Amazon Web Services LLC (AWS) has announced new managed services for Windows developers with the worldwide launch of Amazon Relational Database Services (Amazon RDS) for Microsoft SQL Server and ASP.NET support for AWS Elastic Beanstalk.
Businesses can now take advantage of the managed database and application services to deploy, manage and scale SQL Server databases and ASP.NET applications using familiar Microsoft tools. Amazon RDS currently supports SQL Server 2008 R2 and plans to add support for SQL Server 2012 later this year.
Deploying and managing databases is one of the most complex, time-consuming, and expensive activities in IT. Amazon RDS removes this complexity and makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database by managing database administration tasks such as software installation and patching, monitoring, and back-ups for disaster recovery. Businesses of all sizes have taken advantage of Amazon RDS to offload the operational responsibilities of their MySQL and Oracle databases. With this launch, Amazon RDS brings the same benefits to SQL Server customers. Amazon RDS supports Express, Web, Standard and Enterprise Editions of SQL Server.
“Amazon RDS now supports three of the most popular relational database engines, giving businesses the flexibility to launch a managed Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle or MySQL database based on the needs of their application. With Amazon RDS, customers no longer have to become experts in database set-up and management and can shift their focus to building and improving the capabilities of their applications,” said Charlie Bell, Vice President, Amazon Web Services. “We’re excited to give Windows and ASP.Net developers new options for taking advantage of AWS to quickly deploy and easily manage their databases and applications in the cloud.”
New customers can get started with Amazon RDS for SQL Server with a Free Usage Tier, which includes 750 hours per month of Amazon RDS micro instances with SQL Server Express Edition, 20GB of database storage and 10 million I/O requests per month. After the Free Usage Tier, customers can run Amazon RDS for SQL Server under two different licensing models - "License Included" and Microsoft License Mobility.
Under the “License Included” service model, customers do not need separately purchased SQL Server software licenses. “License Included” pricing starts at $0.035/hour and is inclusive of SQL Server software, hardware, and Amazon RDS management capabilities. The Microsoft License Mobility program allows customers who already own SQL Server licenses to run SQL Server deployments on Amazon RDS. This benefit is available to Microsoft Volume Licensing customers with SQL Server licenses covered by active Microsoft Software Assurance contracts. The Microsoft License Mobility program is suited for customers who prefer to use existing SQL Server licenses or purchase new licenses directly from Microsoft.
AWS Elastic Beanstalk gives developers an even easier way to quickly deploy and manage their Java, PHP and as of today, their ASP.NET applications in the AWS cloud. Developers simply upload their application, and Elastic Beanstalk automatically handles the deployment details of capacity provisioning, load balancing, auto-scaling, and application health monitoring. Because Elastic Beanstalk leverages the familiar IIS 7.5 software stack, existing ASP.NET applications can be deployed with minimal changes to the underlying code. To get started, developers can use the AWS Toolkit for Visual Studio or the AWS Management Console to create applications and environments. There is no additional charge for Elastic Beanstalk, and customers pay only for the AWS resources needed to run their applications.
