According to the Flexera 2023 State of the Cloud Report, 82% of respondents indicated that their top cloud challenge is managing cloud spend, edging out security, which had been the #1 challenge for years.
The report states “Seeking to control stubbornly high cloud costs, many organizations have or plan to create a cloud center of excellence (CCOE) and build mature FinOps practices.”
MySQL is the world’s most popular open source database. With MySQL, some of the most popular applications such as Facebook and booking.com have been able to cost-effectively scale to extremely large numbers of users and transactions. When it comes to using MySQL in the cloud, customers have numerous options considering that all major cloud providers offer a MySQL cloud service. That begs the question…who provides the best value?
Comparing MySQL cloud services
To help answer this question, we compared the cost of the following services:
- Amazon RDS for MySQL
- Amazon Aurora MySQL-Compatible Edition
- Google Cloud SQL for MySQL
- Azure Database for MySQL
- MySQL HeatWave for OLTP (a.k.a MySQL Database Service) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI)
Comparison information:
- We considered the scenario of an OLTP application with 1 TB of data running 24 hours/day for 30 days, i.e., 720 hours.
- All calculations use public prices published as of March 30, 2023. For all vendors, we considered the on-demand/pay-as-you-go list prices.
- Common cloud industry practice is to define compute instances based on the number of virtual CPUs (vCPUs) they include. Each vCPU provides the capacity for one thread of runs. A vCPU doesn’t provide a whole physical compute core but is instead part of a core. In contrast, Oracle’s x86 Compute shapes use OCPUs, which equate to physical CPU cores, each of which provides for two threads. So, two vCPUs on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Azure, or Google Cloud Platform (GCP) compare to 1 OCPU on OCI.
- For the cost calculation, we’ve attempted to use “apples-to-apples” comparisons as much as possible. We considered the compute shapes, CPUs, memory, storage, and backup storage—for a single Availability Zone/Domain deployment for all services.
- When IOs are charged separately (Amazon Aurora), we considered 800 million read IOs and 80 million write IOs for a month.
- For backup storage, we always considered that the data amount would be equivalent to 100% of the database storage.
Cost comparison
Summary
| Amazon RDS for MySQL |
Amazon Aurora – MySQL Compatible |
Google Cloud for MySQL |
Azure Database for MySQL |
MySQL HeatWave for OLTP on OCI |
| $2589.64 |
$3266.16 |
$2668.77 |
$2833.72 |
$883.26 |
| 2.93X the cost of MySQL HeatWave |
3.7X the cost of MySQL HeatWave |
3X the cost of MySQL HeatWave |
3.21X the cost of MySQL HeatWave |
Lowest cost |
Details:
1. Amazon RDS for MySQL
Metrics
Shape: db.r6g.8xlarge – $3.437/hour
CPUs: 32 vCPUs
Memory: 256 GB
Storage: $0.115/GB/month
Backup storage: No additional charge for backup storage up to 100% of total database storage, additional backup storage at $0.095/GB/month
Costs
| Instance (CPUs + memory) |
3.437*720=$2474.64 |
| Storage |
0.115*1000=$115 |
| Backup storage |
$0 |
| TOTAL |
$2589.64 |
2. Amazon Aurora
Metrics
Shape: db.r6g.8xlarge – $4.153/hour
CPUs: 32 vCPUs
Memory: 256 GB
Storage: $0.10/GB/month
I/O rate (charged separately): $0.20 per 1 million requests
Backup storage: No additional charge for backup storage up to 100% of total database storage, additional backup storage at $0.021/GB/month
Costs
| Instance (CPUs + memory) |
4.153*720=$2990.16 |
| Storage |
0.10*1000=$100 |
| I/O Rate |
0.2*880=$176 |
| Backup storage |
$0 |
| TOTAL |
$3266.16 |
3. Google Cloud SQL for MySQL
Metrics
CPU: $0.0442/vCPU/hour
Memory: $0.0075/GB/hour
Storage: $0.182 per GB/month
Backup storage: $0.086 per GB/month
Costs
| CPUs |
0.0442*32*720=$1018.37 |
| Memory |
0.0075*256*720=$1382.40 |
| Storage |
0.182*1000=$182 |
| Backup storage |
0.086*1000=$86 |
| TOTAL |
$2668.77 |
4. Azure Database for MySQL
Metrics
Shape: E32ds v4- $3.776/hour
CPUs: 32 vCPUs
Memory: 256 GB
Storage: $0.115/GB/month
Backup storage: No additional charge for backup storage up to 100% of total database storage, additional backup storage at $0.095/GB/month
Costs
| Instance (CPUs + memory) |
3.776*720=$2718.72 |
| Storage |
0.115*1000=$115 |
| Backup storage |
$0 |
| TOTAL |
$2833.72 |
5. MySQL HeatWave for OLTP on OCI:
Metrics
Shape: MySQL.VM.Standard.E4.16.256GB – $1.1712/hour: [16*0.038+(0.0022*256)]
CPUs: 16 OCPUs (32 vCPUs)
Memory: 256 GB
Storage: $0.04/GB/month
Backup storage: No additional charge for backup storage up to 100% of total database storage, additional backup storage at $0.04/GB/month
Costs
| Instance (CPUs + memory) |
1.1712*720=$843.26 |
| Storage |
0.04*1000=$40 |
| Backup storage |
$0 |
| TOTAL |
$883.26 |
As we can clearly see from this comparison, MySQL HeatWave is far less expensive than the MySQL cloud services from AWS, GCP, and Azure. Moreover, this value may even be greater depending on the deployment region.
Caution: AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud prices vary widely by region
OCI offers consistent pricing and availability for all services across all global regions. This predictability makes it easy for you to plan and budget for rapid geographic expansion regardless of where you need to consume the cloud services. However, prices for AWS, GCP, and Azure vary per region.
For AWS and Azure, we considered their US East regions in Northern Virginia in the above comparison, and for GCP, their US East4 region, also in Northern Virginia. Compared to those US East regions, prices vary as follows for the different services in their other regions:
| Regions |
London |
Frankfurt |
Singapore |
Sao Paulo |
| RDS for MySQL db.r6g.8xlarge |
+ 17% |
+21% |
+19% |
+107% |
| Aurora MySQL-Compatible db.r6g.8xlarge |
+17% |
+21% |
+21% |
+107% |
| Google Cloud for MySQL vCPUs & memory |
+12% |
+12% |
+31% |
+40% |
| Regions |
UK South |
Germany West Central |
South-East Asia |
Brazil South |
| Azure Database for MySQL E32ds v4 |
+10% |
+21% |
+20% |
+110% |
As demonstrated in this blog, MySQL HeatWave on OCI delivers substantially more value than the MySQL cloud services offered by AWS, GCP, and Azure. With our MySQL HeatWave migration program, you can confidently migrate with free expert guidance, free step-by-steps migration guides, and free training.