Introduction to Amazon RDS:

Low Admin, High Performance

Databases in the Cloud

John Smiley

Principal Solutions Architect

Amazon Web Services

If you host your databases on-premises

Power, HVAC, net

Rack & stack

Server maintenance

OS patches

DB s/w patches

Database backups

Scaling

High availability

DB s/w installs

OS installation

you

App optimization

If you host your databases on-premises

Power, HVAC, net

Rack & stack

Server maintenance

OS patches

DB s/w patches

Database backups

Scaling

High availability

DB s/w installs

OS installation

you

App optimization

If you host your databases in EC2

Power, HVAC, net

Rack & stack

Server maintenance

OS patches

DB s/w patches

Database backups

Scaling

High availability

DB s/w installs

OS installation

you

App optimization

If you host your databases in EC2

OS patches

DB s/w patches

Database backups

Scaling

High availability

DB s/w installs

you

App optimization

Power, HVAC, net

Rack & stack

Server maintenance

OS installation

If you choose a managed DB service like RDS

Power, HVAC, net

Rack & stack

Server maintenance

OS patches

DB s/w patches

Database backups

App optimization

High availability

DB s/w installs

OS installation

you

Scaling

The self-managed vs. AWS-managed decision

Self-managed database AWS-managed database

You have full responsibility for

upgrades and backup

Upgrades, backup, and failover are

provided as a service

You have full responsibility for security AWS provides high infrastructure

security, certifications; gives you tools

to ensure DB security

Full control over parameters of server,

OS, and database

Database is a managed appliance, so

you can easily automate

Replication is expensive, complex and

requires a lot of engineering

Failover is a packaged service

Amazon RDS: a managed SQL service

• Simple and fast to deploy

• Simple and fast to scale

• AWS handles patching, backups, replication

• Compatible with your applications

– Choose among MySQL, PostgreSQL,

Oracle, SQL Server

• Fast, predictable performance

• No cost to get started; pay only for what you consume

Flipboard relies on Amazon RDS

• Flipboard is an online magazine with millions of users and billions of “flips” per month

• Uses Amazon RDS and its Multi-AZ capabilities to store mission critical user data

"We were able to go from

concept to delivered product

in about six months with just

a handful of engineers."

- Greg Scallan, Chief

Architect, Flipboard

RDS Database instances: scalable CPU, memory,

storage

• Database instance types offer a range of CPU and memory selections– Scale up or down among instance types on demand

• Database storage is scalable on demand– Choose standard storage for lower cost at low loads

– Choose General Purpose (SSD) for high performance and low cost with variable loads

– Choose Provisioned IOPS (SSD) for the ultimate in performance and consistency for high, sustained loads

– Add GB, change IOPS and change storage types with no downtime for MySQL, PostgreSql, and Oracle

A simple application architecture

RDS database instance

Application, in an

Amazon EC2 instance

Elastic Load Balancer

instance

How RDS backups work

• Automated backups– Restore your database to a point in time

– Enabled by default

– Choose a retention period, up to 35 days

• Manual snapshots– Initiated by you

– Persist until you delete them

– Stored in Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3)

– Build a new database instance from a snapshot when needed

– Copy snapshots to different regions

Choose Multi-AZ for greater availability, durability

• An availability zone is a physically distinct, independent infrastructure

• With Multi-AZ operation, your database is synchronously replicated to another AZ in the same AWS Region

• Failover occurs automatically in response to the most important failure scenarios

• For RDS Oracle, get the benefits of Enterprise grade durability and availability for all editions of Oracle RDS offers (SE1, SE, and EE) at a lower cost.

