What is Amazon RDS?

Amazon Relational Database Service is a distributed relational database web service that is running in the cloud and provides a relational database for use in applications. It is a scalable web relational database that supports MySQL, Oracle, Microsoft SQL server and PostgreSQL. It provides simple setup, operations and scalable platform.

What are you going to Learn? 

● Advantages

● Companies Depending on RDS

● Terminology

● Prerequisites

● How to setup and manage Amazon RDS?

● Conclusion

Advantages of Amazon RDS 

● You can launch an RDS instance in a couple of minutes with the pre-configured relevant database

● You can scale up and down at any time based on the business requirements

● Backup and recovery is very easy

● You can replicate the master database and run reports without affecting the production

● You can free up the application server from database load to increase the website performance

● You can monitor the I/O activity, computing and storage performance from cloud watch

Companies depending on RDS 

● Zynga

● Rovio

● Airbnb

● Flipboard

● Tapjoy

● Ticketmaster

Terminology 

● DB Instance : It is a database virtual machine running in the cloud. It is easy to launch and modify with CLI, APIs or the management console. You can view the instance by using RDS console, CLI commands or APIs

● DB Instance Class : The compute resources and memory are determined by DB Instance Class. You scale up/down the instance by changing the DB Instance Class.

● Amazon DB storage : You can specify the storage size and provisioned IOPS(optional) while creating the new DB instance.

● High Availability : Amazon RDS provides high availability and failover support to the DB instances. You can use Multi - AZ deployment to maintain a replica of your DB instance in a different availability zone. Using this HA option you can minimize the latency and failover redundancy during service disruptions

● DB instance backups : Amazon RDS provides two types of backups.

• Automated backups - It automatically backs up the DB instance in a user-defined time frame and maintains the backup for a limited user-specified time period
• DB snapshots - It is user initiated backup that enables you to backup the DB instance and recover it at any time. Amazon RDS maintains the snapshot until you delete them

● DB instance replication : Amazon RDS has two ways to replicate the database

• Multi - AZ deployment - Amazon RDS automatically maintain a standby replica of your DB instance in a different availability zone for failover.
• Read Replicas - You can create read replica of the source DB instance to manage the heavy workload. The source DB instance replicated to the read replica using MySQL’s native, asynchronous replication. Amazon RDS currently supports replication only between MySQL instances.

● DB security groups : You can create DB security groups to allow a specific source to access a DB instance. The source can be a range of IP address or a EC2 security group. DB security groups allows inbound traffic only.

● VPC security groups : It enables a specific source to access a DB instance in a VPC that is associated with that VPC security group. The source can be a range of addresses or another VPC security group. VPC security can allow both inbound and outbound traffic.

Prerequisites 

● Go to http://aws.amazon.com/rds and click Sign Up for Amazon RDS Now.

● Follow the on-screen instructions.

How to setup and manage Amazon RDS? 

● Login to your amazon management console and click the RDS from services list

● Create a DB security group

• Identify the platforms from the resources

● Click Security Groups from the list

● Click create DB security group

● Enter the name and description to create new DB security group

● Once it is created, click on the ‘Go to details page’ button and select the CIDR/IP from the drop down menu. Enter the IP range you would like to add to this DB security group for inbound.

● Create a DB instance using any of the available DB engine versions.

• Click on Instances button from the list
• Click Launch DB Instance button

● Select the DB engine from the given list

● Check the box to choose whether this instance is for production.

● Enter the DB instance details

● Enter Additional details like Database name, port, availability zone and security groups.

● In the Management options page, you can specify the details about backup and maintenance options for your DB instance. 

● Finally, you can review your options and click Launch DB Instance.

● Once the instance is created it will be listed under the Instances tab. 

● Connecting to a MySQL database running on DB instance

• You can connect to the MySQL DB instance through MySQL workbench. It is GUI application that used to connect the MySQL DB instance.
• You can connect to the MySQL DB instance through MySQL monitor. Use the below command at a command prompt on a client computer to connect to a database.

■ # mysql -h <endpoint> -P 3306 -u <username> -p <password>;

Conclusion

Using the same steps you can create the other DB engines like oracle, microsoft SQL and PostgreSQL. Amazon RDS is much cheaper and reliable than the Windows Azure and Rackspace DB services.