Title

AWS re:Invent 2023 - Deep dive into Amazon Aurora and its innovations (DAT408)

Summary

• Speaker: Graham McAllister, Senior Principal Engineer at AWS.
• Topic: Deep dive into Amazon Aurora's architecture, features, and recent innovations.
• Key Points:
  • Aurora is a cloud-native database for MySQL and Postgres with a unique storage architecture.
  • Aurora's storage is distributed across three availability zones for durability.
  • Writes are log-based and acknowledged after a quorum is reached, while reads are block-based.
  • Aurora supports up to 15 read-only nodes, which can be of different types and sizes.
  • Storage grows and shrinks on demand, and you only pay for what you use.
  • Aurora offers fast failover times, global database features, and cross-region replication.
  • New features include global write forwarding, storage internals optimization, and fast clones.
  • Aurora MySQL and Postgres have been updated with new versions and features.
  • Serverless Aurora dynamically scales and offers cost savings for variable workloads.
  • Aurora's manageability has been improved with blue-green deployments and zero ETL to Redshift.
  • A new storage type, Aurora IO optimized, offers predictable pricing and better performance for high IO workloads.
  • Limitless Database is a new feature that provides managed sharding with consistent global clocks for distributed transactions.

Insights

• Aurora's Architecture: The unique storage architecture of Aurora, which separates log and block storage, allows for high durability and availability. The peer-to-peer replication and automatic repair mechanisms ensure data integrity and reduce the need for manual intervention.

• Global Database and Failover: Aurora's global database capabilities and quick failover processes are designed to meet the needs of businesses that require high availability and disaster recovery solutions. The JDBC wrapper and Route 53 integration help reduce failover times significantly.

• Serverless Aurora: The serverless offering of Aurora is not just for Lambda functions but also for general use cases with variable workloads. The dynamic scaling and pay-per-use model can lead to significant cost savings and performance improvements.

• Manageability Features: Aurora's blue-green deployments and zero ETL to Redshift simplify database management tasks and reduce the operational overhead associated with version upgrades and data warehousing.

• IO Optimized Storage: The introduction of IO optimized storage addresses customer concerns about IO cost unpredictability and provides a solution for workloads with high IO demands. This feature can lead to cost savings and performance gains.

• Limitless Database: The Limitless Database feature addresses the complexities of sharding by providing managed sharding with consistent global clocks. This allows businesses to scale their databases without sacrificing consistency and without the overhead of managing multiple shards manually.