Database
Amazon Aurora
Cloud-native relational engine (MySQL/PostgreSQL compatible)
Amazon Aurora is a MySQL- and PostgreSQL-compatible relational database built for the cloud, with storage that auto-scales across three AZs and up to 15 read replicas. Aurora Serverless v2 scales capacity automatically for variable loads.
When to use it
- Relational workloads needing higher throughput than community MySQL/PostgreSQL
- Read-heavy workloads that benefit from up to 15 low-lag replicas
- Variable workloads using Aurora Serverless v2 for automatic scaling
- Cross-Region DR via Aurora Global Database
When NOT to use it
- Engines Aurora doesn't support (SQL Server, Oracle, MariaDB — use RDS)
- Pure key-value access at any scale (use DynamoDB)
Key exam points
- Storage replicated 6 ways across 3 AZs; self-healing
- Reader endpoint load-balances connections across replicas
- Aurora Serverless v2 scales ACUs up/down automatically — useful for variable load and cost
- Global Database enables fast cross-Region DR and low-latency reads
Compared with
- Amazon RDS — Aurora offers better performance/replication for MySQL/PostgreSQL-compatible workloads; RDS supports more engines.
- Amazon DynamoDB — DynamoDB is serverless NoSQL with per-request billing; Aurora is relational with provisioned or v2-serverless capacity.