Choosing between Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS

Buffer pool extensions

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

BULK INSERT

Yes

Yes

Yes

See Integrating an Amazon RDS for SQL Server DB instance with Amazon S3 in the Amazon RDS documentation.

Change data capture (CDC)

Yes (Enterprise Edition: all versions; Standard Edition: 2016 SP1 and later)

Yes

Yes

See Using change data capture in the Amazon RDS documentation.

Change tracking

Yes

Yes

Yes

Columnstore indexes

Yes (Enterprise Edition: 2014 and later)

Yes (Enterprise Edition: 2019)

Yes (Enterprise Edition: 2014 and later)

Data Quality Services

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Database Mail

Yes

Yes

Yes

See the blog post Using Database Mail on Amazon RDS for SQL Server.

We encourage you to use the Amazon Simple Email Service (Amazon SES) to send outbound email originating from AWS resources, to ensure a high degree of deliverability.

Database Engine Tuning Advisor

Yes

Yes

Yes

DB event notifications

Yes

Yes

No (manually track and manage DB events)

See Using Amazon RDS event notification in the Amazon RDS documentation.

DDL event notifications

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Delayed transaction durability (lazy commit)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Distributed queries

Yes (SQL Server targets)

Yes (SQL Server targets)

Yes (SQL Server targets)

See the Implementing linked servers with Amazon RDS for SQL Server blog post.

Extended events

Yes

Yes

Yes

Extended stored procedures, including xp_cmdshell

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

File tables

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

FILESTREAM

No

Yes

Yes

FILESTREAM isn't compatible with Amazon RDS. However, you can configure the in-memory database.

Full-text search

Yes (except semantic search)

Yes

Yes

In-memory database

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Linked servers

Yes (SQL Server and Oracle targets)

Yes

Yes

See the Implementing linked servers with Amazon RDS for SQL Server blog post and Support for linked servers with Oracle OLEDB in Amazon RDS for SQL Server in the Amazon RDS documentation.

Machine Learning Services (with R scripts)

Yes

Yes

Yes

Machine Learning Services must be installed separately on a Windows or Linux machine. It's supported on an Always On Failover Cluster Instance (FCI) only in SQL Server 2019 and later.

Although R isn't supported on Amazon RDS, you can use it on AWS (see the blog post Getting started with R on AWS).

Maintenance plans

No

Yes

Yes

Amazon RDS provides a separate set of features to facilitate backup and recovery of databases. For backup, you can configure automated backup.

Master Data Services

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator (MSDTC)

Yes

Yes

Yes

See the blog post Enabling distributed transaction support for domain-joined Amazon RDS for SQL Server instances.

OPENROWSET

Yes

Yes

Yes

Partially contained databases

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Performance Data Collector

No

Yes

Yes

On Amazon RDS, you can use Amazon CloudWatch, AWS CloudTrail, and Performance Insights to monitor your SQL Server performance (see Overview of monitoring Amazon RDS in the Amazon RDS documentation).

Policy-Based Management

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

PolyBase

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Preconfigured parameters

Yes

No

No

Resource Governor

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Safe CLR

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and 2016)

Yes

Yes

Sequences

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Server-level triggers

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Service Broker

Yes (except endpoints)

Yes

Yes

Spatial and location features

Yes

Yes

Yes

SQL Server Agent

Yes

Yes

Yes

SQL Server Analysis Services (SSAS)

Yes (SQL Server 2016 and later)

Yes

Yes

See Support for SSAS in Amazon RDS for SQL Server in the Amazon RDS documentation.

SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS)

Yes (SQL Server 2016 and later)

Yes

Yes

See Support for SSIS in Amazon RDS for SQL Server in the Amazon RDS documentation.

SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS)

Yes

Yes

Yes

SQL Server Migration Assistant (SSMA)

Yes

Yes

Yes

SQL Server Profiler

Yes (server-side and client-side traces)

Yes

Yes

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS)

Yes (SQL Server 2016 and later)

Yes

Yes

See Support for SSRS in Amazon RDS for SQL Server in the Amazon RDS documentation.

sqlcmd

Yes

Yes

Yes

Stretch Database

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

THROW statement

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Transact-SQL endpoints

No

Yes

Yes

All operations that use CREATE ENDPOINT are unavailable on Amazon RDS. We recommend that you install SQL Server on an EC2 instance for these operations.

UTF-16 support

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

WCF Data Service

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Always On availability groups

Yes

Yes (both synchronous and asynchronous)

Yes

If you need a self-managed Always On availability group, we recommend that you use AWS Launch Wizard to simplify SQL Server HA deployment on an EC2 instance. See AWS Launch Wizard for SQL Server in the AWS documentation.

Always On Failover Cluster Instances (FCIs)

No

Yes

Yes

You can use AWS Launch Wizard to simplify your SQL Server FCI deployment on Amazon EC2. See AWS Launch Wizard for SQL Server in the AWS documentation.

