AWS Database Blog

Recently, AWS announced the general availability of the Amazon RDS detailed backup storage billing feature. This feature applies to PostgreSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and SQL Server database engines. Before the release of this feature, Amazon RDS backup charges were presented as a single-line item per Region on the monthly bill. However, it was hard to […]

Enterprise customers execute many day-to-day batch jobs on Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL databases, and need notification methods such as email or text after completing such jobs to keep track of their activity. Because Aurora PostgreSQL is a managed service, it restricts access to database extensions such as pgsmtp and pgplpythonu for security reasons. This raises the […]

As a general design best practice, you can optimize your use of Amazon DynamoDB throughput capacity by designing your application for uniform read and write activity across all logical partition keys in the table and its indexes. In doing so, you can prevent creating hot partitions that could consume a disproportionate amount of your table’s […]

In tech, caching is ubiquitous. CPUs use L1, L2, and L3 caches, and mobile phones cache app data locally. Streaming services cache content on the edge, browsers cache images, and more. The same is true for databases. Imagine if, on a gaming site, every time a leaderboard was displayed, a query had to do a […]

AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) helps you migrate on-premises databases to AWS quickly and securely. It supports homogeneous migrations as well as heterogeneous migrations. The source database remains operational while the migration is running or being tested. Migration takes place using a DMS replication server, source, target endpoints, and migration tasks. If you are […]

Organizations moving to secure their critical data worry about while it’s both at-rest and in transit. Relational databases are a common example of situations in which business-critical data must be secured. Microsoft SQL Server lets you secure the in-transit data using Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption. This post reviews the process of enabling SSL encryption […]

Database migration can be a complicated task. It presents all the challenges of changing your software platform, understanding source data complexity, data loss checks, thoroughly testing existing functionality, comparing application performance, and validating your data. AWS provides several tools and services that provide a pre-migration checklist and migration assessments. You can use the AWS Schema […]

Customers continue to want greater visibility and control over the services they use within AWS. When it comes to our database services, customer requests typically revolve around providing greater insights into the query optimization and processing within a given database. Database developers and administrators are mostly already familiar with the idea and use of database […]

June 2023: For Aurora databases where IO is greater than 25% of your costs, check out this blog post and recent announcement to see if you can save money with Aurora I/O-Optimized. Cost reduction is one of the biggest drivers for many IT departments to explore migration of on-premises workloads to the cloud. This post […]

January 2024: This post was reviewed and updated for accuracy. Storing user names and passwords directly in applications is not a best practice. Saving credentials as plaintext should never occur in a secure application. As a solution, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) policies can assign permissions that determine who is allowed to manage Amazon […]