Um...the big deal is....what? I connect remotely to every production SQL Server instance that I've worked with for over 2 decades. I rarely have to manage the OS on anything that my SQL Servers are running on. If I built it against a local development instance, I haven't ever had to make changes to it to get it to run in production. I would hope the RedGate tools worked against this Amazon instance, because it is just like every other SQL Server instance out there.

I guess I must have missed something, because you just described almost every SQL Server in existence. Only a tiny fraction of the SQL Server out there even have a DBA to manage them. Of the group that I manage, I set the backups up once and the sys admins take care of getting my backup files offsite. I rarely have to do anything at an instance level and even more rarely have to manage anything on the OS.

All Amazon has done is say "we'll provide the DBA".