Amazon Web Services introduces two database services

Amazon Web Services has introduced new database tools and services that make it easier for enterprises to bring their production databases to AWS and break free from the cost and complexity of traditional commercial databases. The new, fully managed AWS Database Migration Service allows customers to migrate their production Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, and PostgreSQL databases to AWS with virtually no downtime. And, the AWS Schema Conversion Tool makes it easy for these customers to switch database engines. AWS also announced that its relational database service (Amazon RDS) will support its sixth database engine, the popular MySQL-compatible open-source database MariaDB. Finally, AWS shared that its new database engine Amazon Aurora, announced at the 2014 AWS re:Invent, has become the fastest-growing service in the history of AWS.

“With more than a hundred thousand active customers, and six database engines from which to choose, Amazon RDS has become the new normal for running relational databases in the cloud,” said Hal Berenson, Vice President, Relational Database Services, AWS. “The launch of Amazon Aurora has enabled customers to get the performance of commercial-grade databases at the price of open source engines. And, this has only amplified our customers’ pleas to help them migrate their on-premises databases to Amazon Aurora and other Amazon RDS engines. With the AWS Database Migration Service, and its associated Schema Conversion Tool, customers can choose either to move the same database engine from on-premises to AWS, or change from one of the proprietary engines they’re running on-premises to one of the several open source engines available in Amazon RDS.”

AWS Database Migration Service preview starts today

The AWS Database Migration Service makes it easy for customers to migrate database engines they're using on-premises to run on AWS, or to migrate from proprietary engines running on-premises to open source engines running in AWS. The service is very cost effective. For instance, using the AWS Database Migration Service customers can migrate a 1TB database from on-premises to AWS for as little as $3. Setting up migration is easy and typically takes less than ten minutes. The AWS Database Migration Service handles all of the tasks involved in moving data and completing the migration. The AWS Database Migration service can be used to perform one-time migrations, or can maintain continuous replication between databases without a customer having to install or configure any complex software. The AWS Database Migration Service monitors the progress of replication and migration, notifies customers of any network or host failures, and automatically provisions a host replacement in the event of a failure. Customers pay a simple hourly fee for the compute resources they use for migrating their database. The AWS Schema Conversion Tool, a feature of the migration service, ports database schemas and stored procedures from one database platform to another, so customers can move their applications from Oracle and SQL Server to Amazon Aurora, MySQL, MariaDB, and soon PostgreSQL.

Amazon RDS now supports MariaDB

With support for six database engines, Amazon RDS allows customers to run familiar relational databases at a substantially lower cost without the operational complexity of on-premises systems. Starting today, Amazon RDS supports MariaDB as a fully managed service, which means customers can deploy a MariaDB database with a few clicks in the AWS Management Console and Amazon RDS handles all of the administrative tasks involved in managing a database, including software installation, storage management, replication for high-availability, and back-ups for disaster recovery.

With Amazon RDS’s Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) capability, MariaDB databases can scale to 6TB and 30,000 IOPS per database instance while maintaining fast and consistent performance. Customers can deploy production MariaDB applications using the Multi-Availability Zone (MAZ) deployment option. Amazon RDS will operate a synchronous stand-by replica with an automated fail-over mechanism. Amazon RDS for MariaDB also supports cross-region snapshot copy operations, allowing customers to keep a back-up copy in a different region for disaster recovery purposes. Customers can operate MariaDB databases in a logically isolated virtual network fully configured and controlled with strict firewall policies using Amazon Virtual Private Cloud (Amazon VPC).