Overview of various AWS Database services and their usage
Overview of various AWS Database services and their usage
Do you want to work with data? There is an AWS database that can fit for every requirement. Learn more about various AWS databases and their applications in this article.
What are AWS Databases?
AWS (Amazon Web Services) offers a wide range of databases that can address your data requirements. Whether you need a relational, time-series, graph, document, in-memory or key-value database, AWS databases can fulfill your criteria. Each of these databases can manage applications that receive millions of requests per second. Amazon automates all the key database activities, such as backup, maintenance, upgrades and restoration.
Applications of AWS Databases
Enterprise Applications
You can use AWS databases to provide support for multiple core business processes, such as customer service, sales, human resources and billing. If you manage the IT infrastructure of a restaurant, then you need a fast, reliable and secure database that can handle your reservation system. Amazon databases can ensure that you get to enjoy the availability and performance of traditional databases, along with benefiting from the cost-effectiveness and convenience of open-source databases.
Internet Scale Applications
Create distribution databases and lay the foundation of your web applications with AWS. They scale up automatically based on your workload. As a result, pay only for what you use!
www.mouritech.com Overview of various AWS Database services and their usage
Real-time Applications
Real-time applications such as ad-targeting for marketing campaigns, ride-hailing for an app, updating gaming leaderboards for a game or maintaining session stores - all of these require high throughput and microsecond latency to sort out millions of requests per day. AWS’ in-memory databases have been specifically designed to support these operations.
Open Source Applications
Open source databases are popular due to community support, affordable costs and an extensive ecosystem comprising of numerous tools and extensions. However, they can’t be easily managed in production. AWS databases will make sure that you can deploy them in the cloud with optimal availability, scalability and performance.
Types of AWS Databases
Below is an overview of some of the most popular AWS databases.
1. Amazon RDS
If you are looking for a relational database, consider Amazon RDS. It is a cloud service that you can easily configure, manage and scale for your relational database in the cloud.
Developers use RDS when they need to prioritize high availability and scalability for complex web applications, especially when tasked with a tight budget. Choose the Multi Availability Zones option during configuration for high availability.
Amazon Redshift is a fully managed data warehousing service, which is quick and exists on the cloud. Redshift is known for its powerful performance in supporting BI and machine learning operations. You can scale it for up to petabytes for your needs.
If your platform expects to get a large volume of user requests, such as for an online news website, then Redshift is a good option to boost query response and control infrastructure costs.
3. Amazon DynamoDB
Amazon DynamoDB is ideal for developers who:
Want to implement a lightning-fast and flexible NoSQL database.
Need stable and low latency for large scale applications.
Have to employ key-value and document data models.
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It is tricky to maintain the back-end systems of modern online games. The calculation of usage peaks and working with extensive write operations is incredibly tough. DynamoDB enables you to take advantage of persistent access to user data, regardless of how massive the platform becomes in the future.
Amazon Aurora is a relational database that is said to be five times and three times faster than MySQL and PostgreSQL databases respectively.
SaaS applications are made of multi-tenant architecture and require storage scaling and flexibility in instance. Aurora can offer these features to SaaS companies. Aurora is also a wise choice for mobile and web games as it lends high availability and massive storage scalability.
5. Amazon Quantum Ledger Database (QLDB)
QLDB is a serverless and fully managed database that acts as a ledger database. This mechanism makes it ideal to store financial data for extended periods. For instance, if you want to store the full history of your transactional and accounting data in a cryptographic, transparent and immutable way, then QLDB can use the SHA-256 algorithm to keep your data safe.
6. Amazon ElastiCache
You can use this database service for deploying and scaling a cloud-based in-memory cache. ElastiCache is used in applications that rely on a high number of read operations, such as media sharing, social networks and gaming applications.
7. Amazon SimpleDB
Amazon SimpleDB is a NoSQL data store. You can utilize it to store and query data for requests belonging to web services. Here is what you can do with SimpleDB.
Store server logs and save space.
Audit configuration changes or access entries.
Capture and monitor environment conditions (humidity/pressure levels/temperature).
Amazon Neptune is a graph-based database, which you can employ for applications that deal with highly connected datasets.
www.mouritech.com Overview of various AWS Database services and their usage
Graph databases are widely used in social networking. Choose Neptune to process massive sets of user-profiles and interactions for fast and efficient processing. For instance, to integrate a social feed, Neptune can help to show results that prioritize recent updates from friends and family.
9. Amazon Timestream
Amazon Timestream is time-series database, used to create operational and IoT applications. It deals with the storage and analysis of millions of daily events in a cost-effective way.
Leverage Timestream for DevOps applications that gather information for millions of insert operations per second.
Adopt Timestream to store and compute outgoing and incoming traffic for your web applications.
Since Timestream offers convenient storage and analysis of time-series data, you can use it for maintenance of industrial equipment, fleet management and trade monitoring.
10. Amazon DocumentDB
Amazon DocumentDB is a document-based database, compatible with MongoDB. Store, index and query JSON data with DocumentDB. Its applications include the following:
PoS (point-of-sale) terminals, digital archives, online publications and shopping websites are powered by CMS. The document model of DocumentDB can allow your users to access product information, ratings, images, user reviews and comments from these websites.
DocumentDB enables you to implement user profile management and work with user preferences, authentication and online transactions.
Develop powerful web and mobile applications to compute countless user requests without any latency issues.
11. Amazon Managed Apache Cassandra Service
As the name suggests, this database service is compatible with Cassandra workloads.
Create applications where low latency is essential.
Use Cassandra drivers and API by using any of the following - .NET, Java, Python, Perl, C++, PHP, Node.JS and Ruby.
Configure and migrate Cassandra tables to the cloud.
www.mouritech.com Overview of various AWS Database services and their usage
Why are AWS databases so popular?
You can easily manage the server infrastructure of AWS databases. Management tools such as command-line interface, Management console and APIs can minimize the time required for database administration to a significant extent.
Hardware failure is a recurring theme with databases. Amazon has designed a highly reliable infrastructure that can withstand all types of failures, ensuring that your database is operational 24/7.
AWS is highly loaded with security features. For instance, it provides a VPN known as Amazon Virtual Cloud, for security purposes. You can configure the network and security and enable encryption to protect your data from any threat.
The processing speed of AWS databases is extremely fast, they are created to power applications based on data pipeline.
AWS uses an auto backup functionality that backups data every five minutes to prevent data loss.
AWS comes with support for all types of web and mobile platforms.
Drawbacks
The billing of AWS databases can be complicated for non-tech savvy business owners.
Since AWS databases are located on the cloud, cloud challenges such as size restrictions, data protection and downtime need to be considered.
Some AWS databases also have their own limitations. For instance, Amazon Redshift lacks the support for parallel loading from other sources. Similarly, there is no “SUPER” privilege in Amazon RDS.
Please contact us if you want to deploy an AWS database for your business.
Contact for further details
Bala Murali Krishna Uppalapati
Associate Team Lead – Oracle Analytics
MOURI Tech
www.mouritech.com