Microsoft SQL Server on AWS
The most popular, secure, and reliable cloud for SQL Server
Customers have been running Windows workloads on AWS for over a decade. We run nearly 2x more Windows Server instances than the next largest cloud provider, according to an IDC report.
Amazon Web Services offers you the flexibility to run Microsoft SQL Server for as much or as little time as you need and select from a number of versions and editions. SQL Server on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) gives you complete control over every setting, just like when it’s installed on-premises. Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a fully managed service that takes care of all the maintenance, backups, and patching for you.
To see what versions and editions are available, read below for EC2 and go here for RDS. You can choose AWS license-included options on Amazon EC2 instances and Amazon RDS or choose to bring your own license on Amazon EC2.
SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 End of Support
Support ends for SQL Server 2008/2008 R2 on July 9, 2019. Bring your SQL Server 2008 workloads to the cloud and easily upgrade with AWS Systems Manager.
The AWS Advantage for SQL Server over the next largest cloud provider
2x
2x
7x
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5x
Why SQL Server on AWS
AWS offers the best cloud for SQL Server, and it is the right cloud platform for running Windows-based applications today and in the future. SQL Server on Windows or Linux on Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds, or even thousands of server instances simultaneously.
Greater Reliability
We have the best global infrastructure for running workloads that require high availability with 66 Availability Zones (AZ) across 21 Regions. The AWS Region/AZ model has been recognized by industry analysts as the recommended approach for running enterprise applications that require high availability and AWS provides >2x more regions with multiple availability zones than the next largest cloud provider (21 vs. 8). This is one of the reasons why the next largest cloud provider had 7x more downtime hours than AWS in 2018*.
Faster Performance
Recent benchmarks show more than 2x price-performance for SQL Server running on Windows Server on AWS over the next largest cloud provider. We offer fast and high throughput storage options with Amazon Elastic Block Store and local NVMe instance storage as well as high network bandwidth to accelerate performance.
More Security Capabilities
AWS offers 210 security, compliance, and governance services and key features which is about 40 more than the next largest cloud provider. We also support 89 security standards and compliance certifications including PCI-DSS, HIPAA/HITECH, FedRAMP, GDPR, FIPS 140-2, and NIST 800-171, which is meaningfully more than any other cloud provider. For encryption, all AWS services that store customer data offer the ability to encrypt that data and we offer encryption across 116 different AWS services which is 5X more than the next largest cloud provider.
More Migration Experience
No one has migrated more customers to the cloud than AWS, and customers can use a free well architected tool to help assess their workloads, right size their compute and storage and look at multiple pricing options. You can migrate your SQL Server databases quickly and securely with the AWS Database Migration Service. For SQL Server 2008, you can bring your databases to the cloud and easily upgrade them with AWS Systems Manager.
Lower Costs
AWS helps customers lower their overall costs of running Windows in the cloud with the most comprehensive family of EC2 instances and unique pricing models like Spot which can help customers save up to 90% on their Windows compute costs. Customer can also save money by moving their Microsoft Licenses to dedicated hosts on AWS like Xero did with their SQL Server migration. Dedicated hosts are also a great option for Windows or SQL Server instances that don’t have software assurance. You can’t bring those licenses to the next largest provider.
Popular AWS services for SQL Server workloads
When customers move their SQL Server databases to AWS, here are just some of the popular services that they can use as part of their deployments.
Choice of several versions of Microsoft SQL Server offers you the flexibility to run a database server for as much or as little time as you need, with complete control over the Windows Server settings.
Easy to use, high performance, and cost-effective block storage at any scale with the flexibility to choose from four different volume types for various capacity, price, and performance options. Change volume types, tune performance, or increase volume size without disruption to your SQL Server database.
Fully managed relational database service that offers SQL Server 2012, 2014, 2016 and 2017 while offloading database administration tasks like managing backups, detecting failures and recovering and much more, data transfer, DNS management, and a static IP – for a low, predictable price.
Managed Microsoft Active Directory in the AWS Cloud for organizations that rely on Active Directory for identity and access management and want close integration with your existing infrastructure.
AWS License Manager makes it easier to manage licenses in AWS and on-premises servers from software vendors such as Microsoft. Administrators create customized licensing rules to manage, discover, and report software license usage.
Customer Case Studies
Infor keeps pace with global business growth while saving time and money by going all in on AWS. It runs more than 30 customer-facing applications on the AWS Cloud, to provide enterprise resource planning and other software solutions to a range of enterprises worldwide. Infor uses Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon EC2 I2 instances, and has about two petabytes of application data to back up every day. By using Amazon Elastic Block Store volume types optimized for throughput, Infor can now complete these backups 30 percent more quickly, at a 75 percent cost savings.
