IntroductionRelational databases offer many advantages to organizations. They are the heart of your most critical applications, but they can become difficult to manage and operate with high availability.As you scale your app, you must juggle installs, patching, monitoring, performance tuning, backups, scaling, security, hardware upgrades, and storage management. Thus, database administration is resource-intensive, taking time away from building your application. Amazon RDS simplifies database management by automating time-consuming administration tasks. Thus, your team can focus on optimizing applications and getting faster results with fewer operational overheads. Amazon RDS allows you to use your relational database of choice, including the most popular open-source and commercial engines and Amazon’s relational database built for the cloud, Amazon Aurora. What is Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)Organizations that want to run commercial databases in the cloud should choose Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Amazon RDS is a managed database service that is easy to set up, operate, and scale. However, some business applications require customization to their underlying Oracle and Microsoft SQL server database environment and operating system. Amazon RDS Custom provides a managed database service for business applications that require customization of the underlying database and operating system. It automates database administration tasks, operations, and scaling while enabling you to access and customize the database environment and operating systems to meet the requirements of their business applications.With RDS Custom, you can install agents, drivers, patches, or custom workloads on the host with granular control capabilities. You can easily move your existing self-managed Oracle and Microsoft SQL server databases that require specialized customizations to Amazon RDS Custom and no longer worry about having to manage databases themselves. Key Features of Amazon RDSIt automates cumbersome tasks with many customized functionalities, including those listed below. You also have a choice among 8 popular database engines. Amazon RDS also provides three different deployment environments: Amazon Aurora, Amazon RDS on AWS Outposts, and Amazon RDS Custom. Scroll below to learn more about its interesting features!Managed ServiceThe term ‘managed’ refers to the zero or less burden of administrative tasks. With Amazon RDS, launching a database and connecting applications takes minutes. Despite management, you can also monitor and view database metrics at no additional cost. You can check key operational metrics via Amazon RDS Console and determine performance problems with Amazon RDS Performance Insights. Multiple Database EnginesIts multi-AZ deployments offer high availability and durability with an SLA of up to 99.95% for your database instances. These deployments offer 2x faster transaction commit latency like failover in under 35 seconds. With Amazon Aurora, you can even achieve an SLA of up to 99.99%. It automates failover to one of up to 15 Aurora replicas you created in three AZs. Customizable PerformanceYou have a choice among two different storage types, i.e. Amazon RDS General Purpose Storage and Provisioned IOPS Storage. You can also add a cache from Amazon ElastiCache to enhance the performance of your RDS database and applications. Similarly, you have Amazon DevOps Guru (improves application availability); Amazon RDS Optimized Writes (manages write-intensive database workloads); and Amazon RDS Optimized Reads (enhances the speed of complex queries). Integration With AI & MLUse a variety of ML algorithms and add ML-based predictions via Amazon Aurora machine learning. It provides a secure, simple, and optimized integration with AWS machine learning services. You can integrate generative AI models with Amazon Bedrock or Amazon SageMaker. This detailed documentation by AWS is ideal to know how to store embeddings and perform vector similarity searches. Security Amazon RDS allows you to use keys to encrypt your databases via AWS Key Management Service (KMS). Read replicas, automated backups, and snapshots are also encrypted. Let’s suppose you don’t want to destroy your sources out there with all the other millions of resources, a soup of servers, and so on! Instead, you want your little private slice of the overall AWS pie. And, that’s basically what an Amazon VPC (virtual private cloud) is!ScalabilityYou can scale the memory and compute resources with push-button, get additional provisional storage, elastic scalability with Amazon RDS read replicas, Amazon RDS Proxy, and auto-scalability with Aurora Serverless v2. You can scale a maximum up to a maximum of 128 TiB of storage. You can create more than one replica for a given source DB instance and get high-volume application read traffic from multiple data copies. Flexible Migration OptionsYou can perform both heterogenous and homogenous migration with