Backing up to Amazon S3

Yes

Yes

Yes

Amazon RDS supports native backup and restore for SQL Server databases by using full backup files (.bak files) and Amazon S3 as a repository. See Importing and Exporting SQL Server databases in the Amazon RDS documentation.

BACKUP command

No

Yes

Yes

See How do I perform native backups of an Amazon RDS DB instance that's running SQL Server? in AWS Knowledge Center.

Database mirroring

Yes (Multi-AZ)

Yes

Yes

Database replication

No (limited push subscription)

Yes

Yes

If you want to replicate a single table on Amazon RDS, you can also use AWS DMS or set up read replicas.

Distributed availability groups

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Log shipping

No

Yes

Yes

For disaster recovery purposes, you can use read replicas or AWS DMS.

Managed automated backups

Yes

Yes

No (requires configuring and managing maintenance plans, or using third-party solutions)

See Working with backups in the Amazon RDS documentation.

Multi-AZ with automated failover

Yes

Yes (with manual configuration of Always On availability groups)

Yes (Enterprise Edition only, with manual configuration of Always On availability groups)

See Multi-AZ deployments for Amazon RDS for SQL Server in the Amazon RDS documentation.

Read replicas

Yes (SQL Server 2016 and later)

Yes (with manual configuration of Always On availability groups)

Yes (with manual configuration of Always On availability groups)

RESTORE command

Yes

Yes

Yes

See AWS Knowledge Center.

Built-in instance and database monitoring and metrics

Yes

No

No (export your own metrics to CloudWatch or use a third-party solution)

See the blog post Monitor your SQL Server database by using custom metrics with Amazon CloudWatch and AWS Systems Manager.

Configurable storage size

Yes

Yes

Yes

Maximum number of databases per instance

Depends on the instance size and Multi-AZ configuration

SQL Server maximum (5000)

No limitation

See Maximum capacity specifications for SQL Server in the Microsoft SQL Server documentation.

Maximum storage size of a DB instance

16 TiB

16 TiB

No limitation

Amazon RDS also supports tempdb databases on local disks by using Non-Volatile Memory Express (NVMe) instance storage. See Instance store support for the tempdb database on Amazon RDS for SQL Server in the Amazon RDS documentation.

Minimum storage size of a DB instance

20 GiB

20 GiB

No limitation

New Query Optimizer

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Read replicas

Yes (SQL Server 2016 and later)

Yes (with manual configuration of Always On availability groups)

Yes (with manual configuration of Always On availability groups)

Automatic software patching

Yes

No

No

Encrypted storage using AWS KMS

Yes (all SQL Server editions except Express)

Yes

Yes

See the blog post Securing data in Amazon RDS using AWS KMS encryption.

Flexible server roles

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2014 and later)

SQL authentication

Yes

Yes

Yes

SQL Server audit

Yes

Yes

Yes

SSL (encryption in transit)

Yes

Yes

Yes

See Using SSL with a Microsoft SQL Server DB instance in the Amazon RDS documentation.

sysadmin role

No

Yes

Yes

For unsupported server-level roles, see Microsoft SQL Server security in the Amazon RDS documentation.

When you create a new RDS DB instance, the default master user that you use gets certain privileges for that DB instance (see Account privileges in the Amazon RDS documentation).

TDE (encryption at rest)

Yes (Enterprise Edition: 2014-2019; Standard Edition: 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2019 Enterprise, Standard, Web, and Developer Editions)

Yes (Enterprise Edition: 2014-2019; Standard Edition: 2019)

See information about TDE support in the Amazon RDS and Amazon RDS Custom documentation.

Windows Authentication

Yes

Yes

Yes

Ability to install a third-party agent

No

Yes

Yes

Ability to rename existing databases

Yes (Single-AZ only)

Yes (not available for databases in availability groups or enabled for mirroring)

Yes (not available for databases in availability groups or enabled for mirroring)

For Multi-AZ deployments on Amazon RDS, see Renaming a Microsoft SQL Server database in a Multi-AZ deployment in the Amazon RDS documentation.

Control over DB instance and operating system

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Custom set time zones

Yes

Yes

Yes

Distributed Replay

No

Yes

Yes

The SQL Server Distributed Replay client service requires sysadmin permissions, which is why it isn't supported in Amazon RDS.

Import data into the msdb database

No

Yes

Yes

If this feature is critical to your workload, consider choosing Amazon RDS Custom or Amazon EC2.

Installation methods

N/A

N/A

Amazon Machine Image (AMI) or manual installation

SQL Server editions

Enterprise, Standard, Web, Express

Enterprise, Standard, Developer

Enterprise, Standard, Web, Developer, Express

SQL Server versions

2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022

2019, 2022

2014, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2022