Amazon ElastiCache vs Amazon RDS

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Amazon ElastiCache

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Amazon ElastiCache vs Amazon RDS: What are the differences?

Developers describe Amazon ElastiCache as "Deploy, operate, and scale an in-memory cache in the cloud". ElastiCache improves the performance of web applications by allowing you to retrieve information from fast, managed, in-memory caches, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. ElastiCache supports Memcached and Redis. On the other hand, Amazon RDS is detailed as "Set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud". 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.

Amazon ElastiCache can be classified as a tool in the "Managed Memcache" category, while Amazon RDS is grouped under "SQL Database as a Service".

Some of the features offered by Amazon ElastiCache are:

  • Support for two engines: Memcached and Redis
  • Ease of management via the AWS Management Console. With a few clicks you can configure and launch instances for the engine you wish to use.
  • Compatibility with the specific engine protocol. This means most of the client libraries will work with the respective engines they were built for - no additional changes or tweaking required.

On the other hand, Amazon RDS provides the following key features:

  • Pre-configured Parameters
  • Monitoring and Metrics
  • Automatic Software Patching

"Redis" is the primary reason why developers consider Amazon ElastiCache over the competitors, whereas "Reliable failovers" was stated as the key factor in picking Amazon RDS.

According to the StackShare community, Amazon RDS has a broader approval, being mentioned in 1408 company stacks & 509 developers stacks; compared to Amazon ElastiCache, which is listed in 342 company stacks and 79 developer stacks.

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Pros of Amazon ElastiCache
Pros of Amazon RDS
  • 57
    Redis
  • 32
    High-performance
  • 26
    Backed by amazon
  • 21
    Memcached
  • 14
    Elastic
  • 165
    Reliable failovers
  • 156
    Automated backups
  • 130
    Backed by amazon
  • 92
    Db snapshots
  • 87
    Multi-availability
  • 30
    Control iops, fast restore to point of time
  • 28
    Security
  • 24
    Elastic
  • 20
    Push-button scaling
  • 20
    Automatic software patching
  • 4
    Replication
  • 3
    Reliable
  • 2
    Isolation

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What is Amazon ElastiCache?

ElastiCache improves the performance of web applications by allowing you to retrieve information from fast, managed, in-memory caches, instead of relying entirely on slower disk-based databases. ElastiCache supports Memcached and Redis.

What is 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.

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What are some alternatives to Amazon ElastiCache and Amazon RDS?
Redis
Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache, and message broker. Redis provides data structures such as strings, hashes, lists, sets, sorted sets with range queries, bitmaps, hyperloglogs, geospatial indexes, and streams.
Elasticsearch
Elasticsearch is a distributed, RESTful search and analytics engine capable of storing data and searching it in near real time. Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats and Logstash are the Elastic Stack (sometimes called the ELK Stack).
Memcached
Memcached is an in-memory key-value store for small chunks of arbitrary data (strings, objects) from results of database calls, API calls, or page rendering.
Azure Redis Cache
It perfectly complements Azure database services such as Cosmos DB. It provides a cost-effective solution to scale read and write throughput of your data tier. Store and share database query results, session states, static contents, and more using a common cache-aside pattern.
Amazon DynamoDB
With it , you can offload the administrative burden of operating and scaling a highly available distributed database cluster, while paying a low price for only what you use.
See all alternatives