RDS Fundamentals

Core Concepts and Getting Started

Database Engines

MySQL

Popular open-source relational database

PostgreSQL

Advanced open-source object-relational database

MariaDB

MySQL-compatible database with enhanced features

Oracle & SQL Server

Enterprise-grade commercial databases

Multi-AZ Deployments

High Availability

Automatic failover to standby instance

Synchronous Replication

Data replicated synchronously to standby

Automatic Backups

Backups taken from standby instance

Maintenance Windows

Zero-downtime maintenance operations

Storage Types

General Purpose SSD (gp3)

Balanced price/performance for most workloads

  • • 3,000 IOPS baseline
  • • Up to 16,000 IOPS
  • • 125 MB/s to 1,000 MB/s throughput

Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1)

High-performance for I/O intensive workloads

  • • Up to 64,000 IOPS
  • • Consistent performance
  • • Sub-millisecond latency

Magnetic Storage

Cost-effective for infrequent access

  • • Previous generation
  • • Lower cost option
  • • Limited performance

Instance Classes

db.t3 (Burstable)

Variable workloads

db.m5 (General Purpose)

Balanced compute/memory

db.r5 (Memory Optimized)

Memory-intensive workloads

db.x1e (High Memory)

In-memory databases

RDS Best Practices

  • • Use Multi-AZ for production workloads requiring high availability
  • • Enable automated backups with appropriate retention period
  • • Use Read Replicas to scale read-heavy workloads
  • • Monitor database performance with CloudWatch and Performance Insights
  • • Implement proper security groups and subnet groups
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