When you create a Multi-AZ Database Instance using the Amazon Relational Database Service, we automatically create a standby instance which maintains an up-to-date copy of the primary database. If the primary database goes down due to a instance, storage, or network issue, Amazon RDS automatically initiates a failover from primary to secondary and also creates a fresh secondary for you. Here’s the basic architecture (see my Multi-AZ blog post for more information):

Today we are making the Multi-AZ deployment model an even better value, with price reductions ranging from 15% to 32%. As an example, here are the old and new On-Demand prices for an m1.small RDS Database Instance running MySQL or Oracle (BYOL) in a Multi-AZ deployment:

Region Old Price New Price Savings US East (Northern Virginia) $0.180 $0.153 15% US West (Northern California) $0.230 $0.167 27% US West (Oregon) $0.180 $0.153 15% AWS GovCloud (US) $0.240 $0.187 22% Europe (Ireland) $0.230 $0.167 27% Asia Pacific (Singapore) $0.230 $0.196 15% Asia Pacific (Tokyo) $0.240 $0.204 15% Asia Pacific (Sydney) $0.230 $0.196 15% South America (So Paulo) $0.300 $0.204 32%

This price reduction takes effect February 1, 2013 and represents our continued commitment to make AWS a better and better value over time.

— Jeff;