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InfoQ Homepage News Amazon RDS Introduces Faster Storage for High-Performance Database Workloads

Amazon RDS Introduces Faster Storage for High-Performance Database Workloads

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AWS has recently introduced support for io2 Block Express volumes on Amazon RDS. Priced as the existing Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) io1, the new io2 Block Express volumes are compatible with all database engines and are designed for high-performance, high-throughput, and low-latency database workloads.

Introduced for EBS volumes in 2021, io2 Block Express was previously available only for self-managed database clusters running on EC2 instances. This latest integration of io2 expands upon the current RDS storage options which include general-purpose SSD (gp2 and gp3), PIOPS SSD (io1), and the older magnetic type. Abhishek Gupta, principal developer advocate at AWS, writes:

With io2 Block Express volumes, your database workloads will benefit from consistent sub-millisecond latency, enhanced durability to 99.999 percent over io1 volumes, and drive 20x more IOPS/GiB from provisioned storage (up to 1,000 IOPS per GiB) at the same price as io1.

According to the cloud provider, io2 Block Express storage has the lowest p99.9 I/O latency and the best outlier latency control among leading cloud providers, positioning it as the optimal solution for I/O-intensive mission-critical workloads.

The new volumes support up to 64 TiB of storage and up to 256K PIOPS, achieving a maximum throughput of 4K MiB/s. Throughput levels vary depending on the provisioned IOPS and volume size, with distinct ranges for different database engines. Corey Quinn, chief cloud economist at The Duckbill Group, writes:

This is sincerely interesting, and a reminder that there are still subversive teams inside of AWS who are building things that customers want instead of what AWS Leadership thinks it wants. I recently had a customer who was pushing the limits of RDS I/O performance; they're excited as all get out on this one.

Customers running RDS databases with io1 volumes can migrate to the newer option without any downtime using the ModifyDBInstance API. On a Reddit thread about "How are you using io2 volumes?", user innominate8 warns:

In my experience, io2 volumes are particularly good for converting bad database design into AWS bills.

The cost of the new io2 volumes is notably higher compared to the general-purpose gp3 volumes, yet they are aligned with the pricing of the existing io1 volumes, with both PIOPS storage options billed at the same rate. Randall Hunt, VP of cloud at Caylent, tweets:

There's basically no reason to not use io2 if you're on io1 right now.

The new io2 Block Express volumes support a 1000:1 maximum IOPS to storage ratio and are available on all RDS databases using Nitro System instances. Separately, AWS announced that RDS Multi-AZ deployments with two readable standbys now support security certificate rotation and RDS Custom for SQL Server supports X2iedn and R5b instances.

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