Amazon Relational Database Service

Amazon Relational Database Service (or Amazon RDS) is a distributed relational database service by Amazon Web Services (AWS).^[1] It is a web service running "in the cloud" designed to simplify the setup, operation, and scaling of a relational database for use in applications.^[2] Complex administration processes like patching the database software, backing up databases and enabling point-in-time recovery are managed automatically.^[3] Scaling storage and compute resources can be performed by a single API call.

Amazon RDS was first released on 22 October 2009, supporting MySQL databases.^[4][5] This was followed by support for Oracle Database in June 2011,^{[6] [7]} Microsoft SQL Server in May 2012,^[8] PostgreSQL in November 2013,^[9] and MariaDB (a fork of MySQL) in October 2015.^[10]

In November 2014 AWS announced Amazon Aurora, a MySQL-compatible database offering enhanced high availability and performance.^[11]

Features

A new DB instance can be launched from the AWS Management Console or using the Amazon RDS APIs.^[12]

Amazon RDS offers different features to support different use cases. Some of the major features are:

Multi AZ deployment

Multi-Availability Zone deployments are targeted for production environments.^[13] Multi-AZ deployments aim to provide enhanced availability and data durability for MySQL instances. When a database instance is created or modified to run as a Multi-AZ deployment, Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous “standby” replica in a different Availability Zone^[14] (independent infrastructure in a physically separate location). In the event of planned database maintenance or unplanned service disruption, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the up-to-date standby, allowing database operations to resume without administrative intervention.

Multi-AZ RDS instances are optional and have a cost associated with them. When creating your RDS instance, the user is asked if they would like to use a Multi-AZ RDS instance.

Read replicas

Read Replicas for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL instances use the native, asynchronous replication functionality of their respective database engines.^[15]

Performance metrics and monitoring

Performance metrics for Amazon RDS are available from the AWS Management Console or the Amazon CloudWatch API. In December 2015, Amazon announced an optional enhanced monitoring feature that provides an expanded set of metrics for the MySQL, MariaDB, and Aurora database engines.^[16]

RDS Costs

Amazon RDS instances are priced very similarly to Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). RDS is charged per hour and come in two packages: On-Demand DB Instances and Reserved DB Instances.^[17] On-Demand instances are at an ongoing hourly usage rate. Reserved DB Instances require an up-front, one-time fee and in turn provide a discount on the hourly usage charge for that instance.

Apart from the hourly cost of running the RDS instance, users are charged for the amount of storage provisioned, data transfers and Input and Output operations performed. AWS have introduced Provisioned Input and Output Operations, in which the user can define how many IO per second is required by their application. IOPS can contribute significant cost to the total cost of running the RDS instance.^[18]

Database instance types

As of July 2016, Amazon RDS supports 27 DB Instance Types, 18 of which are the latest generation, to support different types of workloads: ^{[19] [20] [21]}

Current Generation

Instance Type	Memory	EBS Optimized / Throughput	Cores	Network Performance
db.t2.micro	1 GB	N/A	1 cores	Low to Moderate
db.t2.small	2 GB	N/A	1 cores	Low to Moderate
db.t2.medium	4 GB	N/A	2 cores	Low to Moderate
db.t2.large	8 GB	N/A	2 cores	Low to Moderate
db.r3.large	15.25 GB	N/A	2 cores	Moderate
db.r3.xlarge	30.5 GB	N/A	4 cores	Moderate
db.r3.2xlarge	61 GB	N/A	8 cores	High
db.r3.4xlarge	122 GB	N/A	16 cores	High
db.r3.8xlarge	244 GB	N/A	32 cores	10 Gigabit
db.m4.large	8 GB	450 Mbit/s	2 cores	Moderate
db.m4.xlarge	16 GB	750 Mbit/s	4 cores	High
db.m4.2xlarge	32 GB	1000 Mbit/s	8 cores	High
db.m4.4xlarge	64 GB	2000 Mbit/s	16 cores	High
db.m4.10xlarge	160 GB	4000 Mbit/s	40 cores	10 Gigabit
db.m3.medium	3.75 GB	N/A	1 cores	Moderate
db.m3.large	7.5 GB	N/A	2 cores	Moderate
db.m3.xlarge	15 GB	N/A	4 cores	High
db.m3.2xlarge	30 GB	N/A	8 cores	High

