Your Aurora backups are costing you $$$! How to pay only for the configuration you actually need.

When it comes to selecting Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure configurations, everyone has to balance performance and cost. Slow, error-laden software experiences simply aren’t ok, but over-provisioned monstrosities of spend aren’t ok either. That being said, it’s really hard to know what you need when you’re getting started.

That’s why I’m here to provide some infrastructure configuration advice.

But let’s take a minute to level-set here. Why should you trust me? My company, Aimably, regularly performs AWS Cost Reduction Assessments for technology companies great and small. Often, we find a variety of infrastructure configurations that, once changed, can save our clients some serious cash. I’ve decided it’s high time we share some of those findings with everyone else.

This time, it’s on Aurora Database backup methods.

Let’s Start With the TL;DR

A database restoration is, hopefully, a rare event. Something must go terribly wrong for the system to be rolled back to its previous state. At the same time, when provisioning a database you must decide how to prepare for that unlikely event. And that decision has financial consequences.