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  1. Stackups
  2. Application & Data
  3. Relational Databases
  4. Postgresql As A Service
  5. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL vs Serverless

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL vs Serverless

OverviewDecisionsComparisonAlternatives

Overview

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Stacks814
Followers607
Votes40
Serverless
Serverless
Stacks2.2K
Followers1.2K
Votes28
GitHub Stars46.9K
Forks5.7K

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL vs Serverless: What are the differences?

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL: * Set up, operate, and scale PostgreSQL deployments in the cloud*. Amazon RDS manages complex and time-consuming administrative tasks such as PostgreSQL software installation and upgrades, storage management, replication for high availability and back-ups for disaster recovery. With just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, you can deploy a PostgreSQL database with automatically configured database parameters for optimal performance. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database instances can be provisioned with either standard storage or Provisioned IOPS storage. Once provisioned, you can scale from 10GB to 3TB of storage and from 1,000 IOPS to 30,000 IOPS; Serverless: The most widely-adopted toolkit for building serverless applications. Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL can be classified as a tool in the "PostgreSQL as a Service" category, while Serverless is grouped under "Serverless / Task Processing".

"Easy setup, backup, monitoring" is the top reason why over 22 developers like Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, while over 10 developers mention "API integration " as the leading cause for choosing Serverless.

Serverless is an open source tool with 30.9K GitHub stars and 3.43K GitHub forks. Here's a link to Serverless's open source repository on GitHub.

Netflix, Instacart, and Product Hunt are some of the popular companies that use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, whereas Serverless is used by Plista GmbH, Droplr, and Hammerhead. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL has a broader approval, being mentioned in 167 company stacks & 29 developers stacks; compared to Serverless, which is listed in 117 company stacks and 44 developer stacks.

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Advice on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, Serverless

Tim
Tim

CTO at Checkly Inc.

Sep 18, 2019

Needs adviceonHerokuHerokuAWS LambdaAWS Lambda

When adding a new feature to Checkly rearchitecting some older piece, I tend to pick Heroku for rolling it out. But not always, because sometimes I pick AWS Lambda . The short story:

  • Developer Experience trumps everything.
  • AWS Lambda is cheap. Up to a limit though. This impact not only your wallet.
  • If you need geographic spread, AWS is lonely at the top.

The setup

Recently, I was doing a brainstorm at a startup here in Berlin on the future of their infrastructure. They were ready to move on from their initial, almost 100% Ec2 + Chef based setup. Everything was on the table. But we crossed out a lot quite quickly:

  • Pure, uncut, self hosted Kubernetes — way too much complexity
  • Managed Kubernetes in various flavors — still too much complexity
  • Zeit — Maybe, but no Docker support
  • Elastic Beanstalk — Maybe, bit old but does the job
  • Heroku
  • Lambda

It became clear a mix of PaaS and FaaS was the way to go. What a surprise! That is exactly what I use for Checkly! But when do you pick which model?

I chopped that question up into the following categories:

  • Developer Experience / DX 🤓
  • Ops Experience / OX 🐂 (?)
  • Cost 💵
  • Lock in 🔐

Read the full post linked below for all details

357k views357k
Comments
Lonnie
Lonnie

CEO - Co-founder US, Mexico Binational Tech Start-up Accelerator, Incubator at Framework Science

May 9, 2019

ReviewonAmazon DynamoDBAmazon DynamoDBAmazon RDS for PostgreSQLAmazon RDS for PostgreSQL

We use Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL because RDS and Amazon DynamoDB are two distinct database systems. DynamoDB is NoSQL DB whereas RDS is a relational database on the cloud. The pricing will mainly differ in the type of application you are using and your requirements. For some applications, both DynamoDB and RDS, can serve well, for some it might not. I do not think DynamoDB is cheaper. Right now we are helping Companies in Silicon Valley and in Southern California go SERVERLESS - drastically lowering costs if you are interested in hearing how we go about it.

9.18k views9.18k
Comments
Jorge
Jorge

Jan 15, 2020

Needs advice

Considering moving part of our PostgreSQL database infrastructure to the cloud, however, not quite sure between AWS, Heroku, Azure and Google cloud. Things to consider: The main reason is for backing up and centralize all our data in the cloud. With that in mind the main elements are: -Pricing for storage. -Small team. -No need for high throughput. -Support for docker swarm and Kubernetes.

