Boost Amazon RDS Performance with io2 Block Express Storage

Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS) now offers io2 Block Express storage volumes, enhancing performance for production workloads. These volumes provide consistent sub-millisecond latency, 99.999% durability, and support up to 256,000 Provisioned IOPS and 4,000 MiB/s throughput, making them ideal for I/O-intensive, mission-critical database applications. (Read more on AWS)

In performance benchmarks, io2 Block Express volumes consistently outperformed gp3 and io1 volumes across various database engines and configurations. They delivered higher performance with up to 66% lower disk latency compared to gp3, making io2 Block Express particularly suitable for workloads requiring high throughput and low latency.

Getting Started with io2 Block Express

To get started with io2 Block Express, you can create a new RDS instance or modify an existing one via the Amazon RDS console or the AWS CLI.

Creating a New RDS Instance with io2 Block Express:

aws rds create-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \
    --db-instance-class db.m5.large \
    --engine mysql \
    --master-username admin \
    --master-user-password password \
    --allocated-storage 100 \
    --storage-type io2 \
    --iops 1000

Modifying an Existing RDS Instance:

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \
    --storage-type io2 \
    --iops 1000 \
    --apply-immediately

After modifying the instance, a storage optimization process begins, and further modifications are deferred until it completes. A progress indicator provides visibility into this process. It's recommended to evaluate performance and costs according to your application requirements and test any changes prior to production deployment.

Regional Availability

io2 Block Express volumes are available in multiple AWS Regions, including US East (N. Virginia, Ohio), US West (N. California, Oregon), Asia Pacific (Hong Kong, Mumbai, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo), Canada (Central), Europe (Frankfurt, Ireland, London, Stockholm), and Middle East (Bahrain).

For more detailed information, refer to the original AWS Database Blog post: Optimize Amazon RDS Performance with io2 Block Express Storage.