This whitepaper focuses on best practices to attain the most value for the least cost when running Microsoft SQL Server on AWS. Although, for many general-purpose use cases, Amazon RDS for Microsoft SQL Server (MS SQL) provides an easy and quick solution, this paper focuses on scenarios where you need to push the limits to satisfy your special requirements.
In particular, this paper explains how you can minimize your costs, maximize availability of your SQL Server databases, optimize your infrastructure for maximum performance, and tighten it for security compliance, while enabling operational excellence for ongoing maintenance. The flexibility of AWS services, combined with the power of Microsoft SQL Server, can provide expanded capabilities for those who seek innovative approaches to optimize their applications and transform their businesses.
The main focus of this paper is on the capabilities available in Microsoft SQL Server 2019, which is the most current version at the time of this publication. Existing databases that run on previous versions (2008, 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2017) can be migrated to SQL Server 2019 and run in compatibility mode.
Mainstream and extended support for SQL Server 2000, 2005, and 2008 has been discontinued by Microsoft. Any database running on those versions of SQL Server must be upgraded to a supported version first. Although it is possible to run those versions of SQL Server on AWS, that discussion is outside the scope of this whitepaper.
