YugabyteDB vs Amazon Aurora
YugabyteDB is the better choice for you if:
- Your workloads need to be able to scale writes without hitting the bottleneck of a single write master
- Your applications need data residency, ultra-resilience, or low latency access across cloud regions
- You need architectural freedom because you have workloads on multiple public and hybrid clouds
- You need flexibility to run SQL and NoSQL workloads using the same database
What are the differences between YugabyteDB and Amazon Aurora?
1. YugabyteDB can scale reads and writes horizontally without limits
YugabyteDB is a multi-master distributed transactional database. Every node in a YugabyteDB cluster can handle reads as well as writes. As you add nodes to a YugabyteDB cluster, read and write throughput and storage capacity scale linearly.
In contrast, Aurora is not a distributed database. Amazon Aurora scales reads in a cluster by using a distributed storage layer. A cluster can have multiple read nodes that can span cloud regions. But a cluster has only a single write node, and all writes have to go through that write master. This creates three problems – 1. The write throughput of the cluster is limited by the capacity of the write master node, 2. In multi-AZ and multi-region clusters, this can add significant latency, 3. The write master node is a single point of failure.
Recently, AWS introduced a new sharded database configuration (known as Aurora Limitless Database). But Aurora Limitless lacks many essential SQL features, like global unique indexes (necessary where tables usually have more than one key) and serializable transaction isolation. It also doesn’t provide full resilience – failover and upgrades incur downtime. These limitations render Aurora Limitless unsuitable for business-critical cloud native applications.
2. Built-in replication delivers ultra-resilience with 0 RPO and RTO in seconds
Global applications need multi-region databases for ultra-resilience, data residency, and low-latency access across different geographies. With YugabyteDB, you can design and deploy the ideal architecture for your global application.
YugabyteDB offers a wider range of multi-region blueprints using built-in synchronous and asynchronous replication, allowing you to achieve the optimal balance of latency, resilience, and consistency. These include globally-consistent multi-region clusters, read replicas, xCluster asynchronous replication for disaster recovery, two-data-center configurations, row-level geo-partitioning, and more.
With YugabyteDB, you can achieve zero RPO (no data loss) and an RTO of under 5 seconds even in a multi-region environment. Aurora cannot provide an RPO=0 for multi-region configurations. Aurora typically takes 30-60 seconds to fail over.
3. You can geo-partition YugabyteDB clusters for compliance and low latency
One of the key geo-distribution features of YugabyteDB is row-level geo-partitioning, which allows fine-grained control over the geographic placement of data in a user table at the level of a table row. You can tie your data to a specific region for compliance with data residency laws or for providing low latency access to users in geographically distributed locations.
Aurora Global Database does not offer geo-partitioning capabilities. There are significant costs
associated with data access and for any sort of distribution of data when you deploy multi-region clusters.
4. YugabyteDB offers infrastructure choice with hybrid and multi-cloud deployments
YugabyteDB can be deployed in any public, private, hybrid, or multi-cloud environment, whether it is bare metal, virtual, or container-based. This allows you to seamlessly operate across public, private, and hybrid clouds to ensure flexibility and avoid vendor lock-in.
We recognize that multi-cloud decisions are driven by the need to maintain strategic optionality. Being able to switch cloud providers, or move on-premises when needed, allows you to retain negotiating power. Global regulatory changes are also mandating a reduction in cloud concentration risk, and proven resilience, in the event of the failure of a cloud provider’s infrastructure. This is why infrastructure choice is important.
With Aurora, you are locked in to AWS. You cannot deploy a database in another public cloud provider or in a hybrid cloud environment.
5. You can run relational and semi-relational workloads on YugabyteDB
YugabyteDB offers a fully-relational API that is runtime compatible with PostgreSQL as well as a flexible-schema semi-relational API with roots in Apache Cassandra query language (CQL) best suited for internet-scale OLTP apps. The API flexibility allows you to run a wide range of applications on YugabyteDB.
YugabyteDB and Amazon Aurora Side by Side
| Key Outcomes | Feature | Aurora | YugabyteDB |
|---|---|---|---|
| Enhanced Productivity | Query language | PostgreSQL and MySQL (SQL only) | PostgreSQL (SQL) and Cassandra (NoSQL) |
| Distributed transactions | No, multi-region ACID writes are not possible | Yes, globally distributed ACID transactions | |
| Multi-master writes | Max of two write nodes but is limited to MySQL, a single region, and no read nodes | Yes, infinite write scalability | |
| Writes scalability | No, single write node handles all writes and syncs to read replicas in other zones | All nodes can read and write, performance scales linearly with cluster size | |
| Consistent and scalable reads | Partial. Read replicas are scalable, but not consistent due to async replication that can cause stale reads. | Yes, synchronous replication across zones and regions | |
| Asysnchronous read replicas | Up to 15 within same AWS region | Unlimited number across multiple zones or regions | |
| High Resiliency | Single point of failure | Yes, single node for writes and consistent reads | No, availability zone and region level fault tolerance |
| Replication options | Asynchronous, Multi-master | Strongly consistent synchronous and xCluster asynchronous replication BDR | |
| Supported regions | 24 regions | 45 regions across cloud providers for YugabyteDB Aeon; unlimited for self-managed | |
| Improved efficiency | Cloud shell | No | Yes |
| Upgrade method | Online with disruption, no rolling upgrades | Online with non-disruptive with rolling upgrades | |
| Performance advisor | No | Yes | |
| Storage architecture | Shared storage that scales up to 128TB | No theoretical limits, live customers running ~1 PB | |
| Geo-partioning | No | Yes, row level | |
| Greater Savings | Multi-cloud | No | Yes |
| Licensing | Computing, storage, network and backup costs based on usage and IOs. Requires close monitoring | OSS version free. DBaaS offerings priced per core with unlimited usage | |
| Migration | Multiple tools needed, AWS DMS and AWS Schema Conversion Tool | YugabyteDB Voyager migrates schema and data from Oracle, MySQL and PostgreSQL offerings | |
| Open source | No | Yes, Apache 2.0 License | |
| Greater Savings | Patching methods | Online with outages | Online non-disruptive |
| On-prem, self-managed DBaaS | no | Yes, with YugabyteDB Anywhere | |
| Security compliance | SOC II Type 2, PCI DSS, HIPAA, GDPR | ISO 27001, SOC II Type 2 |
Market Leaders Trust YugabyteDB
FAQ
YugabyteDB re-uses the upper half of PostgreSQL allowing us to offer advanced features and provide a seamless transition to distributed SQL. Below the API layer, Yugabyte has completely re architected a distributed, transactional storage layer to seamless handle spreading the database across numerous nodes. Think of YugabyteDB as PostgreSQL for the cloud native world.
YugabyteDB offers a range of deployment options to suit diverse infrastructure needs and preferences. You can deploy it as a fully managed DBaaS on your preferred cloud platform (AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud). You can also deploy it as a self-managed DBaaS on public clouds, on-premises, or in a hybrid setup. Additionally, YugabyteDB can be installed on VMs, containers, or bare-metal systems.
Yes, like PostgreSQL, the YugabyteDB database is 100% open source under the Apache 2.0 license and is available for download on Github. Our commercial DBaaS solutions include support and a powerful control plane for easy deployment and scalable management.