Aurora Global Database

Amazon Aurora global databases span multiple AWS Regions, enabling low latency global reads and providing fast recovery from the rare outage that might affect an entire AWS Region. An Aurora global database has a primary DB cluster in one Region, and up to five secondary DB clusters in different Regions.

By using an Amazon Aurora global database, you can run your globally distributed applications using a single Aurora database that spans multiple AWS Regions.

An Aurora global database consists of one primary AWS Region where your data is written, and up to five read-only secondary AWS Regions. You issue write operations directly to the primary DB cluster in the primary AWS Region. Aurora replicates data to the secondary AWS Regions using dedicated infrastructure, with latency typically under a second.

In the following diagram, you can find an example Aurora global database that spans two AWS Regions.

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You can scale up each secondary cluster independently, by adding one or more Aurora Replicas (read-only Aurora DB instances) to serve read-only workloads.

Only the primary cluster performs write operations. Clients that perform write operations connect to the DB cluster endpoint of the primary DB cluster. As shown in the diagram, Aurora global database uses the cluster storage volume and not the database engine for replication.

Aurora global databases are designed for applications with a worldwide footprint. The read-only secondary DB clusters (AWS Regions) allow you to support read operations closer to application users. By using the write forwarding feature, you can also configure an Aurora global database so that secondary clusters send data to the primary. For more information, see

Using write forwarding in an Amazon Aurora global database⁠

An Aurora global database supports two different operations for changing the Region of your primary DB cluster, depending on the scenario: global database switchover and global database failover.

For planned operational procedures such as Regional rotation, use global database switchover (previously called "managed planned failover"). With this feature, you can relocate the primary cluster of a healthy Aurora global database to one of its secondary Regions with no data loss. To learn more, see

Performing switchovers for Amazon Aurora global databases⁠

To recover your Aurora global database after an outage in the primary Region, use global database failover. With this feature, you fail over your primary DB cluster to another Region (cross-Region failover). To learn more, see

Performing managed failovers for Aurora global databases⁠

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Advantages of Amazon Aurora global databases

By using Aurora global databases, you can get the following advantages:

Global reads with local latency – If you have offices around the world, you can use an Aurora global database to keep your main sources of information updated in the primary AWS Region. Offices in your other Regions can access the information in their own Region, with local latency.

Scalable secondary Aurora DB clusters – You can scale your secondary clusters by adding more read-only instances (Aurora Replicas) to a secondary AWS Region. The secondary cluster is read-only, so it can support up to 16 read-only Aurora Replica instances rather than the usual limit of 15 for a single Aurora cluster.

Fast replication from primary to secondary Aurora DB clusters – The replication performed by an Aurora global database has little performance impact on the primary DB cluster. The resources of the DB instances are fully devoted to serve application read and write workloads.

Recovery from Region-wide outages – The secondary clusters allow you to make an Aurora global database available in a new primary AWS Region more quickly (lower RTO) and with less data loss (lower RPO) than traditional replication solutions. A database in a secondary Region can be promoted to full read/write capabilities in less than 1 minute.

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Advantages of Amazon Aurora global databases

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