Category: Amazon RDS

Choosing the right storage configuration that meets performance requirements is a common challenge when creating and managing database instances. In this post, we provide an end-to-end guide for what storage class to choose depending on your use case. In addition, we compare the performance of different storage volumes on open source engines supported by Amazon RDS, to validate them from a database-centric perspective.

In this post, we provide a comprehensive guide for addressing performance considerations when migrating Oracle databases from Exadata to Amazon RDS for Oracle. We explore methods to analyze Exadata workload characteristics, including determining Smart IO usage, examining database-level I/O patterns, and identifying SQLs that utilize Exadata-specific features. We also discuss various alternatives available on RDS for Oracle to mitigate potential performance impacts.

In this post we demonstrate, how you can extend your existing AD infrastructure and Kerberos authentication to Amazon RDS for Db2.

Recently, Amazon RDS launched the ability to shrink storage volumes using Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments – a nice addition to the list of new use cases that Blue/Green Deployments now supports. In this post, we cover how to use the new storage volume shrink feature in Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments to minimize the downtime required to perform the storage size reduction operation. We also review various mechanisms to monitor the progress of storage shrink and best practices on how to arrive at the optimal storage size for your shrink storage task.

You can create an Amazon RDS for Db2 instance by using the AWS Management Console, AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI), AWS CloudFormation, Terraform by Hashicorp, AWS Lambda functions, or other methods. One of the prerequisites for creating an RDS for Db2 instance is to configure the virtual private cloud (VPC) appropriately. This post shows how to create a VPC with best practices for any Amazon RDS database in general and Amazon RDS for Db2 in particular through a one-click automated deployment.

With the recent addition of physical replication as an option for RDS Blue/Green Deployments, you can overcome most of the limitations of logical replication. This makes physical replication particularly well-suited for use cases like minor version upgrades, schema changes (DDL operations) in the blue environment, and storage adjustments. In this post, we delve into the advantages of using physical replication in RDS for PostgreSQL blue/green deployments to simplify database operations and scale with application demands. We explore the key benefits of physical replication and provide a step-by-step guide to help you get started with this new capability.

With Amazon RDS for Db2, you can seamlessly authenticate your users and groups with or without Kerberos authentication using a single AWS Microsoft AD directory that can serve multiple accounts. In this post, we use AWS Managed Microsoft AD from an AWS account to provide Microsoft AD authentication to Amazon RDS for Db2 in a different account.

The Amazon RDS for Oracle User Guide provides comprehensive coverage of the maintenance activities in Amazon RDS for Oracle. However, it could be cumbersome to quickly learn about the best practices around various maintenance activities in Amazon RDS for Oracle from the user guide. In this post, we describe the key maintenance activities and the best practices to be followed for each of them.

In this post, we demonstrate improvements in planned failover downtime of Multi-AZ instance deployment with Amazon RDS Proxy, a result of several optimizations made by RDS. In the event of a failure, Amazon RDS automatically switches the roles of the primary and standby instances and updates the IP address associated with the database’s DNS (hostname). This allows client applications to maintain their connection settings during failover. This process, known as DNS propagation, can take up to 35 seconds to complete. RDS Proxy eliminates the 35 seconds of DNS propagation delay by continuously monitoring both instances, allowing it to bypass DNS propagation. This allows RDS Proxy to deliver a faster failover response for client applications, maximizing availability during failovers.

In this post, we introduce postgres_get_av_diag(), a new function available in RDS for PostgreSQL and Aurora PostgreSQL to monitor aggressive autovacuum blockers.