Previous Generation

Instance Type	Memory	EBS Optimized / Throughput	Cores	Network Performance
db.t1.micro	0.613 GB	N/A	1 cores	Very Low
db.m1.small	1.7 GB	N/A	1 cores	Low
db.m1.medium	3.75 GB	N/A	1 cores	Moderate
db.m1.large	7.5 GB	N/A	2 cores	Moderate
db.m1.xlarge	15 GB	N/A	4 cores	High
db.m2.xlarge	17.1 GB	N/A	2 cores	Moderate
db.m2.2xlarge	34.2 GB	N/A	4 cores	Moderate
db.m2.4xlarge	68.4 GB	N/A	8 cores	High
db.cr1.8xl	244 GB	N/A	32 cores	10 Gigabit

Competitors and alternatives

Several other vendors provide cloud database services similar to Amazon RDS. Oracle offers Oracle Cloud,^[22] a database service supporting Oracle's database technology. Microsoft offers Windows Azure SQL,^[23] a service supporting the Microsoft SQL database. Competitors supporting MySQL include RackSpace Cloud Databases ,^[24] Google Cloud SQL,^[25] HP Cloud for MySQL,^[26] Xeround Cloud Database,^[27] and ClearDB.^[28]

References

1. Amazon RDS, Cloud Relational Database Service: MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server. Aws.amazon.com (2010-07-28). Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
2. MySQL in the cloud at Airbnb - Airbnb Engineering. Nerds.airbnb.com (2010-11-15). Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
3. Amazon RDS, Introduced. Aws.amazon.com (2010-01-01). Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
4. Release: Amazon Relational Database Service : Release Notes : Amazon Web Services. Developer.amazonwebservices.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
5. Vogels, Werner. (2009-10-26) Expanding the Cloud: The Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). All Things Distributed. Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
6. "Oracle database available as a service on Amazon AWS (RDS)". beyondoracle.com. 2011-05-24. Retrieved 2014-04-13.
7. "AWS Announces Relational Database Service For Oracle". firstbiz.com. Retrieved 2014-04-13.
8. Amazon Web Services Blog: Amazon RDS for SQL Server and .NET support for AWS Elastic Beanstalk. Aws.typepad.com (2012-05-08). Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
9. Alex Williams (14 November 2013). "PostgreSQL Now Available On Amazon's Relational Database Service". TechCrunch.
10. "Amazon Web Services Announces Two New Database Services – AWS Database Migration Service and Amazon RDS for MariaDB". MarketWatch, Inc. 2015-10-07. Retrieved 2015-10-23.
11. http://aws.amazon.com/rds/aurora/
12. Amazon RDS APIs
13. Replication for Availability & Durability with MySQL and Amazon RDS: O'Reilly MySQL Conference & Expo 2011 - O'Reilly Conferences, April 11 - 14, 2011, Santa Clara, CA. En.oreilly.com. Retrieved on 2013-08-09.
14. Availability Zone
15. "Working with PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB Read Replicas". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2015-12-15.
16. Barr, Jeff. "New – Enhanced Monitoring for Amazon RDS (MySQL 5.6, MariaDB, and Aurora)". AWS Blog. Amazon.com. Retrieved 16 September 2016.
17. Reserved DB Instances
18. "Pricing". amazon.com. Amazon.com. Retrieved 2014-04-13.
19. "Amazon RDS Instance Comparison". Retrieved 2016-07-13.
20. "Amazon RDS Instances". [Amazon.com]. Retrieved 2016-07-13.
21. "Amazon RDS Previous Instances". [Amazon.com]. Retrieved 2016-07-13.
22. Frequently Asked Question, Oracle Cloud, Retrieved 31-12-2012
23. Data Management, Windows Azure, Retrieved 31-12-2012
24. Learn how Cloud Databases delivers faster performance, RackSpace, Retrieved 31-12-2012
25. About Google Cloud SQL, Google Developers, Retrieved 31-12-2012
26. HP Cloud Relational Database for MySQL – FAQ, HP Cloud, Retrieved 31-12-2012
27. FAQ – Xeround Cloud DBaaS, Xeround Cloud Database, Retrieved 31-12-2012
28. Frequently Asked Questions, ClearDB, Retrieved 31-12-2012

External links

• Amazon Relational Database Service - official homepage
• Getting Started with Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) on YouTube