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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Infrastructure as a Service
  4. Cloud Storage
  5. Amazon Aurora vs Amazon EBS

Amazon Aurora vs Amazon EBS

OverviewComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS
Stacks650
Followers542
Votes82
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora
Stacks807
Followers745
Votes55

Amazon Aurora vs Amazon EBS: What are the differences?

Introduction

Amazon Aurora and Amazon EBS (Elastic Block Store) are two popular services offered by Amazon Web Services (AWS). While both services are used for storage purposes, they have several key differences that set them apart.

  1. Performance and Scalability: Amazon Aurora is a fully managed relational database service that is designed for high-performance applications. It uses a distributed architecture and is built on top of Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service), offering better read and write performance compared to Amazon EBS. On the other hand, Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes for EC2 instances and is better suited for general-purpose workloads.

  2. Data Replication: Amazon Aurora implements a unique approach to data replication called "Aurora Global Database". It allows for low-latency global replication across multiple AWS regions, enabling high availability and disaster recovery. In contrast, Amazon EBS does not have built-in data replication capabilities and relies on other AWS services, such as Amazon S3, for data backup and replication.

  3. Pricing Model: Amazon Aurora follows a different pricing model compared to Amazon EBS. Aurora pricing is based on database instance sizes for read and write operations, storage capacity, and data transfer. In contrast, Amazon EBS pricing is based on the volume type (Standard, Provisioned IOPS, or io2) and the provisioned storage capacity.

  4. Data Durability: Amazon Aurora offers high data durability through a 6-way replica storage across multiple Availability Zones in a single region. This ensures that data is protected against hardware failures. On the other hand, Amazon EBS provides data durability through replicating data within a single Availability Zone, offering durability in case of failures within that zone.

  5. Database Engine Compatibility: Amazon Aurora is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines, providing similar functionality and tools to these engines. Amazon EBS, being a block-level storage service, is not tied to any specific database engine and can be used with a wide range of databases.

  6. Management and Administration: Both Amazon Aurora and Amazon EBS offer management and monitoring capabilities through the AWS Management Console and APIs. However, as a fully managed service, Amazon Aurora handles automated backups, software patching, and database maintenance tasks, relieving the user from these responsibilities. In contrast, Amazon EBS requires manual backups and maintenance tasks to be performed by the user.

In summary, Amazon Aurora is a high-performance, distributed relational database service with global replication capabilities, whereas Amazon EBS provides block-level storage volumes for EC2 instances with durability within a single Availability Zone. Aurora offers better performance, data replication, and management features, while EBS is more general-purpose and compatible with various database engines.

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Detailed Comparison

Amazon EBS
Amazon EBS
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora

Amazon EBS volumes are network-attached, and persist independently from the life of an instance. Amazon EBS provides highly available, highly reliable, predictable storage volumes that can be attached to a running Amazon EC2 instance and exposed as a device within the instance. Amazon EBS is particularly suited for applications that require a database, file system, or access to raw block level storage.

Amazon Aurora is a MySQL-compatible, relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. Amazon Aurora provides up to five times better performance than MySQL at a price point one tenth that of a commercial database while delivering similar performance and availability.

Amazon EBS allows you to create storage volumes from 1 GB to 1 TB that can be mounted as devices by Amazon EC2 instances. Multiple volumes can be mounted to the same instance.;Amazon EBS enables you to provision a specific level of I/O performance if desired, by choosing a Provisioned IOPS volume. This allows you to predictably scale to thousands of IOPS per Amazon EC2 instance.;Storage volumes behave like raw, unformatted block devices, with user supplied device names and a block device interface. You can create a file system on top of Amazon EBS volumes, or use them in any other way you would use a block device (like a hard drive).;Amazon EBS volumes are placed in a specific Availability Zone, and can then be attached to instances also in that same Availability Zone.;Each storage volume is automatically replicated within the same Availability Zone. This prevents data loss due to failure of any single hardware component.;Amazon EBS also provides the ability to create point-in-time snapshots of volumes, which are persisted to Amazon S3. These snapshots can be used as the starting point for new Amazon EBS volumes, and protect data for long-term durability. The same snapshot can be used to instantiate as many volumes as you wish. These snapshots can be copied across AWS regions, making it easier to leverage multiple AWS regions for geographical expansion, data center migration and disaster recovery.;AWS also enables you to create new volumes from AWS hosted public data sets.;Amazon CloudWatch exposes performance metrics for EBS volumes, giving you insight into bandwidth, throughput, latency, and queue depth. The metrics are accessible via the AWS CloudWatch API or the AWS Management Console. For more details, see Amazon CloudWatch.
High Throughput with Low Jitter;Push-button Compute Scaling;Storage Auto-scaling;Amazon Aurora Replicas;Instance Monitoring and Repair;Fault-tolerant and Self-healing Storage;Automatic, Continuous, Incremental Backups and Point-in-time Restore;Database Snapshots;Resource-level Permissions;Easy Migration;Monitoring and Metrics
Statistics
Stacks
650
Stacks
807
Followers
542
Followers
745
Votes
82
Votes
55
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 36
    Point-in-time snapshots
  • 27
    Data reliability
  • 19
    Configurable i/o performance
Pros
  • 14
    MySQL compatibility
  • 12
    Better performance
  • 10
    Easy read scalability
  • 9
    Speed
  • 7
    Low latency read replica
Cons
  • 2
    Vendor locking
  • 1
    Rigid schema
Integrations
No integrations available
PostgreSQL
PostgreSQL
MySQL
MySQL

What are some alternatives to Amazon EBS, Amazon Aurora?

Amazon S3

Amazon S3

Amazon Simple Storage Service provides a fully redundant data storage infrastructure for storing and retrieving any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the web

Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS gives you access to the capabilities of a familiar MySQL, Oracle or Microsoft SQL Server database engine. This means that the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing databases can be used with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS automatically patches the database software and backs up your database, storing the backups for a user-defined retention period and enabling point-in-time recovery. You benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with your Database Instance (DB Instance) via a single API call.

Google Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage

Google Cloud Storage allows world-wide storing and retrieval of any amount of data and at any time. It provides a simple programming interface which enables developers to take advantage of Google's own reliable and fast networking infrastructure to perform data operations in a secure and cost effective manner. If expansion needs arise, developers can benefit from the scalability provided by Google's infrastructure.

Azure Storage

Azure Storage

Azure Storage provides the flexibility to store and retrieve large amounts of unstructured data, such as documents and media files with Azure Blobs; structured nosql based data with Azure Tables; reliable messages with Azure Queues, and use SMB based Azure Files for migrating on-premises applications to the cloud.

Google Cloud SQL

Google Cloud SQL

Run the same relational databases you know with their rich extension collections, configuration flags and developer ecosystem, but without the hassle of self management.

Minio

Minio

Minio is an object storage server compatible with Amazon S3 and licensed under Apache 2.0 License

OpenEBS

OpenEBS

OpenEBS allows you to treat your persistent workload containers, such as DBs on containers, just like other containers. OpenEBS itself is deployed as just another container on your host.

ClearDB

ClearDB

ClearDB uses a combination of advanced replication techniques, advanced cluster technology, and layered web services to provide you with a MySQL database that is "smarter" than usual.

Rackspace Cloud Files

Rackspace Cloud Files

Cloud Files, powered by OpenStack®, provides an easy to use online storage for files and media which can be delivered globally at blazing speeds over Akamai's content delivery network (CDN).

Storj

Storj

It is an open source, decentralized file storage solution. It uses encryption, file sharing, and a blockchain-based hash table to store files on a peer-to-peer network. The goal is to make cloud file storage faster, cheaper, and private.

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