Amazon RDS product overview

Amazon Relational Database Service, or Amazon RDS, is a managed service that streamlines setting up, operating, and scaling a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while managing time-consuming database administration tasks, enabling focus on applications and business.

Amazon RDS gives users access to the capabilities of a familiar MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL database. This means that the code, applications, and tools already in use work seamlessly with the platform. Amazon RDS can automatically back up the database and keep it up to date with the latest version. Companies benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with their relational database instance.

In addition, Amazon RDS simplifies the use of replication to enhance database availability, improve data durability, or scale beyond the capacity constraints of a single database instance for read-heavy database workloads.

Pros of Amazon RDS

It allows teams to eliminate inefficient and time-consuming database administrative tasks without provisioning infrastructure or maintaining software.
Organizations can innovate and build new apps instead of worrying about self-managing databases, which can be time-consuming, complex, and expensive.

Cons of Amazon RDS

Some users find the installation to be complex.

Breakdown of core features

Automatic software patching

Amazon RDS ensures that the relational database software powering the deployment stays up-to-date with the latest patches. Users can also exert optional control over the schedule of database instance patching.

Best practice recommendations

The platform provides best practice guidance by analyzing configuration and usage metrics from the database instances. Recommendations cover areas such as database engine versions, storage, instance types, and networking. Users can browse the available recommendations and perform a recommended action immediately, schedule it for their next maintenance window, or dismiss it entirely.

Provisioned IOPS (SSD) storage

Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS Storage is an SSD-backed storage option designed to deliver fast, predictable, and consistent I/O performance. Users specify an IOPS rate when creating a database instance, and the system provisions that IOPS rate for the lifetime of the database instance.

Users can provision up to 40,000 IOPS per database instance, although the actual realized IOPS may vary based on the database workload, instance type, and database engine choice.

Automated backups

The automated backup feature of Amazon RDS enables point-in-time recovery. The system backs up the database and transaction logs and stores both for a user-specified retention period. As a result, users can restore database instances to any second during the retention period, up to the last five minutes. The automatic backup retention period is configurable to up to thirty-five days.

(Last updated on 05/27/2022 by Liz Laurente-Ticong)