Amazon EC2 or Amazon RDS, when to choose?
Tags: ec2, rds, aws, communitybuilder
Published: 2024-06-24 13:19:17

The video is in Portuguese (BR), but I'll leave the content below in English of the same thing I covered in the video! I hope you enjoy it.

Today I will discuss two important AWS services: Amazon EC2 and Amazon RDS. I'll explain when you should choose one or the other, with tips to help you make the best decision for your cloud projects. Let's go!

## Amazon EC2

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) is a service that provides scalable computing capacity in the cloud. It is ideal for:

1. Flexibility and control -> If you need total control over the operating system, software, and execution environment, EC2 is the right choice. You can install, configure, and manage everything according to your needs.

2. Customized applications -> Use EC2 when your applications require a highly customized environment that cannot be achieved with managed services. Examples include game servers, custom development environments, and legacy applications.

3. Variable workloads -> If your workloads are variable and unpredictable, EC2 offers the flexibility to adjust computing capacity quickly. This is useful for e-commerce sites with seasonal peaks, marketing campaigns, and product launches.

4. High performance -> For applications that require high performance, such as scientific computing, large-scale data analysis, and machine learning, EC2 instances optimized for computing are ideal.

## Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is a managed service that facilitates the configuration, operation, and scalability of relational databases in the cloud. Choose RDS for:

1. Simple management -> RDS automates time-consuming tasks such as hardware provisioning, database configuration, patching, and backups. It's perfect for companies that want to focus on application development rather than infrastructure management.

2. High availability -> RDS offers high availability and disaster recovery options with Multi-AZ replicas, which replicate your data in multiple availability zones. Ideal for critical applications that cannot afford downtime.

3. Automatic scalability -> RDS allows you to easily adjust storage and computing capacity according to your business needs. It's great for applications that need to grow quickly without the complexity of managing the underlying hardware.

4. Security and compliance: RDS integrates with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and offers encryption at rest and in transit, meeting strict compliance and security requirements. Perfect for financial, healthcare, and other applications that handle sensitive data.

## Examples of use

EC2 -> A startup developing a new online game can use EC2 to create game servers that need a highly customized environment and total control over configuration.

RDS -> An e-commerce store can use RDS to manage its database of products and transactions, taking advantage of automatic scalability and high availability.

In summary, use Amazon EC2 when you need total control and flexibility over your computing environment, and choose Amazon RDS to simplify database management, guaranteeing high availability and scalability. I hope these tips have helped you better understand when to use each of these services.