AWS DMS. It helps you discover, plan, convert and migrate your workloads. The migrations are even easier with its inbuilt and serverless native tools. Amazon RDS for Aurora MySQL and MySQL supports both logical and physical migration using native MySQL-compatible tools and Percona XtraBackup. TLEs (Trusted Language Extensions) For Developers Developers can safely write extensions on popular trusted languages - like Perl, JavaScript, SQL, and PL/pgSQL without needing AWS to certify code. TLE is an open-source development kit that also restricts access to unsafe resources. It is available to both Aurora and Amazon RDS customers at no additional cost. Cost EffectiveAmazon RDS is cost-effective (with no upfront commitment). You simply pay monthly for the database you launch. You can also get good discounts with reserved instances of Amazon RDS as compared to the on-demand Amazon RDS instances. You can also stop and start database instances for up to 7 days at a time. It further makes it affordable to use for test and development purposes. Comparison of Amazon RDS with Google Cloud SQL, and Azure SQL DatabaseFeatureAmazon RDSGoogle Cloud SQLAzure SQL DatabaseSupported DatabasesMySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, AuroraMySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL ServerMySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL ServerHigh AvailabilityMulti-AZ deploymentsRegional and cross-regional replicasZone-redundant deploymentsAutomatic BackupsYesYesYesScalingVertical and horizontal scalingVertical scaling, horizontal with replicasVertical scaling, horizontal with Elastic PoolsSecurityVPC, encryption at rest and in transit, IAM integrationVPC, encryption, IAM integrationVNet, encryption, Azure AD integrationPricingPay-as-you-go, Reserved instancesPay-as-you-go, Committed use contractsPay-as-you-go, Reserved CapacityMonitoringCloudWatch, Enhanced MonitoringStackdriverAzure Monitor, Log AnalyticsServerless OptionsAurora ServerlessNot availableHyperscale (Citus) for PostgreSQLData Migration ToolsDMS, native toolsDMS, native toolsDMS, native toolsReal-world Scenario of Amazon RDSNetflix: Netflix uses Amazon RDS to manage relational databases for various applications.Airbnb: Airbnb relies on Amazon RDS for handling transactional data and multi-AZ deployments for high availability.Expedia: Expedia uses Amazon RDS to support its travel booking platform.Pricing of Amazon RDSCategoryDescriptionPricing (Approximate)Instance TypesStandard (e.g., db.m5.large), Memory Optimized (e.g., db.r5.large)$0.10 - $1.60 per hourStorageGeneral Purpose (SSD), Provisioned IOPS (SSD), Magnetic$0.10 - $0.25 per GB-monthI/O RequestsCharges for read and write operations$0.10 per 1 million requestsData TransferData transferred out to the Internet$0.09 per GBBackup StorageStorage for automated backups $0.095 per GB-monthPricing Comparison of Amazon RDS with Google Cloud SQL, and Azure SQL DatabaseFeatureAmazon RDSGoogle Cloud SQLAzure SQL DatabaseInstance Types$0.10 - $1.60 per hour$0.01 - $3.92 per hour$0.01 - $5.56 per DTU/hourStorage$0.10 - $0.25 per GB-month$0.17 per GB-month (SSD)$0.12 - $0.14 per GB-monthI/O Requests$0.10 per 1M requestsIncluded in the instance priceIncluded in the instance priceData Transfer$0.09 per GB$0.12 per GB outbound$0.087 per GB outboundBackup Storage$0.095 per GB-month$0.10 per GB-month$0.20 per GB-monthPricing Calculator for Amazon RDS with Google Cloud SQL, and Azure SQL DatabaseHow to configure Amazon RDSStep 1: Sign in to AWS Management Console.Step 2: Navigate to RDS: Go to the RDS dashboard.Step 3: Create Database: Click on "Create database".Step 4: Choose Engine: Select a database engine (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL).Step 5: Configure Settings: Specify details like DB instance size, storage type, and VPC settings.Step 6: Set Credentials: Define a master username and password.Step 7: Configure Advanced Settings: Set options like backups, monitoring, and maintenance windows.Step 8: Launch DB Instance: Review configurations and launch the instance.How to configure Amazon RDS by CLIStep 1: Install AWS CLIpip install awscliStep 2: Configure AWS CLIaws configureStep 3: Create RDS Instanceaws rds create-db-instance \ --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \ --db-instance-class db.t2.micro \ --engine mysql \ --allocated-storage 20 \ --master-username admin \ --master-user-password mypasswordStep 4: Describe DB Instances (to check status)aws rds describe-db-instances \ --db-instance-identifier mydbinstanceStep 5: Modify Security Group (to allow access)aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress \ --group-id sg-xxxxxx \ --protocol tcp \ --port 3306 \ --cidr 0.0.0.0/0How do you connect Amazon RDS to WordPress?Step 1: Set Up RDS from the above steps.Step 2: Choose a Database Engine like MySqlStep 3: Configure instance settings, including instance size, storage, and VPC.Step 4: Make sure the RDS instance is in the same VPC as your WordPress server.Step 5: