New, Cost-Effective Memory-Optimized DB Instances for Amazon RDS

The Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) takes care of just about all of the heavy lifting once associated with setting up, running, and scaling a MySQL, Oracle Database, SQL Server, or PostgreSQL database. You can focus on your application while RDS handles database upgrades, fault tolerance, and many other issues that once required a system administrator or DBA.

You can now take advantage of the R3 instance type with Amazon RDS. R3 instances are optimized for memory-intensive applications, have the lowest cost per GiB of RAM among Amazon RDS instance types, and are recommended for high performance database workloads. These new instances feature the latest Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge processors and deliver higher sustained memory bandwidth with lower network latency and jitter at prices up to 28% lower than comparable M2 DB Instances.

Better, Stronger, Faster
The R3 instances support enhanced networking and higher sustained memory bandwidth for higher performance. You can use them to support the demanding database workloads often found in gaming, enterprise, social media, web, and mobile applications. You can also consolidate databases that are currently spread across several smaller M2 instances to a smaller number of high-capacity db.r3.8xlarge instances.

The larger instances (db.r3.xlarge, db.r3.2xlarge, db.r3.4xlarge, and db.r3.8xlarge are optimized for Provisioned IOPS storage. For a workload comprised of 50% reads and 50% writes, you can realize up to 20,000 IOPS for MySQL and 25,000 IOPS for PostgreSQL when running on a db.r3.8xlarge instance.

R3 Details
You can currently launch DB instances that run version 5.6 of MySQL, PostgreSQL, or SQL Server. Support for versions 5.1 and 5.5 of MySQL in the works, as is support for Oracle Database.

Pricing for R3 database instances start at $0.089/hour (effective price) for 3 year Heavy Utilization Reserved Instances and $0.240/hour for On-Demand usage in the US West (Oregon) Region for MySQL. For more information on pricing, check out the RDS Pricing page.

These new instances are currently available in the US East (Northern Virginia), US West (Oregon), US West (Northern California), EU (Ireland), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Asia Pacific (Sydney),and Asia Pacific (Singapore) Regions. We expect to make them available in the GovCloud (US), China (Beijing), and South America (São Paulo) Regions in the near future.

— Jeff;