Amazon RDS for MariaDB FAQs

Amazon RDS currently supports MariaDB major versions 10.4, 10.5, 10.6, and 10.11, and 11.4.

In the context of MariaDB, version numbers are organized as follows:
MariaDB version = X.Y.Z

X = Major version, Y = Release level, Z = Version number within release series.
From the Amazon RDS standpoint, a version change would be considered major if either major version or release level is being changed. Example: going from 10.0.X -> 10.1.X.

A version change would be considered minor if the version number within the release is being changed. Example: going from 11.4.4 -> 11.4.5.

Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments are available in RDS for MariaDB versions 10.4 and higher. Learn more about available versions in the RDS for MariaDB documentation.

Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments allow you to make safer, simpler, and faster database changes. Blue/Green Deployments are ideal for use cases such as major or minor version database engine upgrades, operating system updates, schema changes on green environments that do not break logical replication, like adding a new column at the end of a table, or database parameter setting changes.

You can use Blue/Green Deployments to make multiple database updates at the same time using a single switchover. This allows you to stay current on security patches, improve database performance, and access newer database features with short, predictable downtime.

You will incur the same price for running your workloads on green instances as you do for blue instances. The cost of running on blue and green instances include our current standard pricing for db.instances, cost of storage, cost of read/write I/Os, and any enabled features, such as cost of backups and Amazon RDS Performance Insights.

Effectively, you are paying approximately 2x the cost of running workloads on db.instance for the lifespan of the blue-green-deployment.

For example: You have an RDS for MariaDB 10.4 database running on two r5.2xlarge db.instances, a primary database instance and a read replica, in us-east-1 AWS Region with a Multi-AZ (MAZ) configuration. Each of the r5.2xlarge db.instance is configured for 20 GiB General Purpose Amazon Elastic Block Storge (EBS).

You create a clone of the blue instance topology using Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments, run it for 15 days (360 hours), and then delete the blue instances after a successful switchover. The blue instances cost $1,387 for 15 days at an on-demand rate of $1.926/hr (Instance + EBS cost). The total cost to you for using Blue/Green Deployments for those 15 days is $2,774, which is 2x the cost of running blue instances for that time period.

When Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments initiate a switchover, they block writes to both the blue and green environments, until switchover is complete. During switchover, the staging environment—or green environment—catches up with the blue environment, ensuring data is consistent between the blue and green environments.

Once the blue and green environment are in complete sync, Blue/Green Deployments promote the green environment as the new blue environment by redirecting traffic to the green environment. Blue/Green Deployments are designed to enable writes on the green environment after switch-over is complete, ensuring zero data loss during the switchover process.

Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments switchover guardrails block writes on your blue and green environments until your green environment catches up before switching over. Blue/Green Deployments also perform health checks of your primary and replicas in your blue and green environments.

They also perform replication health checks, for example, to see if replication has stopped or if there are errors. They detect long running transactions between your blue and green environments. You can specify your maximum tolerable downtime, as low as 30 seconds, and if you have an ongoing transaction that exceeds this your switchover will time out.

If your blue environment is a self-managed logical replica, or subscriber, we will block switchover. We recommend that you first stop replication to the blue environment, proceed with the switchover, and then resume replication.

In contrast, if your blue environment is a source for a self-managed logical replica, or publisher, you can continue to switchover. However, you will need to update the self-managed replica to replicate from the green environment post switchover.

MariaDB protects users from data loss by writing data in 16KiB pages in memory twice to durable storage—first to the “doublewrite buffer” and then to table storage. Amazon RDS Optimized Writes write your 16KiB data pages directly to your data files reliably and durably in one step using the Torn Write Prevention feature of the AWS Nitro System.

For instance and Region availability, please see the Improving write performance with Amazon RDS Optimized Writes for MariaDB documentation page. 

All Amazon RDS for MariaDB users should implement Amazon RDS Optimized Writes for up to 2x improved write transaction throughput. Applications with write-heavy workloads, such as digital payments, financial trading, and online gaming applications will find this feature especially helpful.

Amazon RDS Optimized Reads are available for RDS for MariaDB on 10.4.25, 10.5.16, 10.6.7, 10.11.4 and higher.

For instance and Region availability, please see the Improving query performanc efor RDS for MariaDB with Amazon RDS Optimized Reads documentation page. 

Yes, customers can convert their existing Amazon RDS database to use Amazon RDS Optimized Reads by moving your workload to an Optimized Read-enabled instance. Optimized Reads is also available by default on all supported instance classes.