Overview

Aurora is built to provide the speed and reliability of high-end commercial databases, often with a much lower cost. It automatically grows storage as needed, eliminates the need for manual database backups, and automates time-consuming administration tasks.

The service maintains multiple copies of your data across multiple availability zones to help ensure reliability. It can also automatically recover from physical storage failures, reducing database downtime. If something goes wrong, Aurora can repair it automatically without losing your data.

One of Aurora's key features is its ability to automatically scale. The storage automatically grows (currently up to 128TB!) as needed, and you can create up to 15 read replicas to handle more database traffic. You only pay for the storage you actually use.

Aurora also provides "serverless" capability, where the database automatically starts up, shuts down, and scales capacity up or down based on your application's needs. This is particularly useful for applications with unpredictable workloads.

Example uses

Web Applications: Power websites and applications that need fast, reliable database access.
Gaming Applications: Handle player data and game state with high performance and reliability.
SaaS Applications: Support Software-as-a-Service applications with varying workloads.
Enterprise Applications: Replace expensive commercial databases with a more cost-effective solution.

Integration with other AWS services

Aurora integrates seamlessly with many AWS services:

Amazon EC2: Connect your applications to Aurora databases
AWS Lambda: Access Aurora from serverless functions
AWS Identity and Access Management: Control database access
Amazon CloudWatch: Monitor database performance

Think of Amazon Aurora as your high-performance, cloud-native database that combines the reliability of commercial databases with the simplicity of open-source databases, all while automating complex administration tasks.