Ensure that your RDS instances are using General Purpose SSDs instead of Provisioned IOPS SSDs for cost-effective storage that fits a broad range of database workloads. Unless you are running mission-critical applications that require more than 10000 IOPS or 160 MiB/s of throughput per database, Cloud Conformity recommends converting your Provisioned IOPS RDS instances to General Purpose instances in order to lower the cost of your monthly AWS bill while keeping the same I/O performance. For example, if the requirements for your MySQL database are 150GB storage size and 1500 IOPS (input/output operations per second) you can save roughly $110 per month using instances with General Purpose SSD storage instead of ones with Provisioned IOPS SSD storage as the former (1500 IOPS, 150GB storage) costs $234.63/month while the latter (1500 IOPS, 500GB storage) costs only $123.38/month (as of November 2016).
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optimisation
Using General Purpose (GP) SSD database storage instead of Provisioned IOPS (PIOPS) SSD storage represents a good strategy to cut down on AWS RDS costs because for GP SSDs you only pay for the storage compared to PIOPS SSDs where you pay for both storage and IOPS. Converting existing PIOPS-based databases to GP is often possible by configuring larger storage which gives higher baseline performance of IOPS for a lower cost.
Note: Backing up your RDS database instances before converting them to General Purpose SSD is highly recommended because once these instances are modified, all their automated backups (snapshots) are removed.
Audit
To determine the type of your existing RDS database instances, perform the following:
Remediation / Resolution
To convert your Provisioned IOPS SSD based RDS instances to General Purpose SSD based instances, you need to modify your instances storage type configuration by perform the following:
References
- AWS Documentation
- Amazon RDS FAQs
- Amazon RDS Pricing
- Simple Monthly Calculator
- Storage for Amazon RDS
- Modifying an Amazon RDS DB Instance and Using the Apply Immediately Parameter
- AWS Command Line Interface (CLI) Documentation
- rds
- describe-db-instances
- create-db-snapshot
- modify-db-instance
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You are auditing:
RDS General Purpose SSD
Risk level: Medium