News

Amazon Aurora DSQL Ships, Serverless and Distributed

• By David Ramel
• 06/09/2025

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has announced the general availability of Amazon Aurora DSQL, a serverless, distributed SQL database designed for applications requiring high scalability and availability without the overhead of infrastructure management. Aurora DSQL offers active-active high availability and multi-Region strong consistency, enabling developers to build always-available applications with virtually unlimited scalability, the company said.

Key Features of Aurora DSQL

• Serverless Architecture: Automatically scales compute, storage, and I/O based on workload demands, eliminating the need for manual provisioning or capacity planning.
• High Availability: Designed for 99.99% availability in single-Region configurations and 99.999% in multi-Region setups, with no single point of failure and automated failure recovery.
• PostgreSQL Compatibility: Supports many commonly used PostgreSQL queries and features, allowing developers to use familiar tools and drivers with minimal configuration changes.
• Zero Infrastructure Management: Removes the operational burden of patching, upgrades, and maintenance downtime, enabling developers to focus on application development.

Amazon Aurora DSQL was first previewed at AWS re:Invent 2024, where AWS CTO Werner Vogels introduced the database during his keynote. At the conference, Vogels emphasized the importance of designing Aurora DSQL for seamless scalability and global consistency -- themes he elaborated on in his recent blog post. The database was made generally available in late May 2025.

Technical Architecture
According to Vogels, Aurora DSQL's design breaks the database into modular components with clear interfaces, allowing each to scale independently. This architecture enables multi-Region strong consistency with low latency and globally synchronized time.

"The goal with Aurora DSQL's design is to break up the database into bite-sized chunks with clear interfaces and explicit contracts," he said. "Each component follows the Unix mantra -- do one thing, and do it well -- but working together they are able to offer all the features users expect from a database."

For a deeper dive into the development and architecture of Aurora DSQL, refer to Vogels' blog post: Just Make It Scale: An Aurora DSQL Story.

Integration with AWS Services
Aurora DSQL integrates with various AWS services, including:

• AWS Backup: Simplifies data protection and recovery.
• AWS PrivateLink: Provides secure, private connectivity.
• AWS CloudFormation: Enables infrastructure as code for database deployment.
• AWS CloudTrail: Offers governance, compliance, and operational auditing.
• AWS Key Management Service (KMS): Allows encryption with customer-managed keys.

Pricing and Availability
Aurora DSQL is available in the following AWS Regions:

• Single-Region Clusters: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), US West (Oregon), Asia Pacific (Osaka), Asia Pacific (Tokyo), Europe (Ireland), Europe (London), and Europe (Paris).
• Multi-Region Clusters: US East (N. Virginia), US East (Ohio), and US West (Oregon).

Billing is based on two primary measures:

• Distributed Processing Unit (DPU): Charges for all request-based activity such as read/write operations.
• Storage: Measured in GB-months based on the total size of your database.

As part of the AWS Free Tier, the first 100,000 DPUs and 1 GB-month of storage each month are free. For more details, visit the Aurora DSQL Pricing page.

Getting Started
Developers can create a new Aurora DSQL database in a few quick steps via the AWS Management Console. For more information, refer to the Aurora DSQL User Guide.

To learn more about the general availability announcement, read the official AWS blog post: Amazon Aurora DSQL is Now Generally Available.