L12. Databases: RDS, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, and Aurora
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AWS offers managed relational and NoSQL databases. The Cloud Practitioner exam tests Amazon RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache, and Redshift with their use cases and key differentiators.
Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service)
RDS is a managed relational database service supporting: MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server, and Amazon Aurora. What AWS manages: hardware, OS patching, database software patching, automated backups, Multi-AZ failover. What you manage: database schema, performance tuning, query optimization, access credentials. Multi-AZ deployments: RDS automatically replicates to a standby in a second AZ; failover happens automatically. Read Replicas: asynchronous read-only copies that offload read traffic; available in same Region or cross-Region.
Amazon Aurora
Aurora is AWS's proprietary relational database engine that is cloud-optimized for higher performance and availability than standard MySQL/PostgreSQL. Key facts:
- Delivers up to 5x better throughput than MySQL and 3x better than PostgreSQL
- Storage auto-scales from 10 GB to 128 TB
- 6 copies of data across 3 AZs (built-in redundancy)
- Aurora Serverless: auto-scales capacity to zero when idle; pay per second of use
Amazon DynamoDB
DynamoDB is a fully managed serverless NoSQL key-value and document database. Key characteristics:
- Single-digit millisecond performance at any scale
- No servers to manage; AWS handles all capacity, replication, and availability
- DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX): in-memory cache for DynamoDB delivering microsecond latency
Amazon ElastiCache
ElastiCache is a managed in-memory caching service based on Redis or Memcached. Use cases: cache database query results, session management, real-time leaderboards.
Amazon Redshift
Redshift is a managed petabyte-scale data warehouse for analytics (OLAP workloads). Use when: running complex analytical queries across large datasets; not for transactional (OLTP) workloads.
Amazon Neptune
Neptune is a fully managed graph database for highly connected datasets (social networks, fraud detection, recommendation engines).
Database Selection Guide
| Workload | Best Service |
|---|---|
| Relational OLTP | RDS or Aurora |
| NoSQL key-value | DynamoDB |
| In-memory caching | ElastiCache |
| Data warehouse analytics | Redshift |
| Graph relationships | Neptune |
- ✓RDS is managed relational DB; AWS patches OS and DB engine; you manage schema and queries
- ✓Aurora is cloud-optimized MySQL/PostgreSQL with 5x MySQL throughput and automatic 6-copy replication across 3 AZs
- ✓DynamoDB is fully managed serverless NoSQL with single-digit millisecond performance at any scale
- ✓ElastiCache (Redis/Memcached) is in-memory caching to reduce database latency
- ✓Redshift is a managed petabyte-scale data warehouse for analytics, not transactional workloads
1. A company needs a database that can handle millions of requests per second with single-digit millisecond latency and does not require managing servers. Which AWS service is most appropriate?
2. Which Amazon RDS feature automatically replicates a database to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone and fails over automatically?
Recommended: Pluralsight
Complement these lessons with Pluralsight: structured CLF-C02 learning paths, AWS hands-on labs, and realistic practice questions for exam day.