AWS Databases for Cloud Engineers
Learn AWS databases: RDS, Aurora, DynamoDB, ElastiCache with Valkey, DocumentDB, and Neptune, and how to pick the right one.
What You'll Learn
Understanding How to Choose the Right AWS Database
Why picking the wrong database is an expensive mistake Database selection mistakes surface late, after the schema is baked into every service that...
Configuring Amazon RDS for Production Workloads
What RDS actually manages for you RDS is a managed service for standard SQL engines where AWS handles provisioning, patching, backups, and failover.
Building with Amazon Aurora
Why Aurora exists when RDS already works Aurora is AWS's own cloud built engine that speaks the PostgreSQL and MySQL protocols, so existing drivers...
Designing DynamoDB Tables That Scale
What makes DynamoDB fundamentally different from RDS DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database built for predictable, single digit millisecond...
Accelerating Reads with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
The problem DAX solves DAX is a managed in-memory cache for DynamoDB that needs no application logic changes.
Implementing ElastiCache with Valkey, Redis, and Memcached
Why caching is a code change, not a checkbox ElastiCache is a managed in-memory store with sub-millisecond latency, but it only helps when your code...
Skills You'll Master
Curriculum Index10 topics
Understanding How to Choose the Right AWS Database
Why picking the wrong database is an expensive mistake Database selection mistakes surface late, after the schema is...
Configuring Amazon RDS for Production Workloads
What RDS actually manages for you RDS is a managed service for standard SQL engines where AWS handles provisioning...
Building with Amazon Aurora
Why Aurora exists when RDS already works Aurora is AWS's own cloud built engine that speaks the PostgreSQL and MySQL...
Designing DynamoDB Tables That Scale
What makes DynamoDB fundamentally different from RDS DynamoDB is a fully managed NoSQL database built for predictable...
Accelerating Reads with DynamoDB Accelerator (DAX)
The problem DAX solves DAX is a managed in-memory cache for DynamoDB that needs no application logic changes.
Implementing ElastiCache with Valkey, Redis, and Memcached
Why caching is a code change, not a checkbox ElastiCache is a managed in-memory store with sub-millisecond latency, but...
Choosing DocumentDB and Neptune for Specialized Workloads
DocumentDB when your team already thinks in MongoDB DocumentDB is a managed document database that implements MongoDB...
Troubleshooting, Monitoring, and Changing Databases Safely
A structured approach to connectivity problems An EC2 instance in a private subnet cannot reach its database.
Running the Hands-On Lab: Building a Multi-Database Architecture
Before you start This lab builds an RDS PostgreSQL primary with a Read Replica, a Valkey cache, and a DynamoDB table...
Quick Reference and Common Mistakes
Quick reference Common mistakes Confusing Read Replicas with Multi-AZ is the most common RDS error.
Career Impact
Roles that use the skills in this module.
Cloud Engineer
DevOps Engineer
Solutions Architect
Next Modules
Related Guides
Practice on the Coding Sheet
Not a software engineer sheet. Every problem comes from real DevOps, SRE, Platform and Cloud interviews, from your first script to a system you build yourself.
Open the Coding SheetFrequently Asked Questions
Choose DynamoDB when your access pattern is key based lookups at very large scale with predictable queries. Choose RDS or Aurora when you need joins, ad hoc SQL, and multi-row transactions. List your queries first, then pick.
A Read Replica is an asynchronous copy that serves read traffic to scale reads. A Multi-AZ standby is a synchronous copy for failover. A Multi-AZ DB instance standby serves no traffic, while a Multi-AZ DB cluster has readable standbys.
Valkey is the open source, Redis compatible fork that AWS now offers in ElastiCache. It is typically priced lower and is a sensible default for new clusters. Existing Redis clients usually work with little or no change.
If a Lambda function connects directly to a relational database, a traffic spike can exhaust the database connection limit. RDS Proxy pools connections and prevents this, so it is strongly recommended for serverless to relational paths.