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Hall of FameAlexandre Verbitski et al.201747 min readpaperadvanced

Amazon Aurora: Design Considerations for High Throughput Cloud-Native Relational Databases

Read on stanford.edu

Summary

Amazon Aurora is a cloud-native relational database that decouples compute from storage, offloading redo log processing to a purpose-built, multi-tenant storage service. This architecture significantly reduces network I/O, enables fast crash recovery, and provides high durability and availability through a novel 6-way replication quorum model.

  • Aurora decouples DB compute from storage, offloading redo log processing to a distributed storage service.
  • This reduces network IOPS by an order of magnitude compared to traditional database systems.
  • It enables near-instant crash recovery and inexpensive backups by amortizing work across the storage fleet.
  • Data is 6-way replicated across 3 Availability Zones (2 copies per AZ) with a 4/6 write quorum.

Engineers designing or operating high-throughput, fault-tolerant cloud databases should read this to understand a foundational architecture for modern relational database services.

8/10
cloudstoragearchitecturedistributed systemsdatabasesoltp

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