Amazon Aurora

Overview
- Enterprise-class relational database
- Compatible with MySQL or PostgreSQL
- Built for the cloud
- Combines performance/availability of high-end commercial databases with simplicity/cost-effectiveness of open-source
- Reduces database costs while improving reliability and availability
- Automates time-consuming tasks:
  - Provisioning
  - Patching
  - Backup
  - Recovery
  - Failure detection and repair
Service benefits
- Highly available with fast, distributed storage subsystem
- Straightforward to set up
- Uses SQL queries
- “Drop-in compatibility” with MySQL and PostgreSQL database engines
  - Use most existing database tools with little/no change
- Pay-as-you-go service
- Managed service that integrates with:
  - AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS)
  - AWS Schema Conversion Tool
  - Helps move dataset into Aurora
High availability
- Stores multiple copies of data across multiple Availability Zones
- Continuous backups to Amazon S3
- Up to 15 read replicas to reduce possibility of data loss
- Designed for instant crash recovery if primary database becomes unhealthy
Resilient design
- After database crash:
  - Doesn’t need to replay redo log from last checkpoint
  - Performs this on every read operation
  - Reduces restart time to less than 60 seconds in most cases
- Buffer cache moved out of database process
  - Available immediately at restart
  - Reduces need to throttle access until cache repopulated
Key features summary
- High performance and scalability
- High availability and durability
- Multiple levels of security:
  - Network isolation using Amazon VPC
  - Encryption at rest using keys created/controlled through AWS KMS
  - Encryption of data in transit using SSL
- Compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL
- Fully managed
  - Automates database management tasks:
    - Hardware provisioning
    - Software patching
    - Setup
    - Configuration
    - Backups

Amazon Aurora is a high-performance, highly available managed relational database service that combines the reliability of commercial databases with the cost-effectiveness of open-source. It offers automatic scaling, self-healing storage, and simplified management while maintaining compatibility with MySQL and PostgreSQL.