server license costs with AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment. With AWS Compute Optimizer, customers save up to 25% on infrastructure through rightsizing and up to 74% on licenses through SQL Server edition downgrading recommendations.
AWS is not in the business of selling software licenses. We are always trying to reduce your licensing needs by providing flexible licensing options. Customers can either choose to bring your own licenses (BYOL) to maximize existing investments, or leverage the pay-as-you-go, license-included (LI) option to get out of the business of managing license compliance.
AWS has helped many customers modernize their SQL Server workloads to AWS purpose-built cloud databases, allowing them to break free from restrictive licensing terms and fuel innovation with data and AI.
AWS pioneers a simpler, integrated end-to-end experiences to run and manage SQL Server workloads. For example, with services like AWS Launch Wizard for SQL Server, you are guided through sizing, configuration, and deployment, streamlining your SQL Server experience in the cloud. For customers who want to spend less time self managing databases, AWS offers Amazon RDS for SQL Server to offload undifferentiated database tasks.
AWS offers the most secure, extensive, and reliable Global Cloud Infrastructure for you to run, optimize, and modernize SQL Server workloads, while driving consistent superior price performance than the next largest cloud provider.
AWS offers over 750 Amazon EC2 instances where comparable services are simply not available from other cloud providers. We provide the only fully managed services for native-Windows file system with Amazon FSx for Windows File Server, enabling you to simplify management overhead and reduce costs. Amazon Elastic Block Store offers 99.999% availability, 99.999% durability, and performant block storage for your most demanding SQL Server deployments.
Estimate cost savings from migrating or modernizing SQL Server workloads to AWS
The AWS Pricing Calculator helps you estimate your total cost of ownership for running SQL Server workloads on AWS based on service configurations you need for your business. You can include pricing for support costs, Dedicated Hosts on EC2, RDS for SQL Server cost modeling, and flexible pricing options such as Savings Plans in your estimate.
For a more customized pricing quote, please contact an AWS specialist for assistance. Our AWS specialists can assist with cost optimization opportunities based on proven best practices, as well as eligibility for additional promotional credits, SQL Server programs, or other discounts.
SQL Server cloud options on AWS
Lift and shift your on-premises SQL Server databases to Amazon EC2 with flexible licensing options. Gain full control of your environment with OS-level access while protecting existing licensing investments. Learn more.
Amazon RDS frees you up to focus on application development by managing time-consuming database administration tasks, including provisioning, backups, software patching, monitoring, and hardware scaling. Learn more.
Modernize SQL Server to purpose-built cloud databases and accelerate innovation with open source and cloud-based technologies like Amazon Aurora. Learn more.
How AWS helps you migrate and modernize SQL Server workloads
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Assess your cloud readiness before you migrate
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Migrate with AWS programs
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Optimize Windows workloads after you migrate
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Assess your cloud readiness before you migrate
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Assess your cloud readiness before you migrate
AWS can help you assess your readiness to move to cloud. With AWS Optimization and Licensing Assessment (AWS OLA), you can make data-driven migration decisions based on actual resource utilization, third-party licensing, and application dependencies. AWS OLA provides right-sized and licensing-optimized instance recommendations for your on-premises SQL Server workloads, including opportunities for Reserved Instances, optimized CPUs, Dedicated Hosts, and Microsoft BYOL options.
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Migrate with AWS programs
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Migrate with AWS programs
Customers looking to migrate SQL Server workloads with AWS can take advantage of AWS programs for migration. With our APN Partner and Professional Services teams, AWS Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) for Windows provides services, best practices, and tools to help our customers save costs and accelerate your migrations on AWS.
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Optimize Windows workloads after you migrate
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Optimize Windows workloads after you migrate
After moving your SQL Server workloads onto AWS, you can continue optimizing your costs, usage, and licenses to suit your business needs. With AWS Cost Explorer, you can visualize, understand, and manage your AWS costs and usage over time to take control of spend. AWS Compute Optimizer recommends optimal AWS Compute resources for your workloads so that you can reduce costs up to 25% by analyzing historical utilization data. AWS Managed Services can help operate your cloud environment post-migration by analyzing alerts and responding to incidents, reducing operational overhead and risk. You can use AWS Systems Manager to automate operational tasks across your AWS resources and better manage your infrastructure at scale.
