Amazon RDS is a web service that provides a distributed relational database in the cloud. Its databases are easy to set up, operate, scale, and manage.
RDS offers a range of database products that can assist with database management tasks such as migration, backup, recovery and patching. These helpful engines include MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora DB. Some of them you are already using, some will be useful to you in the future. In any case, these tools can be seamlessly integrated with Amazon RDS and will save time and costs spent on database management tasks, among which are:
- allocation and scale management of CPU, IOPS, memory and storage;
- software patching, automatic failure detection, and recovery;
- fine-grained access rights to DB instance and to specific system procedures and tables;
- automated backups, backup snapshots, efficient Amazon RDS restore process;
- failover management;
- increased read scaling with MySQL or PostgreSQL Read Replicas.
DB Instances
Amazon RDS operates using DB instances as basic building elements. A DB instance is a name of an isolated database environment in the cloud which can be created and updated by user via the Amazon RDS API, its command line interface, or the AWS management console. User can add multiple databases to the DB instance and choose on which DB engine it will run. At the moment Amazon RDS supports the MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, and Microsoft SQL Server DB engines. Each of this engines provides a set of parameters that control the behaviour of managed databases.
Along with DB engine you can select the computation, memory and associated storage capacity of your DB instance according to your needs. Amazon RDS offers three types of DB instances: Magnetic, General Purpose (SSD), and Provisioned IOPS (SSD). Their performance characteristics and price vary so that users can find the most suitable option for their project requirements.
Multi-Availability Zone
In order to avoid unplanned service disruption or to improve availability of DB instance you may use a Multi-AZ deployment. This optional service will instruct Amazon RDS to automatically provision and maintain a synchronous “standby” replica of your DB instance in a different Availability Zone. Synchronous replication will ensure data durability, redundancy, and failover support. Moreover, running your DB instance in several Availability Zones will remove I/O freezes issue and reduce latency spikes during system backups.
Monitoring
Performance and health metrics of a DB instance can be tracked using performance charts via the AWS Management Console, or free Amazon CloudWatch service. After subscribing to RDS events you will receive notifications for changes in your DB instance, DB security group, DB parameter group, or DB Snapshot.
More about Amazon RDS?
Relational Database Service offers database in the cloud with cost-efficient and resizable capacity. It takes care of time-consuming database management tasks, including automatic management of complex administration. The latter cover database software patching, database backup and point-in-time recovery. Operating and scaling storage and compute resources are really simple procedures with Amazon RDS. To get more information visit aws.amazon.com/rds.