A resilient, durable, still simple application

architecture

RDS database instances:

Master and Multi-AZ standby

Application, in Amazon

EC2 instances

Elastic Load Balancer

instance

DB snapshots in

Amazon S3

Choose Read Replicas for greater scalability

• Help your app scale by offloading read traffic to

an automatically maintained read replica

• Create multiple read replicas, load-share traffic

• Easy to set upNative

MySQL

RDS

Choose cross-region snapshot copy for even greater

durability, ease of migration

• Copy a database snapshot to a different

AWS Region

• Warm standby for disaster recovery

• Or use it as a base for migration to a

different region

Choose cross-region read replicas for enhanced

data locality, even more ease of migration

• Even faster recovery

in the event of

disaster

• Bring data close to

your customers

• Promote to a master

for easy migration

How RDS billing works

Monthly

bill = GB+

Assumes DB instance accessed only from EC2

Further details at http://aws.amazon.com/rds/pricing/

= 720 hrs * $0.37 + 100 GB * $0.115

= $277.90

db.m3.xlarge; MySQL;

Oregon; Single-AZ;

On-Demand

100 GB

General Purpose (SSD)

Save money with RDS Reserved Instances

• Pay a low up-front fee to get a lower hourly price

on database instances for a 1- or 3-year term

• The lower-price entitlement applies to any

running instance matching its description

• Choose among Heavy, Medium, Light RIsMonth 1 Month 2 Month 3 Month 4 Month 5 Month 6 Month 7 Month 8 Month 9 Month 10 Month 11 Month 12

On-demand 544.50 1,089.00 1,633.50 2,178.00 2,722.50 3,267.00 3,811.50 4,356.00 4,900.50 5,445.00 5,989.50 6,534.00

Heavy RI 1-yr 1,508.10 1,750.20 1,992.30 2,234.40 2,476.50 2,718.60 2,960.70 3,202.80 3,444.90 3,687.00 3,929.10 4,171.20

Start saving here

How to scale with Amazon RDS

• Scale up or down with resizable instance types– CPU to 32 vCPUs, RAM to 244 GiB

• Scale your storage up with a few clicks– Scale while online

– Easy conversion from Standard to General Purpose (SSD) to Provisioned IOPS storage

• Offload read traffic to Read Replicas

• Put a cache in front of Amazon RDS– Amazon ElastiCache for Memcached or Redis

– Or your favorite cache, self-managed in Amazon EC2

• Amazon RDS takes some of the pain out of sharding

Best practices for Amazon RDS

• Choose storage appropriate to usage

• Strongly consider Multi-AZ deployments

• Make maximum use of ability to rapidly provision test environments

• Create regular DB Snapshots

• Test recovery from them

• Configure CloudWatch alerts and DB Event notifications

Security in Amazon RDS

• Security is a shared responsibility– AWS is responsible for physical security of cloud infrastructure

– You are responsible for configuring your instances securely

• Use DB security groups to govern network access to database instances

• Use Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC) to run DB instances in a distinct subset of the AWS cloud– Private IP address ranges, subnets, routing tables and network gateways

• Use AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for fine-grained control of users and rights

• Use DB master users to govern in-DB access to data

How to migrate data into RDS

• Basic technique: dump and restore– Simple, but requires downtime

RDS for

MySQL

RDS for

Oracle

RDS for SQL

Server

RDS for

PostgreSQL

mysqldump Data Pump Generate/

Publish scripts

pgdump

mysqlimport SQL Loader Bulk Copy

(bcp)

\copy

How to migrate data into RDS, continued

• Advanced technique: apply the deltas– Replay transactions against the migration target

RDS for

MySQL

RDS for

Oracle

RDS for SQL

Server

RDS for

PostgreSQL

mysqlbinlog Mview

replication

Linked servers Use row

metadata to

capture

modified rows

Tungsten

Replicator

Golden Gate,

Dbvisit,

Attunity, Dell

SharePlex

SSIS

Schema design

Query construction

Query optimization

Migration

Backup and recovery

Patching

Configuration

Software upgrades

Storage upgrades

Server upgrades

Hardware issues

Why choose Amazon RDS?

Focus your

team here

Let AWS

focus here

Try Amazon RDS for free

• For your first year, at no charge…– Enough free instance-hours to run a “micro” instance

continuously

– 20 GB of database instance storage

– 20 GB for automated backups

– 10 million I/O operations per month

• Learn more about the AWS free tier:

http://aws.amazon.com/free/

Learn more about Amazon RDS

• Amazon RDS home page:

http://aws.amazon.com/rds/

• Amazon RDS Frequently Asked Questions:

http://aws.amazon.com/rds/faqs/

• Links to Import Guides for each engine:

http://aws.amazon.com/rds/faqs/#9

Thank you