Compare SQL Server Enterprise and Standard edition features – AWS Prescriptive Guidance

Functional area
Feature
Enterprise edition
Standard edition
Notes

Scale limits

Maximum number of processors or cores per instance

OS maximum

4 sockets or 24 cores

See DB instance class support for SQL Server on Amazon RDS for SQL.

Maximum memory used per instance

OS maximum

128 GB (SQL Server 2016 and later)

Maximum memory-optimized data size per database

Unlimited memory (SQL Server 2014 and later)

32 GB (SQL Server 2016 and later)

High availability

Always On availability groups

Yes

Basic availability groups (SQL Server 2016 and later)

The Multi-AZ feature of Amazon RDS replicates database updates across two Availability Zones to increase durability and availability. For planned maintenance and unplanned disruptions, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby.

Online indexing

Yes

No

Where possible, plan for these activities during a downtime window.

Online schema change

Yes

No

Resumable online index rebuilds

Yes (SQL Server 2017 and later)

No

Accelerated database recovery (ADR)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Both SQL Server editions support ADR in SQL Server 2019.

Scalability and performance

Table and index partitioning

Yes

Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later)

Data compression

Yes

Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later)

Partition table parallelism

Yes

Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later)

In-Memory OLTP

Yes (SQL 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later)

Delayed durability

Yes (SQL 2014 and later)

Yes (SQL 2014 and later)

Columnstore

Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2016 SP1 and later)

Interleaved execution for multi-statement table valued functions

Yes (SQL Server 2017 and later)

Yes (SQL Server 2017 and later)

Intelligent Database: batch mode on rowstore

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

No

Not available in Standard edition, but you can take advantage of the other features of Intelligent Database.

Intelligent Database: approximate count distinct

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Intelligent Database: table variable deferred compilation

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Intelligent Database: scalar UDF inlining

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Security

Transparent database encryption (TDE)

Yes

Yes (SQL Server 2019)

Contained database

Yes

Yes