🗄️ RDS Relational Database

Introduction

AWS RDS is a managed relational database service supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, MariaDB, Oracle, and SQL Server.

Key Learning Outcomes

By the end of this lesson, you'll understand:

• Creating RDS instances

• Connecting from applications

• Backups and recovery

• Scaling and performance

• High availability

• Security configuration

Creating an Instance

# Create RDS instance
aws rds create-db-instance \
  --db-instance-identifier mydb \
  --db-instance-class db.t3.micro \
  --engine postgres \
  --master-username admin \
  --master-user-password MyPassword123! \
  --allocated-storage 20

Connecting

Node.js:

const pg = require('pg');

const pool = new pg.Pool({
  user: 'admin',
  password: 'MyPassword123!',
  host: 'mydb.xxxxx.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com',
  port: 5432,
  database: 'mydb'
});

async function getUsers() {
  const result = await pool.query('SELECT * FROM users');
  return result.rows;
}

Backups

# Create manual backup
aws rds create-db-snapshot \
  --db-instance-identifier mydb \
  --db-snapshot-identifier mydb-backup

# Restore from snapshot
aws rds restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshot \
  --db-instance-identifier mydb-restored \
  --db-snapshot-identifier mydb-backup

Scaling

# Modify instance class
aws rds modify-db-instance \
  --db-instance-identifier mydb \
  --db-instance-class db.t3.small \
  --apply-immediately

Key Takeaways

• **RDS** manages databases automatically

• **Multi-engine** support (MySQL, PostgreSQL, etc.)

• **Automated backups** and point-in-time recovery

• **Scaling** easy without downtime

• **High availability** with Multi-AZ

Next Steps

Learn about DynamoDB for NoSQL, or explore ElastiCache for caching.