What is Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora (Aurora) is a fully managed relational database engine that’s compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. You already know
how MySQL and PostgreSQL combine the speed and reliability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and
cost-effectiveness of open-source databases. The code, tools, and applications you use today with your existing MySQL and PostgreSQL
databases can be used with Aurora. With some workloads, Aurora can deliver up to five times the throughput of MySQL and up to three
times the throughput of PostgreSQL without requiring changes to most of your existing applications.

Aurora includes a high-performance storage subsystem. Its MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible database engines are customized to take
advantage of that fast distributed storage. The underlying storage grows automatically as needed. An Aurora cluster volume can grow
to a maximum size of 128 tebibytes (TiB). Aurora also automates and standardizes database clustering and replication, which are
typically among the most challenging aspects of database configuration and administration.

Aurora is part of the managed database service Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS). Amazon RDS is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and
scale a relational database in the cloud. If you are not already familiar with Amazon RDS, see the
Amazon Relational Database Service User Guide. To learn more about the
variety of database options available on Amazon Web Services, see
Choosing the right
database for your organization on AWS.

Amazon RDS shared responsibility model

Amazon RDS is responsible for hosting the software components and infrastructure of DB instances and DB
clusters. You are responsible for query tuning, which is the process of adjusting SQL queries to improve
performance. Query performance is highly dependent on database design, data size, data distribution,
application workload, and query patterns, which can vary greatly. Monitoring and tuning are highly
individualized processes that you own for your RDS databases. You can use Amazon RDS Performance Insights and other tools to
identify problematic queries.

How Amazon Aurora works with Amazon RDS

The following points illustrate how Amazon Aurora relates to the standard MySQL and PostgreSQL engines available in Amazon RDS:

• You choose Aurora MySQL or Aurora PostgreSQL as the DB engine option when setting up new database servers through
  Amazon RDS.

• Aurora takes advantage of the familiar Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) features for management and administration. Aurora uses the
  Amazon RDS AWS Management Console interface, AWS CLI commands, and API operations to handle routine database tasks such as provisioning,
  patching, backup, recovery, failure detection, and repair.

• Aurora management operations typically involve entire clusters of database servers that are synchronized through
  replication, instead of individual database instances. The automatic clustering, replication, and storage allocation
  make it simple and cost-effective to set up, operate, and scale your largest MySQL and PostgreSQL deployments.

• You can bring data from Amazon RDS for MySQL and Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL into Aurora by creating and restoring snapshots, or by
  setting up one-way replication. You can use push-button migration tools to convert your existing RDS for MySQL and
  RDS for PostgreSQL applications to Aurora.

Before using Amazon Aurora, complete the steps in Setting up your environment for Amazon Aurora,
and then review the concepts and features of Aurora in Amazon Aurora DB clusters.