Difficulty
Easy to implement
Description
We identified several Aurora RDS instances in your account that may be updated to Graviton instances. Graviton is a newer generation of AWS processors that offers better price-performance — instances based on Graviton are faster, more energy-efficient, and cost less than equivalent x86-based instances.
Selection Criteria
The RDS Aurora instance is not already a Graviton instance.
The instance type is
db.r5,db.r6i,db.t3(excludingdb.t3.smallwhich is not available on Graviton).The instance has been running for at least 30 days.
A newer Graviton generation is available for this instance family.
⚠️ Aurora PostgreSQL : not all engine versions are compatible with Graviton — verify the minor version before migrating.
Expected Saving
Migrating to Graviton typically yields ~10% savings on instance compute costs with equivalent or better performance.
Current Instance | Graviton Equivalent | Estimated Savings |
db.r5.* | db.r6g.* | ~10% |
db.r6i.* | db.r6g.* | ~5-10% |
db.t3.medium | db.t4g.medium | ~10% |
db.t3.large | db.t4g.large | ~10% |
Example: db.r5.large (~$0.240/h On-Demand) → db.r6g.large (~$0.216/h) = ~$17/month savings
Operational Impact
⚠️ Maintenance window required : the instance must be restarted to apply the new instance class — plan during a low-traffic window.
Multi-AZ deployments : Aurora performs an automatic failover (~60 seconds of interruption). The impact is minimized but a brief downtime should be expected.
⚠️ Aurora PostgreSQL compatibility : not all minor versions of Aurora PostgreSQL support Graviton. Verify before migrating (see References).
⚠️ Reserved Instances : if the instance is covered by a Reserved Instance, changing the instance family may not be covered by the existing RI. Verify RI scope (Instance Size Flexibility only applies within the same family).