On May 10, Amazon announced a new database type for AWS Aurora - Aurora I/O-Optimized. This new offering targets companies that heavily utilize I/O operations in their Postgres and MySQL databases, with the key selling point being zero cost for I/O operations. However, AWS has not completely relinquished revenue from I/O operations and is compensating for the I/O savings by charging a higher storage cost.
So, is it a favorable option for your company?
Naturally, the answer depends on your usage. Let's take a look at the costs in the us-east-1 region:
If you have a 5 TB database, for example, your break-even point for Aurora I/O will be 3.13 billion requests per month ($625 storage difference equals $625 in I/O costs). To determine if this is a worthwhile deal, you can check the recent I/O activity in the Monitoring tab on the relevant database in the RDS page.
Based on our experience, most companies do not have a consistent high I/O intensity in their database usage. However, for companies that do, this could be an appealing offer. It might also be interesting for companies that utilize databases as caches, where there is relatively less data but a substantial number of I/O operations.
It's worth noting that you have the flexibility to switch between Aurora I/O-Optimized and Aurora Standard every 30 days. This billing feature can prove useful if you observe changes in your I/O patterns over time.
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