Comparison of Oracle Cloud vs Amazon RDS

Oracle Cloud
Feature
Monitoring

Advantage
Process Monitoring: Exceptions are
proactively presented to the users
and they no longer have to search
for problems. Its also easier to
manage and resolve these
exceptions.
Multi-Dimensional Reporting:
Oracle ERP Cloud Apps give you
secure, self-service access to live
reports based on your data. There
is also embedded business
intelligence within the cloud
applications.
Ad Hoc Queries in Excel: Using the
Smart View tool from Hyperion
which is built into the Oracle ERP
Cloud Applications you can use an
Excel spreadsheet to develop
reports based on live data from
your applications.
Improved User Experience: Oracle
ERP Cloud Applications suite looks
and feels more like a typical
consumer website.
Mobile Capabilities: Access to EBS
from mobile devices is now being
deployed by Oracle. One example
is Fusion Expenses, an expenses
management solution that
simplifies receipt capture and
enables expense submission while
on the road.

Amazon RDS
Disadvantage

Advantage
Monitor Amazon EC2: View metrics for
CPU utilization, data transfer, and disk
usage activity from Amazon EC2
instances (Basic Monitoring) for no
additional charge. For an additional
charge, CloudWatch provides Detailed
Monitoring for EC2 instances with
higher resolution and metric
aggregation. No additional software
needs to be installed.

Monitor Custom Metrics: Submit

Custom Metrics generated by your
own applications via a simple API
request and have them monitored by
Amazon CloudWatch

Monitor and Store Logs: You can use

CloudWatch Logs to monitor and
troubleshoot your systems and
applications using your existing
system, application, and custom log
files.

Set Alarms: Set alarms on any of your

metrics to send you notifications or
take other automated actions

View Graphs and Statistics: Amazon

Cloudwatch Dashboards enable you
to create re-usable graphs of AWS
resources and custom metrics so you
can quickly monitor operational
status and identify issues at a glance.

Disadvantage

Database instances can be managed

from the AWS console
Backup/Reco
very

Enterprise-grade data protection

and privacy policies.

Capacity on demand to eliminate

storage hardware planning.

RDS/Oracle backs up the database

using storage snapshots, and boasts
point-in-time recovery. There are
some clear advantages to this
method. On the one hand, backups
complete quickly, and you can
execute them as often as you want.

Because Recovery Manager is not

supported, some of the nice things you
can do with that tool are missing from
RDS. For instance, simple small repairs
such as single block, single datafile, or
single tablespace recovery are
impossible with RDS. Recovery using
storage snapshots is an all-or-nothing
proposition.

For Oracle the replica (multi AZ) is not

readable. Also nearly all viable
replication options are unsupported,
including Data Guard (standby
database) and Streams, RDS does not
provide a cross-region DR solution for
customers.

Redundancy policies to ensure

that your data is highly available.

Transparent backup management

using RMAN for seamless backup
and restore operations.

Schedule backup automation to

fast local storage, the Oracle
Cloud Object Store or both.
Instantiate new services from
backup copies for development
and test.
High
Availability

All Oracle High Availability

configurations (like ADG) are
supported

RDS/Oracle provides a very easy way

to set up redundancy across Amazon
availability zones (which you can
think of as separate datacenters in
the same region). This configuration,
called multi-zone, provides
synchronous storage replication
between your production RDS
database and a replica in one of the
other zones within the same region.

Patching/Upg
rade

Use patching automation tools

built into the web console (or
REST API) for easy application of
Database quarterly patches. Use
simple migration processes to
validate upgrades.

Auto-provision minor version

upgrades

Scalability

Control storage and compute

scaling thru web console (or REST
API). Burst from subscription to
metered compute to cost
effectively handle peak workloads.

Like all Amazon Web Services, RDS

has the big advantage of being easy
to scale. Just run a command and in
less then 10 minutes of downtime
your database will be scaled up or
down. You can scale up to relatively
large instances.

Security

Use the Compute Service's web

console (or REST API) to manage
security rules and IPsec lists for
flexible, enterprise-level network
security. Leverage all Oracle
Database defense in depth
security capabilities for complete
data security.

There is no need to keep up with

vendor security and performance
patches

Access

Administrative access via SSH,

SQL Developer, Data Pump,
SQL*Plus and other tools.

Administrative access via SQL

Developer only.

Use any available Oracle client

language library including: Oracle
Net (SQL*Net), JDBC, JSON, and
other drivers to access your
dedicated instances.

Use Enterprise Manager, SQL

Developer, Application Express, or
other Oracle or third party tools

IPsec VPN option for secure

access.

RDS grants you limited management

privileges for Oracle, but it stops
short of the SYSDBA role, which would
have total control over the system.
Some applications require SYSDBA,
especially during schema installation.
If you have an application that
absolutely cannot function without
SYSDBA privileges, RDS is off the
table. However, most of the
application schema deployment
scripts that purport to need SYSDBA
privilege actually need no such thing.
In many of these cases, minor
changes to schema build scripts
would make them RDS-compatible.

