Description

Amazon RDS offers Multi-AZ deployments that provide enhanced availability and durability for your databases, using synchronous replication to replicate data to a standby instance in a different Availability Zone (AZ). In the event of an infrastructure failure, Amazon RDS automatically fails over to the standby to minimize downtime and ensure business continuity.

Rationale

Database availability is crucial for maintaining service uptime, particularly for applications that are critical to the business. Implementing Multi-AZ deployments with Amazon RDS ensures that your databases are protected against unplanned outages due to hardware failures, network issues, or other disruptions. This configuration enhances both the availability and durability of your database, making it a highly recommended practice for production environments.

Impact

Multi-AZ deployments may increase costs due to the additional resources required to maintain a standby instance; however, the benefits of increased availability and reduced risk of downtime outweigh these costs for critical applications.

Audit

This policy flags an AWS RDS Instance as INCOMPLIANT if the Multi AZ checkbox is set to false.

Instances that are not in an available state or that belong to an RDS cluster are marked as INAPPLICABLE.