Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Fully managed, highly available SQL Server database service powered by AWS

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What is Amazon RDS for SQL Server?

SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. Amazon RDS for SQL Server is a fully managed, highly available SQL Server database service powered by AWS. With Amazon RDS, you can deploy multiple editions of SQL Server (2016, 2017, 2019, and 2022), including Enterprise, Standard, Web, Developer, and Express, in minutes with cost-efficient and re-sizable compute capacity. 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.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server supports the “License Included” licensing model. You do not need separately purchased Microsoft SQL Server licenses. "License Included" pricing is inclusive of software, underlying hardware resources, and Amazon RDS management capabilities.

You can take advantage of hourly pricing with no upfront fees or long-term commitments. In addition, you also have the option to purchase Reserved DB Instances under one or three year reservation terms. With Reserved DB Instances, you can make low, one-time, upfront payment for each DB Instance and then pay a significantly discounted hourly usage rate, achieving up to 65% net cost savings.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB Instances can be provisioned with either standard storage or Provisioned IOPS storage. Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS is a storage option designed to deliver fast, predictable, and consistent I/O performance and is optimized for I/O-intensive, transactional (OLTP) database workloads.

Benefits of Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Amazon RDS for SQL Server is fully managed by Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). You no longer need to worry about database management tasks, such as hardware provisioning, software patching, setup, configuration, or backups.

With a single click, you can enable the Multi-AZ option, replicating data synchronously across different availability zones. In case the primary node crashes, your database will automatically failover to the secondary and we will automatically re-build the secondary.

By opting into Auto-Scale storage, instances will automatically increase the storage size with zero downtime. With RDS Storage Auto Scaling, you simply set your desired maximum storage limit, and Auto Scaling takes care of the rest.

Amazon RDS creates and saves automated backups of your SQL Server instance. Amazon RDS creates a storage volume snapshot of your instance, backing up the entire instance and not just individual databases. Amazon RDS for SQL Server creates automated backups of your DB instance during the backup window of your DB instance.

We support a number of ways to migrate to Amazon RDS for SQL Server, including Single and Multi-file native restores, Microsoft SQL Server Database Publishing Wizard, Import/Export, AWS Database Migration Service, and SQL Server Replication.