Enable security groups to allow inbound traffic on the database port (default 3306 for MySQL)Step 6: Edit the wp-config.php file in your WordPress Folder.Step 7: Update the database settings with your RDS endpoint, username, and password.define('DB_NAME', 'your_db_name'); define('DB_USER', 'your_db_user'); define('DB_PASSWORD', 'your_db_password'); define('DB_HOST', 'your_rds_endpoint');Step 8: The WordPress site can connect to the RDS instance by loading your website and checking for database connectivity for more details you can explore the video below.How do you connect Amazon RDS to Node Js?Step 1: Set Up RDS from the above steps.Step 2: Choose a Database Engine like MySqlStep 3: Install MySQL Packagenpm install mysqlStep 4: Configure Database Connectionconst mysql = require('mysql'); const connection = mysql.createConnection({ host: 'your-rds-endpoint', user: 'your-db-username', password: 'your-db-password', database: 'your-db-name' }); connection.connect((err) => { if (err) { console.error('Error connecting to the database:', err); return; } console.log('Connected to the database!'); });Step 5: Test the Connection by Running your Node.js application.How to configure Amazon RDS by TerraformStep 1: Install TerraformStep 2: Create a Terraform Configuration FileStep 3: Specify the AWS provider in the file. Step 4: Use aws_db_instance to define the RDS instance with parameters like engine, instance_class, name, username, password, and allocated_storage.Step 5: Run terraform init to initialize the configurationStep 6: Run terraform apply to create the RDS instance.Example:provider "aws" { region = "us-west-2" } resource "aws_db_instance" "example" { engine = "mysql" instance_class = "db.t2.micro" allocated_storage = 20 name = "mydatabase" username = "admin" password = "password" parameter_group_name = "default.mysql8.0" }How to configure Amazon RDS by CLIStep 1: Install Necessary Jenkins PluginsGo to Jenkins Dashboard > Manage Jenkins > Manage Plugins.Install plugins like:AWS Pipeline Plugin (to interact with AWS resources).Pipeline: AWS Steps (for AWS-related steps in pipelines).Step 2: Configure AWS CLI on Jenkinsaws configureStep 3: Create a Jenkins Pipeline JobGo to Jenkins Dashboard > New Item.Choose "Pipeline" and name your job.Under "Pipeline," select "Pipeline script" and start writing your pipeline code.Step 4: Write the Jenkins Pipeline Scriptpipeline { agent any environment { AWS_REGION = 'us-east-1' // Change to your AWS region DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER = 'my-rds-instance' DB_INSTANCE_CLASS = 'db.t2.micro' ENGINE = 'mysql' MASTER_USERNAME = 'admin' MASTER_PASSWORD = 'password1234' // Consider using Jenkins credentials instead of plain text } stages { stage('Create RDS Instance') { steps { script { // Create RDS instance sh """ aws rds create-db-instance \ --db-instance-identifier ${DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER} \ --db-instance-class ${DB_INSTANCE_CLASS} \ --engine ${ENGINE} \ --master-username ${MASTER_USERNAME} \ --master-user-password ${MASTER_PASSWORD} \ --allocated-storage 20 \ --region ${AWS_REGION} """ } } } stage('Check RDS Status') { steps { script { // Check the status of the RDS instance sh """ aws rds describe-db-instances \ --db-instance-identifier ${DB_INSTANCE_IDENTIFIER} \ --region ${AWS_REGION} """ } } } } post { always { echo 'Pipeline execution completed.' } } }Step 5: Run the Jenkins PipelineSave the pipeline and click "Build Now" to execute it.The pipeline will create an RDS instance, and you can monitor the status in Jenkins logs.Useful AWS RDS commandsCommandDescriptionaws rds create-db-instanceCreates a new RDS instance.aws rds describe-db-instancesDescribes RDS instances.aws rds modify-db-instanceModifies settings of an existing RDS instance.aws rds delete-db-instanceDeletes an RDS instance.aws rds reboot-db-instanceReboots an RDS instance.aws rds create-db-snapshotCreates a snapshot of an RDS instance.aws rds describe-db-snapshotsDescribes RDS snapshots.aws rds delete-db-snapshotDeletes an RDS snapshot.aws rds restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshotRestores an RDS instance from a snapshot.aws rds create-db-subnet-groupCreates a DB subnet group.aws rds describe-db-subnet-groupsDescribes DB subnet groups.aws rds delete-db-subnet-groupDeletes a DB subnet group.aws rds create-db-parameter-groupCreates a DB parameter group.aws rds describe-db-parameter-groupsDescribes DB parameter groups.aws rds modify-db-parameter-groupModifies a DB parameter group.aws rds delete-db-parameter-groupDeletes a DB parameter group.ConclusionsIt’s a wrap on Amazon RDS! We have discussed its definition and key features in detail. It also gave us useful insights on how automating daunting tasks with Amazon relational databases can give a sign of relief and help to focus more on the tasks that matter the most to businesses. Read Morehttps://devopsden.io/article/what-is-heroku-and-what-does-heroku-doFollow us onhttps://www.linkedin.com/company/devopsden/
