RDS Proxy and Secure Access
Learn how to use Amazon RDS Proxy to optimize database connection handling and enforce secure access using IAM authentication and AWS Secrets Manager.
In cloud-native applications, it’s common for servers, containers, or Lambda functions to open many simultaneous database connections. However, relational databases like MySQL and PostgreSQL have physical limits on the number of concurrent connections they can handle efficiently.
Amazon RDS Proxy acts as a scalable intermediary between our application and the database. Instead of each client maintaining its separate connection, the proxy manages a pool of database connections and reuses them intelligently. This means:
Applications connect to the proxy endpoint, not directly to the database.
Connection reuse drastically reduces overhead on the database server.
Connection management is centralized, leading to better performance under heavy or unpredictable workloads.
How RDS Proxy works
Each proxy contains a target group, which represents the DB instances or clusters it connects to. It keeps a connection with a cluster writer instance. For Multi-AZ deployments, the proxy automatically tracks and routes to the current writer instance. Connections maintained by the proxy for applications form the connection pool.
RDS ...