Loading/migration: Most Oracle

customers are accustomed to
migrating their databases from one
hosting solution to another via
datafile copy. In the case of very large
databases, migration by physical

Missing access to the underlying O/S

thus no full control of instance

standby switchover is the method of

choice. With RDS, there is no access
to the underlying filesystem, so
datafile-based migration methods are
impossible. Since the only access to
RDS/Oracle is via SQL Net, data must
be loaded using database links. This
means using Data Pump, DML over
database link, or materialized views.
Parameter
Control

Have full control over parameters

Performance

All Oracle provided performance

features can be utilized

Preconfigured and tightly

integrated, vendor-managed
Engineered Systems reduce IT
complexity, this is the most
material benefit, and one in big
demand by both business and
technology leaders

Engineered Systems dramatically

increase compute performance
and scalability while at the same
time generally achieve economies
which reduce IT costs.

Licensing

No additional Software licenses

are required for Oracle Private
Cloud Appliance . The Oracle
Private Cloud Appliance system
price includes all the required
softwares.

Exalogic configurations available

for private cloud deployment are

Do not have full control over instance

parameters
Oracle private clouds are not selfprovisioned by customers and not
as elastic as the marketing claims
may suggest. Engineered Systems
offer strong load balancing and can
accommodate pre-defined peak
periods, but have clear capacity
limits and are not scalable on
demand, particularly in the way
weve come to recognize IaaS on
demand services from public cloud
vendors such as Amazon Web
Services, Microsoft Azure or
Rackspace. Although in fairness,
these more recognized IaaS vendors
may offer on-demand scalability,
but have not yet matured to
manage back office ERP and similar
business systems in large scale
environments.

AWS RDS offers PIOPS (Provisioned

IOPS) in order to achieve fast,
consistent and predictable
Input/Output (I/O) performance. This
is ideal for online transaction
processing (OLTP) databases or high
I/O centric applications.

Oracle Engineered Systems dont

really share computing resource
pools in a way that achieves the
same economies as IaaS in a public
cloud context. However, technology
leaders considering private clouds
obviously have some predisposition
or (regulatory, proximity, security or
other) business requirements that
steer them away from public clouds.
Comparing capabilities and benefits

Oracle databases on RDS can be

created with license included. This
means that for certain Oracle
editions, you can pay as you go for
your license. This is currently limited
to Standard Edition One, but rumors
abound that higher editions, including
Enterprise Edition, will be available
with license included in the near
future.

The major missing component is

tuning. With RDS/Oracle, you still need
to have some knowledge of Oracle and
SQL tuning to run a successful RDS
service.

not just limited to large enterprise

companies. The offerings go down
to eighth rack sizing, made up of 4
servers, thereby becoming a
viable option for SMBs.

of public clouds with private clouds

is an unfair comparison, but in this
early era of IaaS solutions and loose
marketing claims it is nonetheless
prevalent and therefore needs to be
explained.

Oracle private clouds are not

delivered as-a-service. This
solution is a rental which can be
modified, but is nonetheless bound
by hardware and software
parameters, for a specified rental
period.

Oracle public cloud registration

process is also not fully comply with
the sign of the real cloud computing
services. It is a monthly style and
with the use of the comprehensive
pay mode. Before you start using
the service, you must submit an
application and wait for a certificate
by e-mail before you can log in to
use. Sounds like on-demand hosted
the original Oracle schema.
Misc

Improving Your On-Premises ERP

Solution
Deploying Oracle Business
Intelligence, or similar
applications, to improve the
quality of business reporting.
Implementing new EBS modules
and customizing their applications
to improve functionality
Integrating a broad range of
applications such as
Salesforce.com with their EBS
solution

> On-Premises ERP Solutions Will

Be Legacy Applications within 2
Years
According to Gartner [1], by 2016,
heavily customized on-premises
ERP implementations will be
viewed as legacy applications, and
by 2018 some 30% of companies
will have moved their ERP
applications to the cloud.
As a result, there is likely to be a
migration to an integrated set of
best of breed applications that
work together to provide
organizations with a complete ERP
solution in the cloud. Its unlikely
that these applications will all
come from a single company so
there will be an increased
emphasis on application
integration.

> Coexistence
Oracle is adding new functions
and capabilities to their ERP Cloud
Applications that they are not
adding to E-Business Suite. As a
result, the coexistence of EBS onpremises and Oracle ERP Cloud
modules can make sense, and will
provide you with the best possible
functionality.
For example, Revenue
Management Cloud Service is an
ideal solution for companies with
complex revenue recognition rules
and who are running Oracle EBS
today. This application takes data
from Oracle EBS through prebuilt
integrations, and provides
powerful revenue recognition

capabilities not previously

available.
This coexistence enables a
gradual migration from onpremises Oracle EBS to Oracle ERP
Cloud Applications.