The post of mine you are replying to outlines maintenance work we had to do on an actual RDS instance. My point is that you shouldn't weigh managed solutions as maintenance-free: they're not (and examples of why and how they are not are in the first post). They might win out, and they do have a place, but if you're evaluating them as "hassle-free", you will be disappointed.

> If you think encryption is a problem, don't use it until later.

We had compliance requirements that required encryption, so waiting until later was not an option.

> Since RDS is a managed service, I just tell compliance auditors, "It's a managed service."

I'm not a big fan of giving compliance auditors half-truths that mislead them into thinking we're doing something we're not.

> So don't use new databases in the first 5 years for production, as recommended.

You mean we should run our own? (/s… slightly.) We were exploring Aurora as the performance of normal RDS was not sufficient. Now, there was plenty we could have done better in other area, particularly in the database schema department, but Aurora was thought to be the most pragmatic option.