Microsoft SQL Server on AWS
Customers have been running Microsoft Workloads on AWS for over 12 years, longer than any other cloud provider. Customers choose AWS because we have the most experience with Microsoft applications in the cloud and we offer the best platform for Windows Server and SQL Server in these areas: higher performance and reliability, greater security and identity services, more migration support, the broadest and deepest capabilities, lower total cost of ownership, and flexible licensing options. AWS supports everything you need to build and run Windows applications including Active Directory, .NET, Microsoft SQL Server, Windows desktop-as-a-service, and all supported versions of Windows Server. With our proven expertise, we can help you easily lift-and-shift, refactor, or even modernize your Windows workloads.
Click here to learn What's New with SQL Server on AWS.
Why SQL Server on AWS
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AWS has the broadest global infrastructure with 77 Availability Zones (AZ) across 24 regions and 99.99% availability for each Amazon EC2 region. By moving your SQL Server workloads to AWS, customers can realize a 98% reduction in unplanned downtime, 71% faster deployment, and 26% higher developer productivity, per IDC. AWS also delivered 2x better performance and 62% lower cost for a SQL Server workload on an EC2 R5b.8xlarge instance when directly tested against the next largest cloud provider, per Principled Technologies.
AWS offers 230 security, compliance, and governance services and features, 3x more services than the next largest cloud provider. With the AWS Nitro System, the underlying platform for EC2 instances, we provide you with enhanced security that continuously monitors, protects, and verifies instance hardware and firmware, minimizing the attack surface from vulnerabilities and external threats. We offer AWS Managed Active Directory securely in the cloud eliminating the need for you to synchronize or replicate data from your existing Active Directory during migrations. With AWS Identity Services, you can also manage identities and permissions at scale, while providing flexible options for where and how you manage your employee, partner, and customer information.
AWS has unmatched experience helping millions of organizations reach their migration goals faster through unique tools and services. With Amazon Database Migration Service, AWS has helped customers migrate over 230,000 databases to AWS. The Migration Acceleration Program (MAP) for Windows provides best practices, tools and incentives to reduce the complexity and cost of migrating to the cloud with support from AWS Partners and Professional Services.
AWS offers over 350 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. Customers also choose AWS for the best and most consistent networking performance for Microsoft applications, delivering 3x more throughput and 25% lower latency than the next cloud provider.
Customers can accelerate growth, drive efficiencies, and realize long-term cost reductions running SQL Server on AWS. Customers can reduce 5-year cost of operations by 56% and gain 37% lower infrastructure costs, delivering up to 442% ROI over 3 years, per IDC. AWS also offers customers more ways to save through unique pricing models such Savings Plans, which provide you with savings up to 72% on Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon EC2 Spot reduces costs by up to 90% on compute instances for fault tolerant workloads.
We offer the most options for using new and existing Microsoft software licenses on AWS. By purchasing Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) or Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) license-included instances, you get new, fully compliant Windows Server and SQL Server licenses from AWS. You can bring your existing licenses to AWS with Amazon EC2 Dedicated Hosts, Amazon EC2 Dedicated Instances, or EC2 instances with default tenancy using Microsoft License Mobility through Software Assurance. AWS License Manager makes it easier to track the usage of software licenses and reduce the risk of non-compliance.
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.

Achieve better price-performance for your SQL Server workloads
You can gain faster performance at lower cost for your Windows and SQL Server workloads on AWS. A recent benchmark by Principled Technologies showed that an EC2 R5b.8xlarge instance delivered 2x the performance & 62% cost savings for a SQL Server workload, when directly tested against the next largest cloud provider.
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
VMware Cloud on AWS
Rapidly extend, migrate, and secure your VMware-based SQL Server workloads to the AWS cloud
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 |
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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 |
Edge and hybrid | Rapidly extend, migrate, and secure your VMWare-based SQL Server workloads to the AWS cloud | VMWare Cloud on AWS |
.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.