AWS can also help you modernize your Windows-based applications with AWS open source services when you’re ready to break free from the high costs of commercial licensing. We offer the widest range of options to include running SQL Server database applications on EC2 Linux, moving workloads to Amazon Aurora, containerizing your Windows applications with Amazon EKS, going serverless with AWS Lambda, or leveraging a micro-services based architecture.
Easy to use, high-performance block storage for SQL Server
Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) with new Amazon EC2 R5b instances provides easy to use, high-performance block storage for Microsoft SQL Server. Benefit from the highest block storage performance with a single storage volume using io2 Block Express (Preview) and EC2 R5b. Other SSD-backed EBS options include io2 volumes for business-critical applications and gp3 volumes for general purpose applications. Amazon EBS also offers crash-consistent snapshots and enables application consistent snapshots through Windows VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Services) to help protect your SQL Server deployments.
SQL Server on AWS services
SQL Server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)
Secure and resizable compute capacity (virtual servers) in the cloud for self-managed SQL Server instances
Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for SQL Server
Fully managed relational database service that offers SQL Server
Amazon Aurora
Fully managed MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database
Amazon Elastic Block Store
Easily size, configure, and deploy SQL Server on AWS
Amazon FSx for NetApp ONTAP
Fully managed shared storage built on NetApp’s popular ONTAP file system
Amazon FSx for Windows File Server
Fully managed shared storage built on Windows Server
AWS Launch Wizard
Easily size, configure, and deploy SQL Server on AWS
AWS License Manager
Central license management service for AWS and on-premises environments
AWS Directory Service
Managed Microsoft Active Directory with identity and access management
AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio
Extension for Microsoft Visual Studio to develop, debug, and deploy .NET applications
SQL on Commercial Linux Operating System
SQL Server on Red Hat Enterprise Linux provides a fast, reliable, and secure operating environment for deploying SQL workloads
SQL Server on AWS services
| Category | Service descriptions | AWS service |
|---|---|---|
| Databases | Secure and resizable compute capacity (virtual servers) in the cloud for SQL Server instances |
SQL Server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) |
| Fully managed relational database service that offers SQL Server | Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) for SQL Server | |
| Fully managed MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database. Performance and availability of commercial databases at 1/10th the cost | Amazon Aurora | |
| Storage | Fully managed shared storage for high-availability SQL Server workloads | Amazon FSx for Windows File Server |
| High performance block storage to attach volumes to SQL Server instances | Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) | |
| License management | Central license management service for AWS and on-premises environments | AWS License Manager |
| Windows-based services | Managed Microsoft Active Directory with identity and access management | AWS Directory Service |
| .NET on AWS | Extension for Microsoft Visual Studio to develop, debug, and deploy .NET applications | AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio |
Optimize SQL Server workloads on AWS with Intel Xeon Scalable Processors
Intel Xeon Scalable Processors on AWS provide you with better data protection, faster processing of more data volumes, and increased service flexibility for fully managed services like Amazon RDS or compute infrastructure like Amazon EC2. Customers using RDS can gain up to 25% improvement in transactions per core with the latest generation compute instance, improving overall database performance.
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Customers
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Infor
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Infor adopted an all-AWS strategy to save time and money as they manage their exponential business growth. They use Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2 instances to run 1000’s of SQL databases, saving 75% on monthly backup costs and backing up 2 petabytes of data daily 30% faster.
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Jobvite
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Jobvite first migrated its SQL Server to AWS to achieve uptime above 99.98 percent, and reduced the cost by 35 percent. Recently, the company has modernized its self-managed SQL Server workloads with Amazon Aurora to eliminate database maintenance, yielding a 40 percent increase in responsiveness for each application/tier and eliminate time-intensive database maintenance.
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Kaplan
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Kaplan has reduced its datacenter footprint and improved user experience by moving to Amazon RDS for SQL Server to deliver content faster to its customers around the world.The company gained a more reliable infrastructure and less latency, as well as better insight into the cost of its applications and systems.
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Hess Corporation
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Hess Corporation needed to quickly divest some of its business with SQL Server on AWS. They were able to migrate seamlessly and achieve rapid scalability in the AWS Cloud. to gain the flexibility it needed to scale rapidly, building out hundreds of servers at the click of a button.
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Autodesk
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Autodesk needed to modernize to gain flexibility and scalability to support anticipated growth so moved to fully managed Amazon Aurora MySQL. This shift helped streamline the management and resiliency of the Autodesk SSO service, optimize costs, and reduce overhead for infrastructure maintenance.