Amazon Relational Database Service – Looking Back at 2017

The Amazon RDS team launched nearly 80 features in 2017. Some of them were covered in this blog, others on the AWS Database Blog, and the rest in What’s New or Forum posts. To wrap up my week, I thought it would be worthwhile to give you an organized recap. So here we go!

Certification & Security

• January – FedRAMP Certification for Amazon RDS for MySQL, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.
• February – Forced SSL Support for SQL Server.
• April – Access Management for MySQL and Aurora Using IAM.
• June – TDE Encrypted Cross-Region Snapshots for RDS SQL Server and Oracle.
• June – RDS Encryption at Rest for Additional T2 Instance Types.
• September – Migration of Encrypted RDS MySQL to Aurora.
• September – HIPAA Eligibility for RDS for SQL Server and RDS for MariaDB.

Features

• January – Advanced Auditing for Amazon Aurora.
• January – RDS MySQL to Aurora Replication in Same Region.
• January – Cross-Region Read Replicas of Encrypted Database Instances.
• January – Outbound Oracle Network Access Using Custom DNS Servers.
• March – Cross-Region Snapshot Copy, Cross-Region Replication, Cross-Account Snapshot Sharing for Aurora.
• April – Fast, Online DDL Processing for Aurora.
• May – Linux Huge Page Support for Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL.
• June – Amazon Aurora Select Into Amazon S3.
• June – Stopping and Starting of RDS Database Instances.
• June – Amazon Aurora Copy on Write Database Cloning.
• August – Amazon Aurora Fast Database Cloning.
• August – 16 TB Maximum Database Storage Size for SQL Server.
• September – Open Preview of Performance Insights for Aurora PostgreSQL.
• September – Amazon Aurora Audit Log Upload to CloudWatch Logs.
• October – Size Flexibility for Amazon RDS Reserved Instances.
• October – General Availability of Amazon Aurora with PostgreSQL Compatibility.
• October – Amazon Aurora for MySQL Asynchronous Key Prefetch.
• October – Amazon RDS For Oracle Support for Oracle SQLT Diagnostics Tool.
• November – Restore MySQL Backup to Amazon RDS MySQL Database.
• November – Auto Scaling for Aurora Replicas.
• November – Scaling of Storage Size for Amazon RDS for SQL Server.
• November – Up to 16 TB of Storage & Faster Scaling for Amazon RDS for MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and PostgreSQL.
• November – Amazon RDS for SQL Server Storage Reconfiguration on Snapshot Restore.
• November – Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL Support for the pgrouting and postrgresql-hll Extensions, HyperLogLog Data, and decoder_raw Module.
• December – Batched Scans and Hashed Joins for Aurora with MySQL Compatibility.

Engine Versions & Features

• January – MariaDB 10.0.28.
• April – Open Preview of Aurora for PostgreSQL.
• May – Amazon RDS Support for Versions 9.6.2, 9.5.6, 9.4.11 and 9.3.16 of PostgreSQL.
• May – Oracle Patch Set Upgrades (PSU) for April 2017.
• June – Amazon RDS Support for Versions 9.6.2, 9.5.6, 9.4.11, and 9.3.16 in the AWS GovCloud (US) Region.
• June – SQL Server 2016 Service Pack 1 (SP1).
• July – Amazon RDS for Oracle Supports HugePages.
• July – Amazon RDS for SQL Server Enterprise Edition with License Included in More Regions.
• July – Oracle SE2 License Included Available in AWS GovCloud (US).
• July – MariaDB 10.1.23 and 10.0.31.
• July – PostgreSQL 9.6.3, 9.5.7, 9.4.12, and 9.3.17.
• September – PostgreSQL 9.6.3, 9.5.7, 9.4.12, and 9.3.17 in AWS GovCloud (US).
• September – Amazon RDS for Oracle Support for Oracle APEX.
• September – Amazon RDS for Oracle Support for Oracle Multimedia, Spatial, and Locator Options.
• September – Amazon RDS for Oracle Support for Customer-Initiated Snapshot Upgrades for Deprecated Database Versions.
• November – Amazon RDS for Oracle Support for Oracle Enterprise Manager Cloud Control 13c1 and 13c2.
• November – PostgreSQL 9.6.5, 9.5.9, 9.4.14, and 9.3.19 in Commercial and AWS GovCloud (US).
• November – Oracle Patch Set Upgrades (PSU) for July 2017.
• November – SQL Server 2016 SP1 CU5 and SQL Server 2017.
• November – MariaDB 10.1.26 and 10.0.32.
• December – Oracle Patch Set Upgrades (PSU) for October 2017.

Regional Support

• March – Aurora in the US West (N. California) Region.
• June – Aurora in the Europe (Frankfurt) Region.
• July – Windows Authentication for RDS for SQL Server in More Regions.
• August – Multi-AZ for RDS SQL Server in the Europe (Frankfurt) Region.
• November – Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL in the Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt), Asia Pacific (Sydney), and Asia Pacific (Mumbai) Regions.
• December – Amazon Aurora for PostgreSQL in the Europe (Paris) Region.

Instance Support

• March – Aurora on T2.Small Instances.
• June – RDS on M4 Instances in the São Paulo Region.
• October – Amazon RDS for Oracle on New R4, T2, and M4 Instance Types.
• October – Amazon Aurora on R4 Instances.
• November – Amazon RDS for MySQL and MariaDB on R4, T2, and M4 Instance Types.
• November – Amazon RDS for SQL Server on R4 and M4 Instance Types.
• December – Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL on R4, T2, and M4 Instance Types.

Price Reductions

• July – Price Reduction for R3 Instances running SQL Server Enterprise License Included.

And That’s a Wrap
I’m pretty sure that’s everything. As you can see, 2017 was quite the year! I can’t wait to see what the team delivers in 2018.

— Jeff;

Modified 08/12/2020 – In an effort to ensure a great experience, expired links in this post have been updated or removed from the original post.