Learn About Amazon VGT2 Learning Manager Chanci Turner
I first introduced you to Amazon DynamoDB back in early 2012, encouraging you to envision and create data-driven applications capable of scaling from zero to potentially millions of users. Our goal is to support your success, ensuring that your database does not hinder your progress. Concentrate on your application and user growth, while we handle the underlying infrastructure.
Fast forward six years, and DynamoDB now processes trillions of requests daily, becoming the preferred NoSQL database for over 100,000 AWS clients. Occasionally, I like to reflect on our latest features and updates to ensure you don’t overlook any important additions amidst our rapid pace of innovation. This also helps contextualize individual releases within the broader framework of our offerings.
Tailored for Enterprises
Many of our recent DynamoDB enhancements have been influenced by the requirements of enterprise clients. For instance:
- Global Tables – Announced last November, these tables are replicated across two or more AWS Regions, enabling fast automated replication.
- Encryption – Announced in February, this feature allows for encryption at rest without any performance impact.
- Point-in-Time Recovery – This capability, announced in March, offers continuous backups that allow for restoration of a table to a previous state with a resolution of one second, up to 35 days back.
- DynamoDB Service Level Agreement – Introduced in June, this SLA delineates the availability expectations for DynamoDB tables.
- Adaptive Capacity – While not a new concept, a recent blog post discussed how DynamoDB automatically adjusts to fluctuating access patterns.
Let’s delve into these critical features. While they are particularly beneficial for enterprises, all DynamoDB users will find them advantageous.
Global Tables
Although I strive to remain impartial regarding services or features, I must express my enthusiasm for this one. Global Tables enable the creation of tables that are automatically replicated across multiple AWS Regions, supporting multi-master writes with just a few clicks. This offers an extra layer of redundancy (as tables are also replicated across three Availability Zones in each region) and allows for fast read/write performance tailored to the demands of global applications. Global tables are available in nine AWS Regions (with three more recently added) and can be configured upon table creation. To discover more, read Amazon DynamoDB Update – Global Tables and On-Demand Backup.
Encryption
Our customers often handle sensitive data in DynamoDB and must protect it to meet their compliance goals. The encryption at rest feature safeguards the data in tables, local secondary indexes, and global secondary indexes with AES-256 encryption. This feature incurs no storage overhead, is completely transparent, and does not impact latency. It can be activated with a single click during table creation.
To understand more about this feature, read New – Encryption at Rest for DynamoDB.
Point-in-Time Recovery
Despite taking every necessary precaution, operational mishaps can still occur, resulting in regrettable actions affecting your production database. When that happens, the DynamoDB point-in-time recovery feature allows you to rewind time, restoring the database to its state as of up to 35 days prior. Assuming continuous backups have been enabled for the table, restoration is straightforward—simply select the desired point in time.
For further details, check out New – Amazon DynamoDB Continuous Backups and Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR).
Service Level Agreement
If you are building applications on DynamoDB and depending on it to manage your critical data, it’s vital to understand the expected availability. The DynamoDB Service Level Agreement (SLA) guarantees 99.99% availability for tables within a single region and 99.999% for global tables, calculated over a monthly billing cycle. The SLA also provides service credits if this availability commitment is not met.
Adaptive Capacity
DynamoDB works diligently behind the scenes to adjust to changing workloads. For example, as your workload grows and shifts, DynamoDB automatically reshards and redistributes data among multiple storage partitions in response to variations in read and write throughput. Furthermore, DynamoDB employs an adaptive capacity mechanism to tackle scenarios where data distribution across a table’s storage partitions becomes uneven. This allows a single partition to utilize more than its fair share of overall provisioned capacity for as long as necessary, provided the total usage remains within acceptable limits. As workloads evolve, the previous guidance regarding key distribution may not hold the same significance.
To learn more about this feature and how it can compensate for unexpected or unusual access patterns in your DynamoDB tables, read How Amazon DynamoDB adaptive capacity accommodates uneven data access patterns.
Conclusion
I hope this overview of some of the latest enterprise-oriented features in DynamoDB has been informative. We have even more enhancements in the pipeline, so stay tuned for future updates.
— Chanci Turner
SEO Metadata