Amazon RDS for MySQL features

Amazon RDS allows you to use the AWS Management Console or a simple set of web services APIs to create, delete, and modify relational database instances (DB Instances). You can also control access and security for your instance(s) and manage your database backups and snapshots. For a full list of the available Amazon RDS APIs, please see the Amazon RDS API Guide.

If your application already relies on a MySQL database, importing data to Amazon RDS is simple. In general, to migrate your data to Amazon RDS you simply:

• Create a DB Instance with the compute, storage capacity, and access controls required.
• For smaller databases (e.g. up to 1 GB), extract the data with mysqldump and pipe it directly into Amazon RDS. Below is an example showing the “acme” database being copied to Amazon RDS:

mysqldump acme | mysql --host=hostname --user=username --password acme

For larger databases, build your database schema in Amazon RDS, then convert the data into a flat file and import it into your DB Instance using the mysqlimport utility. Below is an example showing the “acme” database being copied to Amazon RDS:

mysqlimport --local --compress --user=username --password --host=hostname --fields-terminated-by=',' Acme sales.part_*

• Update the database connection string in your application config file.

Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments allow you to make safer, simpler, and faster database updates with zero data loss on RDS for MySQL. In a few steps, Blue/Green Deployments create a staging environment that mirrors the production environment and keeps the two environments in sync using logical replication. You can make changes—such as major/minor version upgrades, schema modifications, and parameter setting changes—without impacting your production workload. 

When promoting your staging environment, Blue/Green Deployments block writes to both the blue and green environments until switchover is complete. Blue/Green Deployments use built-in switchover guardrails that time out promotion if they exceed your maximum tolerable downtime, detect replication errors, check instance health, and more.

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Amazon RDS Optimized Writes, built on top of the AWS Nitro System Torn Write Prevention feature, allow you to improve write transaction throughput by up to 2x in RDS for MySQL at no additional cost. Optimized Writes safely writes your 16KiB data pages in a single step. Optimized Writes is especially useful for customers with write-intensive database workloads, such as digital payments, financial trading, and online gaming.

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Amazon RDS Optimized Reads are designed to provide you with faster database performance with up to 50% faster query processing in Amazon RDS for MySQL at no additional cost. Optimized Reads improve the speed of your complex queries that use temporary tables, such as queries that require sorts, hash aggregations, high-load joins, and Common Table Expressions (CTEs). Optimized Reads improve the speed of your queries by placing the temporary tables on your NVMe-based instance storage, which is physically connected to your host server.

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You will be charged at the end of each month for the Amazon RDS resources you actually consume. Once a DB Instance you have created is available for connection, you will be charged for each hour your DB Instance is running. Each DB Instance will run until termination, which occurs when you issue an API call to delete the DB Instance or in the event of an instance failure. Partial DB Instance hours consumed are billed as full hours. In addition to DB Instance hours, you are also billed for your monthly storage, I/O requests, and backups. If you scale your storage capacity within the billing period, your bill will be pro-rated accordingly.

For details, see the Amazon RDS for MySQL pricing page.

Your use of this service is subject to the Amazon Web Services Customer Agreement.