Amazon RDS for Oracle Database is designed for developers or businesses who require the full features and capabilities of Oracle databases or who wish to migrate existing applications and tools that utilize Oracle databases. Since Amazon RDS for Oracle Database provides you direct access to familiar Oracle Database software of the edition you have specified, your applications should connect seamlessly.

• Pre-configured Parameters – Amazon RDS for Oracle deployments are pre-configured with a sensible set of parameters and settings appropriate for the Oracle Database edition and DB Instance class you have selected. You can simply launch an Oracle DB Instance and connect your application within minutes without additional configuration. If you desire additional control, you can achieve it via DB Parameter Groups.
  
• Monitoring and Metrics – Amazon RDS provides Amazon CloudWatch metrics for you DB Instance deployments at no additional charge. You can use the AWS Management Console to view key operational metrics for your DB Instance deployments, including compute/memory/storage capacity utilization, I/O activity, and DB Instance connections.
  
• DB Event Notifications – Amazon RDS provides Amazon SNS notifications via email or SMS for your DB Instance deployments. You can use the AWS Management Console or the Amazon RDS APIs to subscribe to over 40 different DB events associated with your Amazon RDS deployments.
  
• Software Patching – Amazon RDS will make sure that the Oracle Database software powering your deployment has the latest patches available within a reasonable period after their release. You can exert optional control over when and if your DB Instance is patched via DB Engine Version Management.
  

• General Purpose (SSD) – Amazon RDS General Purpose (SSD) storage delivers a consistent baseline of 3 IOPS per provisioned GB and provides the ability to burst up to 12,000 IOPS.

You can convert from Magnetic Storage to General Purpose (SSD) storage; you will encounter a short availability impact when doing so.

To learn more and get started with Amazon RDS General Purpose (SSD) Storage, please refer to the General Purpose (SSD) Storage section of the Amazon RDS User Guide.

• Provisioned IOPS (SSD) – You can provision up to 64 TB storage and up to 256,000 IOPS per database instance. Your actual realized IOPS may vary from the amount you provisioned based on your database workload, instance type, and database engine choice. Refer to the Factors That Affect Realized IOPS section of the Amazon RDS User Guide.

You can convert from standard storage to Provisioned IOPS storage and get consistent throughput and low I/O latencies. You will encounter a short availability impact when doing so. You can independently scale IOPS (in increments of 1000) and storage on-the-fly with zero downtime. You can scale the IOPS up or down depending on factors such as seasonal variability of traffic to your applications.

To learn more and get started with Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS, please refer to the Provisioned IOPS Storage section of the Amazon RDS User Guide.

• Automated Backups – Turned on by default, the automated backup feature of Amazon RDS enables point-in-time recovery for your DB Instance. Amazon RDS will back up your database and transaction logs and store both for a user-specified retention period. This allows you to restore your DB Instance to any second during your retention period up to the last five minutes. Your automatic backup retention period can be configured to up to thirty-five days.
• DB Snapshots – DB Snapshots are user-initiated backups of your DB Instance. These full database backups will be stored by Amazon RDS until you explicitly delete them. You can create a new DB Instance from a DB Snapshot whenever you desire. You can also copy DB Snapshots across AWS Regions for geographical migration or disaster recovery use cases.
  

• DB Instance Class – Using the Amazon RDS APIs or a few clicks of the AWS Management Console, you can scale the compute and memory resources powering your deployment up or down. Scaling operations typically complete within a handful of minutes.
• Storage and IOPS – As your storage requirements grow you can provision additional storage on-the-fly with zero downtime. If you are using Amazon RDS Provisioned IOPS, you can also scale the throughput of your DB Instance by specifying the IOPS rate from 1,000 IOPS to 256,000 IOPS in 1,000 IOPS increments and storage from 100 GB to 64 TB.
  

• Automatic Host Replacement – Amazon RDS will automatically replace the compute instance powering your deployment in the event of a hardware failure.
• Multi-AZ Deployments – A deployment option for your production DB Instances that enhances database availability while protecting your latest database updates against unplanned outages. When you create or modify your DB Instance to run as a Multi-AZ deployment, Amazon RDS will automatically provision and manage a “standby” replica in a different Availability Zone (independent infrastructure in a physically separate location). Database updates are made concurrently on the primary and standby resources to prevent replication lag. In the event of planned database maintenance, DB Instance failure, or an Availability Zone failure, Amazon RDS will automatically failover to the up-to-date standby so that database operations can resume quickly without administrative intervention. Prior to failover you cannot directly access the standby, and it cannot be used to serve read traffic.
  

Using Amazon VPC, you can isolate your DB Instances in your own virtual network and connect to your existing IT infrastructure using industry-standard encrypted IPSec VPN. To learn more about Amazon RDS in VPC, refer to the Amazon RDS User Guide. In addition, using Amazon RDS, you can configure firewall settings and control network access to your DB Instances.

Amazon RDS for Oracle also supports Transparent Data Encryption and Native Network Encryption as part of Oracle's Advanced Security option for Oracle Database Enterprise Edition. For Transparent Data Encryption, Amazon RDS manages the Oracle Wallet and Master Encryption Key for the DB Instance.