What are the respective advantages/limitations of Amazon RDS vs. EC2 with MySQL?

Question

I realize a couple of basic differences between the two, i.e.

• EC2 is going to be cheaper
• RDS I wouldn't have to do maintenance

Other than those two, are there any advantages to running my database from RDS as opposed to a separate EC2 server acting as a MySQL server. Assuming similar instance sizes, are both going to run into the same limitations in terms of being able to handle a load?

To give you a little bit more info about my use, I've got a database, nothing too big or anything, just high SELECT volume.

Answer 1

To put it simply, EC2 will provide amazing performance with RAID0 EBS. But doing this required significant amount of overhead. And without RAID0 EBS, EC2 will not be performing up to the mark.

RDS management console is very easy to use and also easy to upgrade, configure instances. Choose RDS rather than EC2, comparitively RDS gives much lesser problems.