Amazon Web Services Inc. debuted a collection of new features at its re:Invent event today that will make it easier for enterprises to run database environments on its cloud.

There’s a growing trend in the enterprise toward automating repetitive information technology maintenance tasks. This is often achieved with artificial intelligence. Products that use AI to automate repetitive IT tasks are known as MLOps solutions. AWS competes in the MLOps segment with a service called Amazon DevOps Guru, which is among the offerings that the cloud giant updated today as part of the feature release.

DevOps Guru uses AI to automatically detect technical issues in companies’ AWS environments and generate remediation recommendations. The service is receiving a new feature called Amazon DevOps Guru for RDS that extends its capabilities to Amazon Aurora, a popular cloud-based relational database provided by AWS. The cloud giant says the database is used by hundreds of thousands of customers.

DevOps Guru for RDS is capable of automatically identifying technical issues in Aurora deployments that impact database performance. The service can, for example, spot if a database requires more virtual central processing units to carry out a task than it’s supposed to. DevOps Guru for RDS can detect other types of issues as well. 

“DevOps Guru for RDS uses ML to automatically identify and analyze a wide range of performance-related database issues, such as over-utilization of host resources, database bottlenecks, or misbehavior of SQL queries,” AWS Senior Developer Advocate Marcia Villalba wrote in a blog post today. “It also recommends solutions to remediate the issues it finds.”

Developers can access the insights surfaced by DevOps Guru through a centralized dashboard. For software teams that find out about technical issues as soon as they emerge, the service provides alerting features. “When an issue is detected, DevOps Guru for RDS displays the finding in the DevOps Guru console and sends notifications using Amazon EventBridge or Amazon Simple Notification Service (SNS). This allows developers to automatically manage and take real-time action on the issues,” Villalba wrote.

Similarly to troubleshooting performance issues, setting up databases can be a time-consuming task. That’s particularly true in cases where a company must make extensive customizations to its database to address the requirements of a complex application. In some cases, administrators even have to modify operating system settings.

AWS is launching a service called Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server to accommodate companies that require the ability to extensively customize their database environments. The service is designed for running deployments of Microsoft Corp.’s SQL Server relational database. Earlier, in October, AWS introduced a similar offering called Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle geared toward Oracle Corp. customers.

The two services provide a variety of customization options that companies can use as needed to meet application requirements. Amazon RDS Custom for SQL Server offers features aimed specifically at environments that use Microsoft technologies. Companies can, for example, enable a capability called SQL Common Language Runtime in their database that is necessary to run certain applications built with Microsoft’s popular .NET development framework.

“Through the time-saving benefits of a managed service, RDS Custom for SQL Server frees you up to focus on more business-impacting, strategic activities,” explained AWS Principal Developer Advocate Channy Yun. “The use of automating backups and other operational tasks let you rest easy, knowing your data is safe and ready to be recovered if needed.”

Companies use AWS to host not only relational databases such as SQL Server but also NoSQL systems designed to store unstructured information. Amazon DynamoDB, the NoSQL database that AWS provides as part of its platform, is being updated with a new feature to help companies reduce data storage expenses.

The records that an organization keeps in DynamoDB are often accessed with varying frequency. Some files might be retrieved weekly by applications, while others only every few months or years. To optimize costs, companies sometimes move their most infrequently accessed records from DynamoDB to the Amazon S3 object storage service, which provides access to lower-cost storage infrastructure. 

The catch is that realizing the cost savings can require making code modifications. Workloads need to access DynamoDB and S3 through two separate application programming interfaces. Developers must make use of both APIs if they wish to build an application that transfers infrequently used data between DynamoDB and S3, which can require a great deal of effort. 

AWS has added a feature called Amazon DynamoDB Standard-Infrequent Access to simplify developers’ work. It stores infrequently accessed records for a 60% lower cost than standard DynamoDB pricing. Because the feature is built directly into the database, developers don’t have to move infrequently accessed records to S3 in order to reduce storage costs, which means they only have to use one API instead of two. The end result is a decrease in code complexity. 

“DynamoDB Standard-IA is a great solution if you must store terabytes of data for several years where the data must be highly available, but it is not frequently accessed,” Villalba explained.

AWS is making it easier for companies that wish to use its cloud platform’s features to migrate databases from legacy environments. The AWS Database Migration Service, a tool the cloud giant has built specifically for this task, was upgraded today with a feature called AWS DMS Fleet Advisor that automates a number of manual tasks. Administrators can monitor database migrations through a likewise newly added centralized monitoring console. 

Image: AWS