Blog > Introduction to Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora is a proprietary technology from AWS (not an open-source), but it’s compatible with PostgreSQL and MySQL, supported as Aurora DB. Aurora is “AWS Cloud Optimized” and claims 5x performance improvement over MySQL on RDS, over 3x the performance of PostgreSQL. Its storage automatically grows in increments of 10GB; when the user puts more data into their database, it grows automatically up to 64 TB.
- The user doesn’t need to worry about monitoring the disk; it will grow automatically with time.
- Aurora can have 15 replicas, while MySQL has 5, and the replication process is faster.
- The failover in Aurora is instantaneous, so it’s going to be much faster than a failover from multi-AZ or MySQL RDS, and because it’s cloud-native by default, it provides high availability.
- Aurora costs a little bit more than RDS, but it is more efficient.
- Amazon Aurora features a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 64TB per database instance.
- It delivers high performance and availability with up to 15 low-latency read replicas: point-in-time recovery, continuous backup to Amazon S3, and replication across three availability zones.
Amazon Aurora Benefits
High Performance and Scalability
- Get 5x the throughput of standard MySQL and 3x the throughput of standard PostgreSQL
- It provides a budget price at about 110 the cost
- It allows scaling database deployment up and down from smaller to larger instance types according to user needs
- To scale read capacity and performance, the user can add up to 15 low-latency real replicas across three availability zones
- Amazon Aurora automatically grows storage when the user needs up to 64TB per database instance.
High Availability and Durability
- Amazon Aurora‘s design offers greater than 99.9% availability, replicating six copies of data across three availability zones and backing up the user’s data continuously to Amazon S3.
- With a global database, we have a single Aurora database that can span multiple AWS regions to enable fast local reads and quick disaster recovery.
Highly Secure
- Security in Aurora includes network isolations using Amazon VPC and encryption at rest using keys the user can create and control through a key management service called a KMS and encryption of data using transit using SSL.
- On an encrypted Amazon Aurora, instance data in the underlying storage is encrypted as the automated backups, snapshots, and replicas are encrypted in the same cluster.
MySQL and PostgreSQL Compatible
- MySQL and PostgreSQL database can easily migrate to Aurora
Fully-Managed
- Amazon RDS fully manages Amazon Aurora, so it no longer needs to worry about the database management tasks such as hardware provisioning, software patching, setup configurations, or backup.
- Amazon Aurora is continuously monitoring and backs up the user’s database to Amazon S3.
- It also allows monitoring performance using Amazon Cloudwatch.
Global Database
- Amazon Aurora global database is a globally distributed application allowing a single Amazon Aurora database to span across multiple AWS regions to have their database across multiple geographical locations.
- AWS Aurora global database replicates data with no impact on database performance, enables fast local reads and low latency in each region, and provides disaster recovery.
- It uses storage-based applications with a typical latency of less than one second, using dedicated infrastructure that leaves the database fully available to serve application workloads.
Global Database Features
Sub-Second Data Access in Any Region
- An enterprise will get quick data access regardless of the number and location of secondary regions, with typical cross-region replication latencies below 1 second.
- Scalability by creating up to 16 database instances in each region; all the instances stay continuously up to date.
Cross-Region Disaster Recovery
- Promote one of the secondary regions to take a read or write responsibility.
- Aurora clusters can recover in less than 1 minute, even in the event of complete regional outrage.
- It provides a recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 second and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 1 minute.
Author: SVCIT Editorial Copyright
Silicon Valley Cloud IT, LLC.