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Azure Cosmos DB VS Amazon Aurora

Compare Azure Cosmos DB VS Amazon Aurora and see what are their differences

Azure Cosmos DB logo Azure Cosmos DB

NoSQL JSON database for rapid, iterative app development.

Amazon Aurora logo Amazon Aurora

MySQL and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud. Performance and availability of commercial-grade databases at 1/10th the cost.
  • Azure Cosmos DB Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-16
  • Amazon Aurora Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-03-17

Azure Cosmos DB features and specs

  • Global Distribution
    Azure Cosmos DB allows for the distribution of data across multiple global regions, enhancing availability and delivering low-latency access to data for users around the world.
  • Multi-Model Support
    It supports multiple data models including document, graph, key-value, and column-family APIs, making it versatile for a variety of applications and use cases.
  • Automatic Scaling
    The database automatically scales up and down to meet the demands of application traffic, helping to manage workloads efficiently without manual intervention.
  • High Throughput and Low Latency
    Cosmos DB offers high performance with single-digit millisecond read and write latencies, ensuring fast access to data for applications.
  • Comprehensive SLAs
    Azure Cosmos DB provides industry-leading SLAs covering availability, throughput, consistency, and latency, offering strong guarantees for customers.
  • Integrated Security
    It includes robust security features such as SSL/TLS encryption, role-based access control, and integration with Azure Active Directory for secure data management.

Possible disadvantages of Azure Cosmos DB

  • Cost
    Azure Cosmos DB can be expensive, especially for high-throughput workloads and global distribution scenarios. Its pricing model based on provisioned throughput (RU/s) can add up quickly.
  • Complexity
    Managing and optimizing Cosmos DB can be complex, requiring a deep understanding of its configuration settings, partitioning strategies, and indexing to achieve optimal performance.
  • Vendor Lock-In
    As a proprietary service, using Cosmos DB tightly couples your application to Azure. This can make it difficult to migrate to other database solutions or cloud providers in the future.
  • Consistency Models
    Azure Cosmos DB supports multiple consistency levels which can introduce complexity in designing applications. Developers need to understand and choose the appropriate consistency level for their specific use case.
  • Limited Native Analytics
    Cosmos DB does not have built-in advanced analytics capabilities. Integrating with other services like Azure Synapse or Databricks may be necessary for sophisticated data analytics and reporting.

Amazon Aurora features and specs

  • High Performance
    Amazon Aurora is designed to provide up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL and three times the throughput of standard PostgreSQL databases.
  • Scalability
    Aurora scales storage automatically, growing from 10GB up to 128TB with no downtime. This automatic scaling makes it ideal for applications with fluctuating workloads.
  • High Availability and Durability
    Aurora automatically replicates six copies of data across three availability zones and continuously backs up data to Amazon S3, ensuring durability.
  • Security
    Aurora offers multiple layers of security including network isolation using Amazon VPC, encryption at rest using keys that you create and control through AWS Key Management Service (KMS), and encryption of data in transit using SSL.
  • Fully Managed
    Aurora is fully managed by AWS, which automates time-consuming administrative tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups.
  • Compatibility
    Aurora is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL, making it easier to migrate existing applications to Aurora with minimal changes.

Possible disadvantages of Amazon Aurora

  • Cost
    Aurora can be more expensive than traditional RDS instances, particularly for workloads that do not fully utilize its high performance and scalability features.
  • Complexity
    The numerous features and configurations can make Aurora complex to manage and tune, especially for those who are not familiar with AWS services.
  • Vendor Lock-in
    Adopting Aurora ties you into the AWS ecosystem, which can make it difficult to migrate to other cloud providers or on-premises systems.
  • Cold Start Latency
    Aurora Serverless can experience latency during cold starts, which can be problematic for applications requiring instant scalability.
  • Limited to AWS Environment
    Aurora is only available within the AWS environment, which can be limiting if your infrastructure spans multiple cloud providers.