Hess Corporation is a leading global independent energy company engaged in the exploration and production of crude oil and natural gas. In order to divest some of its business, the company used SQL on AWS to separate the business systems and data for potential buyers. Hess worked with Nimbo, one of our APN partners (Advanced Consulting Partner) to help migrate their infrastructure to AWS.
Kaplan is a global provider of educational services for individuals, schools, and businesses. After Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the company migrated its Kaplan Test Prep division to the AWS cloud, including datacenter hosting applications and databases, which were moved to Amazon RDS for SQL. As a result, Kaplan has reduced its datacenter footprint and improved user experience by leveraging multiple AWS regions to deliver content faster to its customers around the world.
Delaware North manages and provides food and beverage concessions, premium dining, entertainment, lodging, and retail at many large venues around the world, such as sports stadiums, entertainment complexes, national and state parks, airports, and casinos, serving more than 500 million customers at 200 venues each year. By moving most of its corporate datacenter operations to AWS, the company was able to reduce its server footprint by 91 percent and save at least $3.5 million over five years, while improving security compliance and disaster recovery. In addition to SQL, Delaware North runs Microsoft Windows Server and System Center Configuration Manager (SCCM) on AWS, among many other services.
Jobvite provides recruiting solutions to more than 1,600 customers, including LinkedIn, Twitter, Etsy, SpaceX, and Farmers Insurance. The company's customers depend on it to be fast and reliable, which became challenging with their prior solution. After moving to AWS for dev/test, staging, and production, server provisioning time went from weeks to minutes and uptime is now above 99.98 percent, while cutting costs by 35 percent. Jobvite is using dozens of AWS services, such as EC2, S3, ELB, WorkSpaces, and multiple versions of RDS, including SQL. By leveraging AWS, the company is able to achieve the scalability to expand to new markets and business segments.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is the trade association for the world’s airlines, representing 250 companies, which account for 84 percent of global air traffic. When the organization needed to boost the performance of its BI platform, it looked to AWS because of its pace of innovation, big data services portfolio, and security features – especially the ISO 27001 certification which IATA required for its highly confidential information. IATA is running SQL and SharePoint on AWS, in a hybrid solution integrated with its on premises Active Directory.
SQL Server Editions Available
Express Edition 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017: An entry-level database product that enables small database applications. The maximum size of a database supported is 10 GB. SQL Server Express is offered at no additional cost over the base Microsoft Windows Server instance price on EC2.
Web Edition 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017: A mid-level database product that is restricted to Web facing applications, and available at a low cost over the base Windows Server instance price on EC2. This product offers 524 PB database size, easy manageability, and is suitable for small- to large-scale Web applications.
Standard Edition 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017: A higher end database product that allows unrestricted use for building enterprise-scale applications with Windows and .NET, and massively scalable websites. Standard includes support for Mirroring, and is suitable for applications with High Availability needs.
Enterprise Edition 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017: A high end, datacenter database product offers “AlwaysOn” high availability, in-memory performance, enterprise scalability, self-service business intelligence and robust data quality. Enterprise is suitable for demanding database and business intelligence requirements.
All versions integrate with Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS), enabling you to take advantage of the persistence, performance, and reliability of Amazon EBS for all your databases. Click here to learn more about other database options with AWS. To find details on available AMIs please visit the Windows AMI page.
Blog posts & articles
April 15th 2019
February 18th 2019
November 28th 2018
October 15th 2018
October 5th 2018
Developer Resources
AWS offers a number of resources to get developers up and running quickly with Windows on AWS. These written guides include reference architectures and sample code which you can use to learn how to deploy SQL Server databases reliably. For example, our SDK for .NET utilizes APIs to help you quickly get started with .NET and AWS services.
In addition to these guides, we provide many other resources such as a documentation, training, videos, PowerShell tools, and more.
Documentation and Resources
This whitepaper focuses on best practices to attain the most value for the least cost when running Microsoft SQL Server on the AWS platform. Although for many generalpurpose use cases, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) for Microsoft SQL Server provides an easy and quick solution, in this paper we focus on scenarios where you need to push the limits to satisfy your special requirements.
This Quick Start implements a high availability solution built with Microsoft Windows Server and SQL Server running on Amazon EC2, using the Always On Availability Groups feature of SQL Server Enterprise edition. Explore a rich set of configuration options for SQL Server, Active Directory, and the WSFC cluster, including SQL Server version and licensing, tenancy options, and a choice of two Active Directory implementations: You can use AWS Directory Service for Active Directory, or manage the EC2 instances for Active Directory yourself.
This Quick Start deploys Microsoft Active Directory Domain Services (AD DS) on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) Cloud. AD DS and Domain Name System (DNS) are core Windows services that provide the foundation for many Microsoft-based solutions for the enterprise, including Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Exchange, and .NET Framework applications.
Host Microsoft Windows Server, SQL Server, SharePoint on the AWS Cloud
Get started building with Windows SQL Server in the AWS Console.