Working with Cloud Backups: RDS Backup With the Power of SQL Server

There were times when simple cloud storage services were more than enough for any kind of organization. But with moving times, a database of the organization has increased exponentially. Thus nowadays backups are also available in different formats and ranges.

It has been generally observed that most of the organizations host their production environment on cloud backup but when it comes to their testing, development, debugging and reporting data they generally prefer their own staging environment for that. But now the whole process can be automated and made lighter weighted fewer complexes and saves a lot of time. With RDS databases on board with SQL servers, this problem no more persists. But before that let’s understand that what is RDS backup service?

What is RDS Backup?

Relational database management service or RDS backup that is easy to set up, operate and scale a database in the cloud. The best part is that it is cost-efficient and the capacity can be resized anytime one wants. The whole point of managing such time-consuming database administration tasks will free the company and thus allowing them to put the focus on applications and business.

The possibilities to use some of the amazing languages with RDS backups provide opportunities to make use of MySQL, Oracle, etc. All of this together makes RDS backups automatic and thus simultaneously keeps your database software up to date along with the latest version. The question might arise in your mind that what special RDS manages?

RDS manages the work that may be involved in setting up a relational database. Once all the setup is ready and installed, RDS automates processes like performing backups or patching software. This automation powers your database with optional deployments. Does this count in any special management? If not then it also manages synchronous data replication across all the available zones that also have automatic fail-over.

But that setting that is very integral to your database and may be specific to your application does not come under the responsibility of RDS backup. For optimizing the database according to the workflow of the application, additional relational schemas will be required. But as well we know that desperate times require desperate measures.

RDS vs EC2

Still in the dilemma of selecting which cloud backup service? It should be RDS or EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud)? Although both the options of cloud backups storage services have an equally secured environment and almost the same scalability level but consists of many differences too at the same time. RDS comes with this edge in the form of an advantage to the developers. It reduces all the other administrative responsibilities but the choice between RDS and EC2 cannot be just based on this instance.

Each one of them has its own set of pros and cons, so the selection totally depends on the qualities of each that might suit your business. But for determining this, one should definitely aware of the priority list for their business and to reach their set goals.

EC2 offers complete control and commendable flexibility for your SQL database. But there are many other several factors that put RDS cloud backup solution a little forward-

• With RDS, you can easily outsource tasks like the database can be easily provisioned and the versions can be updated keeping your database secured with the help of its proficiency.
• Keeps your developers and testers to keep focus on tasks that are more important tasks and side by side schemes your database by optimizing.
• With RDS on role, no more requirement for manual setup of database mirroring through highly optimized database solutions and synchronous multi-AZ replication.
• The best quality of RDS that is the most responsible for this inclination is its disaster management. During any emergency or disaster times, RDS automates all the processes which are the actual requirement for any backup solution.

Some of the Factors that are not available with RDS but with EC2 are-

• EC2 comes with full control over the database as well as over the operating system.
• You have full freedom to hire your own database administrator
• The SQL server features are also supported by EC2 that is currently an unavailable option with RDS.
• It also has provision for expanding the database size to maximum and elevates performance needs.
• It can setup disaster recovery solution with SQL server.

Knowing this you might be able to easily decide the cloud backup solution for your database. But for that you need to know how to automate the SQL server backup can be restored with RDS. So for this there are 3 prerequisites that needs to be covered-

1. One Amazon S3 bucket wherein all your backup files will be stored.

   

2. One AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) role so that you can access the bucket.

Ok so this starts by creating a .bak file

1. The production RDS SQL instance should be connected to the SQL Server Management Studio.
   
2. The SQL Server Agent should be expanded in the Object Explorer.
   
3. Then select “NEW JOB” from “JOBS”.
4. These were the basic steps and for the rest of the information, you can refer directly the AWS documentation for the same.
5. Then after following all the steps, to get the desired frequency you can add schedule to the JOB. With this one can easily invoke desired frequency.
   These are the easiest steps to automate SQL server backup with RDS.

What is the Advantage of an SQL Server?

Since the SQL is on the cloud, data has been starting to get a royal treatment. The SQL database, in particular, can store the big bulk of the data. The data is all distributed well and the cloud can handle the cold data on sideways. By the data integrated on an SQL server gives the real-time ability analytics based on fully-in-memory optimized transaction tables.

There was a time when you had to move data just to separate out analytics workloads. But now with the SQL server, you no need to go for that same procedure any more. So basically one can easily consider SQL server as a restore enhancement with redefined capabilities. But this is not enough, let’s go through some more advantages-

Improved Disaster Recovery- The flexibility, reliability and it being limitless makes it best suitable for all the disaster recoveries. The backups are available from anywhere and can be retrieved any time for the restores.

Better Archives- with SQL server, you get better archives. The storage provides an instant and highly available durable archiving option.

Minimum Hardware Management- This advantage comes with cost benefits also. There are no overhead costs or expertise involved for hardware management. It is redundant and protects the database against all kinds of hardware failures.

High Speed- SQL queries can be retrieved in large amounts in no time. They are efficient enough to support any size of database with high and un-metered speed.

Clear Cut Standards- Databases that are based on SQL servers uses long term established standard and are adhered to the international standards. These standards are clear cut and are well suited for all the major working environments.

Apart from this, continuous development is been made in the field storage backup to make it more resilient. Now it has become so easy to sync two databases and mirror primary and partner servers. Hence, the overall availability of the system has been improved. The restores have become more synchronized and thus SQL servers are been recommended for production deployments. And with the things discussed before you can now easily select between SQL server on EC2 and SQL server RDS. But one thing is clear that be it a serious project or any simple deployment, SQL server is the best fit for both.