Optimizing databases

We spent some time discussing RIs in the previous chapter. We concluded that compared to RIs, SPs offer less management overhead and better cost savings. Unfortunately, at the time of writing, SPs only provide discounted rates for compute services. Fortunately, though, RIs apply to database services, namely, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon ElastiCache, Amazon Redshift, Amazon OpenSearch Service, and Amazon DynamoDB.

I won’t go into the details of how each service works, although AWS documentation has plenty of information on that front (see the Further reading section at the end of the chapter for links). The mechanism for reserving database instances works the same as with EC2 instances. You still choose the term and payment option. You can still get recommendations in Cost Explorer for these types of reserved instances. The way AWS applies the discount works in the same way as well; if you purchased an RI, AWS would apply the...