Amazon Relational Database Service (or Amazon RDS) is a distributed

relational database A relational database is a (most commonly digital) database based on the relational model of data, as proposed by E. F. Codd in 1970. A system used to maintain relational databases is a relational database management system (RDBMS). Many relatio ...

service by

Amazon Web Services Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Amazon that provides Software as a service, on-demand cloud computing computing platform, platforms and Application programming interface, APIs to individuals, companies, and gover ...

(AWS). It is a web service running "in the cloud" designed to simplify the setup, operation, and

scaling Scaling may refer to: Science and technology Mathematics and physics * Scaling (geometry), a linear transformation that enlarges or diminishes objects * Scale invariance, a feature of objects or laws that do not change if scales of length, energ ...

of a relational database for use in applications. Administration processes like patching the database software, backing up databases and enabling point-in-time recovery are managed automatically. Scaling storage and compute resources can be performed by a single

API An application programming interface (API) is a way for two or more computer programs to communicate with each other. It is a type of software interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that describes how ...

call to the AWS control plane on-demand. AWS does not offer an

SSH The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. Its most notable applications are remote login and command-line execution. SSH applications are based on ...

connection to the underlying virtual machine as part of the managed service.

Timeline

Amazon RDS was first released on 22 October 2009, supporting

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

databases. This was followed by support for

Oracle Database Oracle Database (commonly referred to as Oracle DBMS, Oracle Autonomous Database, or simply as Oracle) is a multi-model database management system produced and marketed by Oracle Corporation. It is a database commonly used for running online t ...

in June 2011,

Microsoft SQL Server Microsoft SQL Server is a relational database management system developed by Microsoft. As a database server, it is a software product with the primary function of storing and retrieving data as requested by other software applications—which ma ...

in May 2012,

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

in November 2013, and

MariaDB MariaDB is a community-developed, commercially supported fork of the MySQL relational database management system (RDBMS), intended to remain free and open-source software under the GNU General Public License. Development is led by some of the ori ...

(a fork of MySQL) in October 2015, and an additional 80 features during 2017. In November 2014 AWS announced

Amazon Aurora Amazon Aurora is a relational database service developed and offered by Amazon Web Services beginning in October 2014. Aurora is available as part of the Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS). History Aurora offered MySQL compatible servic ...

, a MySQL-compatible database offering enhanced

high availability High availability (HA) is a characteristic of a system which aims to ensure an agreed level of operational performance, usually uptime, for a higher than normal period. Modernization has resulted in an increased reliance on these systems. Fo ...

and performance, and in October 2017 a PostgreSQL-compatible database offering was launched. In March 2019 AWS announced support of PostgreSQL 11 in RDS, five months after official release.

Features

New database instances can be launched from the AWS Management Console or using the Amazon RDS APIs. Amazon RDS offers different features to support different use cases. Some of the major features are:

Multi-Availability Zone (AZ) deployment

In May 2010 Amazon announced Multi-Availability Zone deployment support. Amazon RDS Multi-Availability Zone (AZ) allows users to automatically provision and maintain a synchronous physical or logical "standby"

replica A 1:1 replica is an exact copy of an object, made out of the same raw materials, whether a molecule, a work of art, or a commercial product. The term is also used for copies that closely resemble the original, without claiming to be identical. Al ...

, depending on database engine, in a different Availability Zone (independent infrastructure in a physically separate location). Multi-AZ database instance can be developed at creation time or modified to run as a Multi-AZ deployment later. Multi-AZ deployments aim to provide enhanced

availability In reliability engineering, the term availability has the following meanings: * The degree to which a system, subsystem or equipment is in a specified operable and committable state at the start of a mission, when the mission is called for at a ...

and data durability for MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, PostgreSQL and SQL Server instances and are targeted for production environments. 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 a RDS instance, the user is asked if they would like to use a Multi-AZ RDS instance. In Multi-AZ RDS deployments backups are done in the standby instance so I/O activity is not suspended any time but users may experience elevated latencies for a few minutes during backups.

Read replicas

Read replicas allow different use cases such as to scale in for read-heavy database workloads. There are up to five replicas available for MySQL, MariaDB, and PostgreSQL. Instances use the native, asynchronous replication functionality of their respective database engines. They have no backups configured by default and are accessible and can be used for read scaling. MySQL and MariaDB read replicas can be made writeable again since October 2012; PostgreSQL read replicas do not support it. Replicas are done at database instance level and do not support replication at database or table level.

Performance metrics and monitoring

Performance metrics A performance indicator or key performance indicator (KPI) is a type of performance measurement. KPIs evaluate the success of an organization or of a particular activity (such as projects, programs, products and other initiatives) in which it en ...

for Amazon RDS are available from the AWS Management Console or the

Amazon CloudWatch Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

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.

RDS costs

Amazon RDS instances are priced very similarly to

Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is a part of Amazon.com's cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services (AWS), that allows users to rent virtual computers on which to run their own computer applications. EC2 encourages scalable deployment of ...

(EC2). RDS is charged per hour and comes in two packages: On-Demand DB Instances and Reserved DB Instances. 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 are required by their application. IOPS can contribute significantly to the total cost of running the RDS instance. As part of the AWS Free Tier, the Amazon RDS Free Tier helps new AWS customers get started with a managed database service in the cloud for free. You can use the Amazon RDS Free Tier to develop new applications, test existing applications, or simply gain hands-on experience with Amazon RDS.

Automatic backups

Amazon RDS creates and saves automated

backup In information technology, a backup, or data backup is a copy of computer data taken and stored elsewhere so that it may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form, referring to the process of doing so, is "back up", w ...

s of RDS DB instances. The first

snapshot Snapshot, snapshots or snap shot may refer to: * Snapshot (photography), a photograph taken without preparation Computing * Snapshot (computer storage), the state of a system at a particular point in time * Snapshot (file format) or SNP, a file ...

of a DB instance contains the data for the full DB instance and subsequent snapshots are

incremental Increment or incremental may refer to: *Incrementalism, a theory (also used in politics as a synonym for gradualism) *Increment and decrement operators, the operators ++ and -- in computer programming *Incremental computing *Incremental backup, wh ...

, maximum retention period is 35 days. In Multi-AZ RDS deployments backups are done in the standby instance so I/O activity is not suspended for any amount of time but you may experience elevated latencies for a few minutes during backups.

Operation

Database instances can be managed from the AWS Management Console, using the Amazon RDS APIs and using

AWS CLI Amazon Web Services, Inc. (AWS) is a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms and APIs to individuals, companies, and governments, on a metered pay-as-you-go basis. These cloud computing web services provide di ...

. Since 1 June 2017, you can stop AWS RDS instances from AWS Management Console or AWS CLI for 7 days at a time. After 7 days, it will be automatically started, and since September 2018 RDS instances can be protected from accidental deletion. Increase DB space is supported, but not decrease allocated space. Additionally there is at least a six-hour period where new allocation cannot be done.

Database instance types

As of August 2020, Amazon RDS supports 82 DB instance types - to support different types of workloads: * General Purpose: 31 instances * Memory Optimized: 33 instances * Previous Generation: 18 instances

General purpose

Memory optimized

Previous generation

References

External links

Amazon Relational Database Service
- official homepage * {{DEFAULTSORT:Amazon Rds Cloud databases RDS 2009 software