51.8k views51.8k
Comments

Detailed Comparison

Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
Serverless
Serverless

Amazon RDS manages complex and time-consuming administrative tasks such as PostgreSQL software installation and upgrades, storage management, replication for high availability and back-ups for disaster recovery. With just a few clicks in the AWS Management Console, you can deploy a PostgreSQL database with automatically configured database parameters for optimal performance. Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL database instances can be provisioned with either standard storage or Provisioned IOPS storage. Once provisioned, you can scale from 10GB to 3TB of storage and from 1,000 IOPS to 30,000 IOPS.

Build applications comprised of microservices that run in response to events, auto-scale for you, and only charge you when they run. This lowers the total cost of maintaining your apps, enabling you to build more logic, faster. The Framework uses new event-driven compute services, like AWS Lambda, Google CloudFunctions, and more.

Monitoring and Metrics –Amazon RDS provides Amazon CloudWatch metrics for you DB Instance deployments at no additional charge.;DB Event Notifications –Amazon RDS provides Amazon SNS notifications via email or SMS for your DB Instance deployments.;Automatic Software Patching – Amazon RDS will make sure that the PostgreSQL software powering your deployment stays up-to-date with the latest patches.;Automated Backups – Turned on by default, the automated backup feature of Amazon RDS enables point-in-time recovery for your DB Instance.;DB Snapshots – DB Snapshots are user-initiated backups of your DB Instance.;Pre-configured Parameters – Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL deployments are pre-configured with a sensible set of parameters and settings appropriate for the DB Instance class you have selected.;PostGIS;Language Extensions :PL/Perl, PL/pgSQL, PL/Tcl;Full Text Search Dictionaries;Advanced Data Types : HStore, JSON;Core PostgreSQL engine features
-
Statistics
GitHub Stars
-
GitHub Stars
46.9K
GitHub Forks
-
GitHub Forks
5.7K
Stacks
814
Stacks
2.2K
Followers
607
Followers
1.2K
Votes
40
Votes
28
Pros & Cons
Pros
  • 25
    Easy setup, backup, monitoring
  • 13
    Geospatial support
  • 2
    Master-master replication using Multi-AZ instance
Pros
  • 14
    API integration
  • 7
    Supports cloud functions for Google, Azure, and IBM
  • 3
    Lower cost
  • 1
    Auto scale
  • 1
    Openwhisk
Integrations
No integrations available
Azure Functions
Azure Functions
AWS Lambda
AWS Lambda
Amazon API Gateway
Amazon API Gateway

What are some alternatives to Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL, Serverless?

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda

AWS Lambda is a compute service that runs your code in response to events and automatically manages the underlying compute resources for you. You can use AWS Lambda to extend other AWS services with custom logic, or create your own back-end services that operate at AWS scale, performance, and security.

Azure Functions

Azure Functions

Azure Functions is an event driven, compute-on-demand experience that extends the existing Azure application platform with capabilities to implement code triggered by events occurring in virtually any Azure or 3rd party service as well as on-premises systems.

Google Cloud Run

Google Cloud Run

A managed compute platform that enables you to run stateless containers that are invocable via HTTP requests. It's serverless by abstracting away all infrastructure management.

Heroku Postgres

Heroku Postgres

Heroku Postgres provides a SQL database-as-a-service that lets you focus on building your application instead of messing around with database management.

Google Cloud Functions

Google Cloud Functions

Construct applications from bite-sized business logic billed to the nearest 100 milliseconds, only while your code is running

Knative

Knative

Knative provides a set of middleware components that are essential to build modern, source-centric, and container-based applications that can run anywhere: on premises, in the cloud, or even in a third-party data center

OpenFaaS

OpenFaaS

Serverless Functions Made Simple for Docker and Kubernetes

ElephantSQL

ElephantSQL

ElephantSQL hosts PostgreSQL on Amazon EC2 in multiple regions and availability zones. The servers are continuously transferring the Write-Ahead-Log (the transaction log) to S3 for maximum reliability.

Nuclio

Nuclio

nuclio is portable across IoT devices, laptops, on-premises datacenters and cloud deployments, eliminating cloud lock-ins and enabling hybrid solutions.

Apache OpenWhisk

Apache OpenWhisk

OpenWhisk is an open source serverless platform. It is enterprise grade and accessible to all developers thanks to its superior programming model and tooling. It powers IBM Cloud Functions, Adobe I/O Runtime, Naver, Nimbella among others.

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