Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity while automating time-consuming administration tasks such as hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups. It frees you to focus on your applications so you can give them the fast performance, high availability, security, and compatibility they need.

Why RDS database?

*Easy to use as it is pre-configured with parameters and settings appropriate for the engine and class you have selected.

*Automatic software patching that makes sure that the relational database software powering your deployment stays up to date with the latest patches

* Best practice recommendations always provide guidance by analyzing configuration and usage metrics from your database instances. 

How about the Performance of RDS?

RDS service provides a very high performance which is suitable to any business needs as it provides. 

*General Purpose (SSD) Storage that is an SSD-backed storage option delivers a consistent baseline of 3 IOPS per provisioned GB and provides the ability to burst up to 3,000 IOPS above the baseline.

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

How Scalability RDS service?

This is one of the greatest features on AWS which many business owners and business developers need to succeed, let us see how Scalability could help everyone!

*Push-button compute scaling You can scale the compute and memory resources powering your deployment up or down, up to a maximum of 32 vCPUs and 244 GiB of RAM.

* Easy storage scaling Amazon Aurora engine will automatically grow the size of your database volume as your database storage needs grow, up to a maximum of 64 TB or a maximum you define. The MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and PostgreSQL engines allow you to scale up to 64 TB of storage and SQL Server supports up to 16 TB. Storage scaling is on the fly with zero downtime.

* Read Replicas make it easy to elastically scale out beyond the capacity constraints of a single DB instance for read-heavy database workloads. You can create one or more replicas of a given source DB instance and serve high-volume application read traffic from multiple copies of your data, thereby increasing aggregate read throughput. Read replicas are available in Amazon RDS for MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, and Oracle as well as Amazon Aurora.

How could we keep our data from being lost?

AWS provide high levels of data durability and availability by:

* Automated backups No more losing data as the automated backup feature of Amazon RDS enables point-in-time recovery for your database instance. Amazon RDS will back up your database and transaction logs and store both for a user-specified retention period.

* Database snapshots are user-initiated backups of your instance stored in Amazon S3 that are kept until you explicitly delete them. Not that only but you can create a new instance from database snapshots whenever you desire.

*Multi-AZ deployments provide enhanced availability and durability for database instances, making them a natural fit for production database workloads.

*Automatic host replacement Amazon RDS will automatically replace the compute instance powering your deployment in the event of a hardware failure.

Is it safe to be on the cloud?

Using AWS will gain the control and confidence you need to securely run your business with the most flexible and secure cloud computing environment available to protect your information, identities, applications, and devices to meet core security and compliance requirements, such as data locality, protection, and confidentiality with our comprehensive services and features like

*Encryption at rest and in transit allows you to encrypt your databases using keys you manage through AWS Key Management Service (KMS) and supports Transparent Data Encryption in SQL Server and Oracle. Transparent Data Encryption in Oracle is integrated with AWS CloudHSM, which allows you to securely generate, store, and manage your cryptographic keys in single-tenant Hardware Security Module (HSM) appliances within the AWS cloud.

*Network isolation AWS recommends that you run your database instances in Amazon VPC, which allows you to isolate your database in your own virtual network and connect to your on-premises IT infrastructure using industry-standard encrypted IPsec VPNs.

*resource-level permissions Amazon RDS is integrated with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) and provides you the ability to control the actions that your AWS IAM users and groups can take on specific Amazon RDS resources, from database instances through snapshots, parameter groups, and option groups.

How could we manage our business with RDS service?

*Monitoring and metrics Amazon RDS provides Amazon CloudWatch metrics for your database instances at no additional charge. Also, through the RDS Management Console to view key operational metrics, including compute/memory/storage capacity utilization, I/O activity, and instance connections.

*Event notifications Amazon RDS can notify you via email or SMS text message of database events through Amazon SNS.

* Configuration governance Amazon RDS integrates with AWS Config to support compliance and enhance security by recording and auditing changes to the configuration of your DB instance including parameter groups, subnet groups, snapshots, security groups and event subscriptions.

With this many features of RDS service, it must be expensive, right?

Absolutely No, AWS offers you a pay-as-you-go approach for pricing for over 160 cloud services. 

*Pay only for what you use There is no up-front commitment with Amazon RDS; you simply pay a monthly charge for each database instance that you launch.

*Reserved instances give you the option to reserve a DB instance for a one- or three-year term and in turn receive a significant discount compared to the On-Demand Instance pricing for the DB instance.

*Stop and start Amazon RDS allows you to easily stop and start your database instances for up to 7 days at a time.