Azure Cosmos DB videos

Azure Cosmos DB: Comprehensive Overview

More videos:

  • Review - Azure Friday | Azure Cosmos DB with Scott Hanselman
  • Tutorial - Azure Cosmos DB Tutorial | Globally distributed NoSQL database

Amazon Aurora videos

Introduction to Amazon Aurora - Relational Database Built for the Cloud - AWS

More videos:

  • Review - Amazon Aurora Global Database Deep Dive
  • Review - What's New in Amazon Aurora - AWS Online Tech Talks

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Azure Cosmos DB and Amazon Aurora)
Databases
51 51%
49% 49
NoSQL Databases
67 67%
33% 33
Relational Databases
19 19%
81% 81
Graph Databases
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Amazon Aurora should be more popular than Azure Cosmos DB. It has been mentiond 23 times since March 2021. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Azure Cosmos DB mentions (9)

  • Blazor server app, deployment options
    If you are writing the code maybe consider learning Cosmos DB it’s pretty easy to work with and there is a free tier. Also in my experience it’s much faster than a SQL database. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Infrastructure as code (IaC) for Java-based apps on Azure
    Sometimes you don’t need an entire Java-based microservice. You can build serverless APIs with the help of Azure Functions. For example, Azure functions have a bunch of built-in connectors like Azure Event Hubs to process event-driven Java code and send the data to Azure Cosmos DB in real-time. FedEx and UBS projects are great examples of real-time, event-driven Java. I also recommend you to go through 👉 Code,... - Source: dev.to / over 2 years ago
  • Deploying a Mostly Serverless Website on GCP
    When debating the database solution for our application we were really seeking for a scalable serverless database that wouldn’t bill us for idle time. Options like AWS Athena, AWS Aurora Serverless, and Azure Cosmos DB immediately came to mind. We believed that GCP would have a comparable service, yet we could not find one. Even after consulting the GCP cloud service comparison documentation we were still unable... - Source: dev.to / almost 3 years ago
  • Which DB to use for API published on Azure?
    If you are looking for one to start with; you can try Cosmos: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/cosmos-db/. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Basic Setup for Azure Cosmos DB and Example Node App
    I have had an opportunity to work on a project that uses Azure Cosmos DB with the MongDB API as the backend database. I wanted to spend a little more time on my own understanding how to perform basic setup and a simple set of CRUD operations from a Node application, as well as construct an easy-to-follow procedure for other developers. - Source: dev.to / about 3 years ago
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Amazon Aurora mentions (23)

  • Building a RAG System for Video Content Search and Analysis
    Using Amazon Bedrock to invoke Amazon Titan Foundation Models for generating multimodal embeddings, Amazon Transcribe for converting speech to text, and Amazon Aurora postgreSQL for vector storage and similarity search, you can build an application that understands both visual and audio content, enabling natural language queries to find specific moments in videos. - Source: dev.to / 25 days ago
  • Everyone Uses Postgres… But Why?
    Cloud deployment: PostgreSQL can be deployed in the cloud with AWS RDS, Amazon Aurora, Azure Database for PostgreSQL, or Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. - Source: dev.to / 6 months ago
  • Announcing the public beta for dedicated clusters
    Today, our Postgres databases are Amazon Aurora instances. You can trust that your database will have the scalability, reliability and security that AWS is known for. With dedicated clusters you can configure both the Postgres engine version, cluster class and number of replicas for failover and query distribution. - Source: dev.to / 9 months ago
  • Vector database is not a separate database category
    As far as the big players are concerned, Google offers AlloyDB (https://cloud.google.com/alloydb) while Amazon offers Aurora (https://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/). - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Building realtime experiences with Amazon Aurora
    Aurora is a managed database service from Amazon compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. It allows for the use of existing MySQL code, tools, and applications and can offer increased performance for certain workloads compared to MySQL and PostgreSQL. - Source: dev.to / almost 2 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Azure Cosmos DB and Amazon Aurora, you can also consider the following products

ArangoDB - A distributed open-source database with a flexible data model for documents, graphs, and key-values.

PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL is a powerful, open source object-relational database system.

Redis - Redis is an open source in-memory data structure project implementing a distributed, in-memory key-value database with optional durability.

MySQL - The world's most popular open source database

MongoDB - MongoDB (from "humongous") is a scalable, high-performance NoSQL database.

Oracle DBaaS - See how Oracle Database 12c enables businesses to plug into the cloud and power the real-time enterprise.