Aurora is an AWS relational database engine that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL.
Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases.
- Amazon Aurora is up to five times faster than standard MySQL databases and three times faster than standard PostgreSQL databases.
- It provides the security, availability, and reliability of commercial databases at 1/10th the cost.
Features
Amazon Aurora is a distributed, fault-tolerant, self-healing storage system that auto-scales up to 128TB 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 (AZs).
- Aurora uses a base configuration of a cluster, which contains a single primary instance and zero or more replicas.
- All instances (primary and replicas) use the same shared storage – the cluster volume.
- Reads and writes use the cluster endpoint.
High availability and complete fault tolerance
- Aurora has 2 copies of data in each AZ with a minimum of 3 AZs (6 copies).
- Aurora is designed to handle the loss of up to two copies of data without affecting write availability and up to three copies without affecting read availability.
- Aurora storage is self-healing. Data blocks are scanned and repaired continuously.
- Aurora’s failover hierarchy ranges from Tier 0 to Tier 15. Tier 0 has the highest priority in Aurora’s failover hierarchy.
A cluster volume is SSD, which can scale up to 64 TiB and auto-healing. (Start with 10 GiB, 10 GiB increment)
- Cluster volumes scale automatically and are charged only for consumed data – backed up to S3.
Aurora involves a cluster of DB instances instead of a single instance. When you connect o an Aurora cluster, you can use an endpoint, which abstracts the connection.
- You can have multiple endpoints. Each endpoint maps a connection to an appropriate group of instances based on the use cases such as write or read. Queries can point to the read endpoint, which connects to one of read replicas with load balancing.
Aurora Backups and Snapshots
- Automated backups are enabled by default.
- You can take snapshots without affecting the performance.
- You can share Aurora snapshots with other AWS accounts.
Aurora Backtrack
- Backtrack allows you to roll back a database for up to 72 hours.
- It does not create a new database or a new cluster. Instead, Aurora rolls back the same database to a previous state.
Aurora Replicas
There are 3 types of replicas: Aurora replicas (up to 15), MySQL replicas (up to 5), and Postgres replicas (up to 5).
- Automated failover is available only with Aurora replicas.
- Aurora replicas are in-region. MySQL replicas support cross-region.
- The automated backups are turned on by default. You can share Aurora snapshots with other AWS accounts.
Aurora Parallel Query
Parallel Query is used to running large queries in all storage nodes in parallel inside the cluster.
Aurora Serverless
Aurora Serverless is an on-demand, autoscaling edition of Amazon Aurora.
- It is a cost-effective option for infrequent or unpredictable workloads with easier setup.
- The database endpoint connects to a proxy fleet that routes the workload to a fleet of resources that are automatically scaled. Client applications do not need to change how to use the proxy fleet. Aurora Serverless manages the connections automatically.
- You specify the minimum and maximum load levels with Aurora Capacity Units, and Aurora Serverless scales based on the incoming load automatically.
- Aurora Serverless charges based on the resources used per second.
- You can even scale down to zero. It can be paused after the specified duration of inactivity.
- Aurora serverless is a simple and low-cost option for infrequent or unpredictable workloads such as Development or QA environments.
- You can use CLI or Data API to connect to Aurora Serverless. Using the Data API, you can access Aurora Serverless from the Query Editor or Lambda functions.
Aurora Global Database
Amazon Aurora Global Database is designed for globally distributed applications, allowing a single Amazon Aurora database to span multiple AWS regions.
- The typical cross-region replication latencies are below 1 second.
- Cross-Region Disaster Recovery
- In the failover scenario, you can promote one of the secondary regions to take read/write responsibilities. An Aurora cluster can recover in less than 1 minute, even in the event of a complete regional outage.
- It provides your application with an effective Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 1 second and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 1 minute.
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