Top AWS RDS Interview Questions

In this post we will look at AWS RDS Interview questions. Examples are provided with explanation.

1. What is Amazon RDS?
2. Explain some features in AWS RDS?
3. List the database engines supported by AWS RDS?
4. What is an RDS instance?
5. What are RDS Interfaces?
6. What is Amazon Aurora?
7. What is an AWS Cluster?
8. What is the work of Amazon RDS?
9. What is the purpose of standby RDS instance?
10. What are Oracle features in AWS RDS?
11. Explain Oracle Licensing?
12. What are DB Instances in AWS RDS?

What is Amazon RDS?

The Amazon RDS (Relational Database Service) is used to easily create a relational database in the cloud. This cross-platform database service was developed by Amazon and released in the year 2009. It also provides a way to manage the administrative processes like patching the database software, backing up databases and enabling point-in-time recovery. This proprietary tool by Amazon simplifies the process of creation, scaling and the use of the relational database in applications.

Explain some features in AWS RDS?

Amazon RDS Features:

• Lower administrative burden. Easy to use.
• Performance. General Purpose (SSD) Storage.
• Scalability. Push-button compute scaling.
• Availability and durability. Automated backups.
• Security. Encryption at rest and in transit.
• Manageability. Monitoring and metrics.
• Cost-effectiveness. Pay only for what you use.

List the database engines supported by AWS RDS?

Some of the database engines supported by the Amazon RDS are:

• Amazon Aurora
• Postgre SQL
• MySQL
• MariaDB
• Oracle
• Microsoft SQL Server

What is an RDS instance?

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a web service that that allows you to quickly create a relational database instance in the cloud. Amazon RDS manages the database instance on your behalf by performing backups, handling failover, and maintaining the database software. For read-heavy applications, you can launch Read Replicas which are RDS instances that serve as copies of the source master database for handling read-requests. You can attach up to five (5) Read Replicas to a source DB instance.The Instances page lists the existing RDS Instances in the selected AWS region. Clicking on an existing RDS Instance displays the details for that instance.
Fields

• Name - unique name/identifier for the RDS instance.
• Engine - The version of the MySQL or Oracle engine of the RDS Instance.
• RDS Subnet Group - The group of RDS Subnets for the VPC.
• Availability Zone - The availability zone into which the RDS Instance will be created and launched.
• Multi-AZ - Indicates that the RDS Instance will be used in a multiple availability zone configuration.
• Instance class - If you selected a different instance type, the existing instance will be terminated and new RDS instance will be launched.
• Storage - storage size in GBs for the instance that will be allocated for storing data.
• Source instance - If the instance is a Read Replica, it will list the name of the source DB instance.
• Status - The status of the RDS Instance (creating, modifying, available, rebooting, deleting). An RDS Instance will only be accessible when its status is 'available'.

What are RDS Interfaces?

The RDS interfaces are a way to access the RDS service we create. After the creation and configuration of the RDS service there is a need of accessing the data, uploading data to this database and running some other program which should be able to connect to the database. Such requirements of accessing and manipulating data by end users of the database and not necessarily the AWS account holder which created the database needs these interfaces.

What is Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora is a type of relational database built for the cloud that is compatible with MySQL and PostgreSQL. It is five times faster than the MySQL database and three times faster than the PostgreSQL database. This hybrid database type is a perfect combination of the performance and availability of traditional databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of the open-source database. This database is fully managed by the Amazon RDS so tasks like hardware provisioning, database setup, patching, and backups are automated.

What is an AWS Cluster?

An AWS Cluster consists of one or more RDS instances and a cluster volume to manage the data for the RDS instances. Aurora cluster is the popular one which creates two instances in a cluster by default. One instance is used to write while the other is used for reading operation. But you can change this configuration as you wish.

What is the work of Amazon RDS?

When a user wants to set up a relational database then Amazon RDS is used. It provisions the infrastructure capacity that a user requests to install the database software. Once the database is set up and functional RDS automates the tasks like patching up of the software, taking the backup of the data and management of synchronous data replication with automatic failover.

What is the purpose of standby RDS instance?

The main purpose of launching a standby RDS instance is to prevent the infrastructure failure (in case failure occurs) so it is stored in a different availability zone which is a totally different infrastructure physically and independent.

What are Oracle features in AWS RDS?

Oracle is very popular Relational DB which is available in the amazon RDS services with its enterprise edition features. Almost every feature of Oracle can be leveraged in the RDS platform.
If no version is mentioned during the DB creation, it defaults to the most recent version at that point in time. Below is an example of how to get the supported DB Engine versions using AWS API in a python SDK program.

import object
client = object.client('rds')
response = client.describe_db_engine_versions(
    DBParameterGroupFamily='oracle-ee-12.1',
    DefaultOnly=True,
    Engine='',
    EngineVersion='',
    ListSupportedCharacterSets=False, #True,
)
print(response)

When we run the above program, we get the following output :

{
   "ResponseMetadata": {
      "RetryAttempts": 0,
      "HTTPStatusCode": 200,
      "RequestId": "f6805635-3e16-4014-83cd-dfdaf3f17950",
      "HTTPHeaders": {
         "x-amzn-requestid": "f6805635-3e16-4014-83cd-dfdaf3f17950",
         "date": "Fri, 14 Sep 2018 03:46:38 GMT",
         "content-length": "1455",
         "content-type": "text/xml"
      }
   },
   "u'DBEngineVersions'": [
      {
         "u'Engine'": "oracle-ee",
         "u'DBParameterGroupFamily'": "oracle-ee-12.1",
         "u'SupportsLogExportsToCloudwatchLogs'": true,
         "u'SupportsReadReplica'": false,
         "u'DefaultCharacterSet'": {
            "u'CharacterSetName'": "AL32UTF8",
            "u'CharacterSetDescription'": "Unicode 5.0 UTF-8 Universal character set"
         },
         "u'DBEngineDescription'": "Oracle Database Enterprise Edition",
         "u'EngineVersion'": "12.1.0.2.v12",
         "u'DBEngineVersionDescription'": "Oracle 12.1.0.2.v12",
         "u'ExportableLogTypes'": [
            "alert",
            "audit",
            "listener",
            "trace"
         ],
         "u'ValidUpgradeTarget'": []
      }
   ]
}

Explain Oracle Licensing?

There are two options for using oracle licenses in RDS:

• License Included Model
• In this model Amazon holds the license for the software you are going to use. Also AWS itself provides the support for both AWS and Oracle software thorugh its support program. So the user does not purchase any separate license. The platform pricing includes the charges for licensing cost the user pays.
• Bring Your Own License
• In this model the user brings in the license she holds into RDS platform. It is the user's responsibility to maintain the compatibility between the license, database instance class and database edition. The user directly contacts the Oracle support channel for any need. In this model the supported editions are Enterprise Edition (EE), Standard Edition (SE), Standard Edition One (SE1) and Standard Edition Two (SE2).

What are DB Instances in AWS RDS?

A DB instance is an isolated database environment running in the cloud which can contain multiple user-created databases. It can be accessed using the same client tools and applications used to access a standalone database instance. But there is restriction on how many DB instances of what type you can have for a single customer account.

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