Read-heavy applications require exceptional database performance, which is why we’re excited to announce the general availability of Secondaries on AuraDB Virtual Dedicated Cloud.
Secondaries are read-only copies of your AuraDB database, and they significantly increase maximum read-query throughput. You can offload read operations from your primary AuraDB instance by distributing query load across multiple Secondaries, allowing the database to serve greater volumes of read transactions. That means you can scale your application efficiently without compromising performance.
The benefits of Secondaries include:
- Increased read throughput. Up to 15 Secondaries per AuraDB instance boost your system’s capacity to handle read-heavy workloads, making your application more resilient under high demand.
- Better load distribution. By distributing read operations evenly, Secondaries help prevent instance bottlenecks, enabling applications to perform smoothly even during traffic spikes.
- Higher availability. Distributing multiple Secondaries across availability zones ensures fault tolerance and high availability—an outage in one zone doesn’t impact Secondaries in other zones.
Managing Secondaries in AuraDB
You can easily scale Secondaries in AuraDB as your workload requirements change.
Managing Secondaries via the Aura Console
Once the Secondary feature is enabled, you’ll notice the Secondary count displayed on your instance card. By default, this count is set to zero. You can add and remove Secondaries or adjust the number of Secondaries by clicking the three dots:
Adding Secondaries to an AuraDB instance from the Aura console
Managing Secondaries via the Aura API
For more automated or programmatic control, you can manage Secondaries through the Aura API. Use the /instances/{instanceId} endpoint to easily adjust the secondary count on your AuraDB instance without manual intervention:
Retaining the Secondary Count After Pausing and Resuming
One of the management features of AuraDB allows you to pause and resume your database via the console or API. The Secondary count is retained when you pause the database. If your database has three Secondaries when paused, for example, it will resume with the same number, maintaining your setup without requiring any reconfiguration.
Configuration and Region Considerations
While Secondaries offer powerful capabilities for enhancing read performance and availability, it’s important to keep the following considerations in mind:
- Configuration. Secondaries in AuraDB are static and do not currently support elastic or auto-scaling behavior. You’ll need to manually adjust the number of Secondaries to match your needs as your application scales.
- Region. Your AuraDB instance and secondaries must be in the same cloud region. This single-region availability ensures low latency but precludes cross-region deployment.
Maintaining Optimal Performance as Workloads Increase
If you’re running a read-heavy application or looking to scale your database workload efficiently, enabling Secondaries in your AuraDB instance is a powerful solution. By distributing read queries across multiple copies of your data, Secondaries allow your application to handle higher traffic and deliver a seamless user experience.
Whether you choose to manage your Secondaries via the Aura console or the API, the process is flexible and scalable, and you’ll find it easy to optimize database performance as your workloads grow.
For more information, please take a look at our documentation.
