🧠 What is AWS RDS?
Amazon RDS is a fully managed cloud service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It handles:
- Hardware provisioning
- Database setup
- Backups
- Patching
- Failover
- Monitoring
✅ You focus on your application, AWS handles the database operations.
🔧 Supported Database Engines
| Engine |
Use Case Example |
| Amazon Aurora |
High-performance MySQL/PostgreSQL-compatible |
| MySQL |
LAMP stacks, WordPress, web apps |
| PostgreSQL |
Complex queries, GIS, analytics |
| MariaDB |
Drop-in MySQL replacement |
| Oracle |
Enterprise workloads (license required) |
| SQL Server |
Microsoft-based enterprise apps |
📦 Key Features of RDS
| Feature |
Description |
| Managed Service |
AWS handles patching, backups, failover, etc. |
| Multi-AZ Deployments |
High availability with automatic failover across AZs |
| Read Replicas |
Improve read performance and scale read-heavy workloads |
| Automated Backups |
Daily snapshots + point-in-time recovery (PITR) |
| Encryption |
Data at rest (KMS) and in transit (SSL/TLS) |
| Monitoring |
CloudWatch, enhanced monitoring, performance insights |
| Scaling |
Vertical (instance type) + Storage auto-scaling |
🛠️ How It Works
🔐 Security
-
VPC Integration – isolate database in your private subnet
-
IAM Authentication – use AWS IAM instead of DB credentials
-
Encryption – at rest (KMS) and in transit (TLS/SSL)
-
Security Groups – control inbound traffic
💸 Pricing
| Cost Component |
Description |
| Instance Hours |
Billed per DB instance (like EC2) |
| Storage |
Billed per GB-month |
| IOPS |
For provisioned IOPS volumes |
| Data Transfer |
Free within the same AZ |
💡 Use RDS Free Tier: 750 hrs/month + 20 GB storage (MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB)
🔄 Multi-AZ vs Read Replica
| Feature |
Multi-AZ |
Read Replica |
| Purpose |
High availability |
Read scalability |
| Replication |
Synchronous |
Asynchronous |
| Failover |
Automatic |
Manual promotion |
| Read Support |
Only primary |
Replica can handle reads |
✅ When to Use RDS?
| Need |
Use RDS? |
| Relational data model |
✅ Yes |
| Managed operations |
✅ Yes |
| PostgreSQL/MySQL backend |
✅ Yes |
| High-availability setup |
✅ Yes |
| Serverless workloads |
❌ Use Aurora Serverless or DynamoDB |
