Features Of Amazon RDS
The following are some key features of Amazon RDS:
- Availability: The “Automated Backup” feature of RDS makes the recovery of the database instance much easier and makes it available for access quickly. Other than that, “Database Snapshots” are user-driven backup features initiated by Amazon RDS, which makes it easier for the user to monitor all the alterations made on the Database Instance. These snapshots can be shared among multiple AWS accounts in order to expand the availability of the DB instance, along with maintaining the security of the confidential data.
- Security: While creating a new database, you have to create a password that is totally restricted and known to you only. And by default, you are given the “Admin role” which has the maximum authority on that particular database. Amazon RDS also allows its users to encrypt the databases using “keys” which is managed by KMS (Key Management Service) under Amazon RDS.
- Backups: RDS provides us the facility to have backups. We can have backups in multiple forms. Snapshots are basically non-editable backups used for maintaining records. We also can create Automated Backups simply by altering the configurations during creating the database. Reserved instances are also another type of backup facility available here.
- Scalability: RDS enables us to automatically scale up or scale down depending upon the number of transactions happening on your database per minute. We can do both “Horizontal Scaling” and “Vertical Scaling”. Let us go through the difference between both of them.
- Horizontal Scaling deals with scenarios where the amount of traffic is increased on your database exponentially, in such cases, this scaling comes into the picture. This simply creates multiple hardware & software which are look-alike of the previously existing ones on the cloud in order to tackle the traffic.
- Vertical Scaling deals with situations, where the traffic is not very much increased but the current configurations of the hardware & software are not able to handle the demands of the client anymore. Using this scaling method, we are capable of adding additional storage and processors to our pre-existing resources.
- Performance: RDS gives two SSD-backed storage options for its users, i.e. General Purpose & Provisioned. All these variants directly impact the level of performance of the resource and its attached services. The general SSD is very cost-effective and is used at places where a broad workforce is required. Provisioned, as the name suggests are designed for temporary or lower workloads purposes.
- Pricing: RDS only asks you to pay for what you use, once you are done with a certain resource delete it and don’t pay for it anymore. There is no compulsory minimal charge decided for using RDS. Depending upon the Database Engines and the type of database, a bill is calculated and sent to you at the end of the month. For free tier accounts, special configurations are bound to choose and you won’t get any bills if you delete all the resources you used before logging out.
Amazon RDS – Introduction to Amazon Relational Database System
Amazon RDS is a relational database management system along with the facilities of the AWS cloud platform. It facilitates us in creating database instances as per our requirements, i.e. resizable, variety of database types, etc.