Amazon Aurora is the database to lookout for in the future
Updated August 07, 2019
Amazon Aurora is the database to lookout for in the future
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with Amazon Aurora
Amazon Aurora is essentially a relational database as a service on AWS. Since it is cloud-based, there are many advantages to its name. First of all, it is a server-less database which essentially means that you do not need to host a physical server and provide space for it. Secondly, it is a pay-per-use model which means you only pay whenever you use it, which is a great feature if you do not make everyday queries into the database. Since it is again an amazing product from Amazon, it fits very well in the AWS ecosystem. You can use it to scale your database as per your needs, no need to buy server space and resources in advance, then not use them. It can scale and descale according to your needs.
- It is a high performance and low latency database. You can also be assured of the high-availability of the database and the services hosted.
- The Security provided by Amazon is again top notch because all of the data is encrypted and secured. The customers feel much more relaxed and assured when the project is using Amazon Aurora to host their services.
- A big plus point for Amazon Aurora is the latest and impactful upgrades which it brings in the package. The automated up-gradation and maintenance is an outstanding feature which it provides to receive and stay up to date with the latest upgrades in the DB world.
- It is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. It essentially means that the database is able to support the old data-sets and tools which were being used on those DB's. This is a great advantage because it is essentially backward compatible.
- The Amazon technical team behind the development of this software is very knowledgeable and supportive as well. We told our requirements clearly and they suggested the best use of the database for us, which scenario it should be used, and which it is not a perfect fit.
- I think the biggest point for a project or team to consider is the cost. Although it can scale and descale according to your requirements, still you need to be cautious and have a vision of how big your database is going to be, how complex it is going to be, and how much does latency matter. You need to factor all those decisions before going to spend extra on Amazon Aurora as compared to a simple MySQL database.
- It suffers from Clod start which is a very well known aspect of the product. But the recovery part is also not up to the mark. They need to improve on the ability to restore a copy of the backup, but mostly it is seen that the copy is corrupted or not the latest one.
- It does allow us to add new nodes to the existing cluster but we need to be wary of that the new nodes are read-only nodes. All the functions of write/update will still be carried out by the master node only.
- After migrating to Amazon Aurora, our speed of the query, database availability, and security has increased a lot from before.
- It has an inbuilt autodetection and correction mechanism for locks in the database, which is a great asset for any team. It also enhances our database schema if it not properly structured.
- If your requirements are not clear at the moment, but you know based on the project that it is going to be a big database, then you should go with Amazon Aurora as you can scale and descale based on your needs.
- PostgreSQL and MySQL
Amazon Aurora is in a different league altogether because it is a serverless cloud-based database unlike those two. You don't need to buy any upfront server space and storage, but you can scale as and when your project requires. It is mostly suited for medium to large databases and usually the ones which are not queried on a regular basis.