Which AWS service would you choose for running a relational database?

Choosing Amazon RDS for running a relational database is appropriate because it is a managed service specifically designed for relational databases, making it easier to set up, operate, and scale databases in the cloud. RDS stands for Relational Database Service, and it supports various database engines, including MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and SQL Server.

With Amazon RDS, users benefit from automated tasks such as backups, patch management, and recovery, which help in maintaining the database without having to manually handle these operational tasks. Additionally, RDS provides scalability, allowing users to easily adjust the capacity as workloads change.

In contrast, while Amazon Redshift is a powerful data warehousing solution, it is optimized for analytics rather than standard relational database operations. Amazon EC2, on the other hand, offers virtual servers where you can install and manage any software, including databases, but requires much more management and maintenance work compared to RDS. Amazon Aurora is a relational database service that is part of RDS, which offers additional performance and availability benefits but is a specific implementation rather than the broad managed service that RDS encompasses as a whole. Therefore, for general use of relational databases, RDS is the most suitable choice.