As a follow up to the May 2014 article SQL Server 2014 Licensing Fine Print Shockers (here), Microsoft have indicated that MSDN subscriptions licensing would be allowed on “Dedicated” AWS EC2 instances, so in this case you don’t have to use production licensing for a dev/test SQL Server on a EC2 instance. Note when you
Looking at the May 2014 Gartner Magic Quadrant vs the August 2013, it quite evident that Microsoft Azure IaaS is catching AWS in terms of functionality, automation and innovation. They are not quite there yet but at the very least they are putting pressure on AWS and AWS is responding in parts by reducing their prices and
The use of AWS S3 storage to store SQL Server backups makes sense, firstly it is significantly cheaper than EBS, secondly you can encrypt what’s stored and thirdly you can manage backup file retention and lifecycle using inbuilt functionality.