Amazon’s Relational Database Services (RDS) is the ideal solution for enterprises that seek high scalability, easily available relational databases but do not wish to invest in IT infrastructure and IT personnel to manage databases. Amazon RDS is compatible with Aurora, MySQL, PostgreSQL, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle and many more.
Amazon RDS helps in managing, patching and handling scalability of user database requirements and the user is only charged for the resources they use. Hence, an increasing number of enterprises and IT admins are enquiring about the best AWS RDS cost calculator to estimate the cost of AWS RDS according to their specific requirements.
If you wish to learn more about calculating the cost of AWS RDS, then this article is for you. Below, we have detailed the various factors that affect RDS charges and tips on managing RDS costs.
RDS Cost Factors
The total cost of RDS solutions is dependent on several factors However, the three main factors required by the AWS RDS cost calculator include:
1 – Type of Instance
The foremost factor that can affect RDS costs for a user is the type of instance that is used as a host in the user’s database service. You can choose the micro “db.t2.micro” instance using alone virtual CPU with 1 GB of memory or you can choose the larger, memory-optimized “db.r3.2xlarge” using 8 virtual CPUs with a total of 244 GB of memory.
2 – Database Engine & AWS Region
The second factor that can affect AWS RDS cost for users is the combination choice of database engine they choose and the AWS Region in which to run the instances. AWS RDS is compatible with 6 database engines, including:
- MySQL
- PortgreSQL
- AWS Aurora
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Oracle
- MariaDB
3 – Payment Plan
The third main factor which can influence AWS RDS costs is related to choosing Amazon’s Reserved Instance (RI). Although the RDS solution is offered through an On-Demand pricing plan, you can also choose to get incredible discounts by selecting to reserve and pre-pay the use of instances. You can avail of amazing discounted rates of 19% to 64%, depending on the upfront payment, the term of plan and size of the instance.
In addition, users also incur higher charges for:
- Data egress and data ingress from the database instance
- Type of storage used
Tips to Manage AWS RDS Costs
It becomes easy to estimate your IT expenses when you know the right configuration of your database deployment which can be entered into the AWS RDS cost calculator. Our experts have listed tips on how to manage AWS RDS costs more effectively.
Tip 1 – Determine instance costs
Similar to AWS EC2 instances, the charges for RDS instances are in direct proportion to the provisioned resources for the instance. By making sure that the instances being used are of the right size, there can be significant savings in RDS costs.
To lower the cost of RDS instances, even more, you can reserve an instance for an overall lower cost and pre-pay for additional discounts, when you can forecast traffic patterns for a longer-term.
Tip 2 – Choose Provisioned IOPS
Provisioned IOPS is offered as SSD storage that gives assured throughput. Environments that require higher throughput and need faster performance and consistent response time can benefit greatly by choosing Provisioned IOPS. It is important to remember that you will be charged an additional amount to configure Provisioned IOPSs on your account. Users who choose Provisioned IOPS are charged for the volume of storage used and the rate of their selected Provisioned IOPS.
An alternate to choosing Provisioned IOPS is selecting General Purpose Storage. It is SSD storage and you will be charged for the volume of storage space consumed but not for the read and write commanded to, and from, the storage. This way, you can cut down on storage costs when using the AWS RDS solution.
Tip 3 – Select Magnetic Storage
Apart from the two types of SSD storage on offer, Amazon RDS users can also choose to connect their database instances to magnetic storage. For magnetic storage, Amazon charges users for the volume of consumed storage space and also for every request in batches of a million requests.
Conclusion
Amazon is already renowned for offering incredibly efficient and affordable application deployment solution in the form of cloud computing and storage. Users who choose to use AWS RDS solutions should take into account the factors and tips listed above to ensure that their AWS RDS calculator gives an affordable and efficient estimate.