This topic describes how to select instance specifications that best suit your business needs. If the specifications are higher than what you need, resources are wasted. If the specifications are lower than what you need, the performance of your ApsaraDB RDS instance is low and your workloads cannot be properly processed.

Instance families

ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL supports the general-purpose instance family and the dedicated instance family. These instance families support different configurations and scenarios. The following table describes these instance families.

Instance family Description Scenario
General-purpose instance family
  • A general-purpose instance exclusively occupies the allocated memory resources, but shares CPU and storage resources with the other general-purpose instances that are deployed on the same physical host.
  • CPU resources are moderately reused among general-purpose instances that are deployed on the same physical host. This increases cost-effectiveness.
  • The storage capacity of a general-purpose instance is independent of the number of CPU cores and memory capacity. You can flexibly configure the storage capacity based on your business requirements.
Users are not demanding for performance or stability.
Dedicated instance family
  • A dedicated instance exclusively occupies the allocated CPU and memory resources. Its performance remains stable and is not affected by the other instances that are deployed on the same physical host.
  • The top configuration of the dedicated instance family is dedicated host. A dedicated host instance occupies all the resources on the physical host where it is deployed.
Users use databases as core systems in sectors such as finance, e-commerce, government affairs, and large- and medium-sized Internet services.

Select specifications

If you want to process online workloads, we recommend that you select the dedicated instance family. Then, you can select proper CPU and memory specifications. This allows your RDS instance to deliver the maximum number of connections and maximum input/output operations per second (IOPS) that are required by the online workloads. For more information, see Primary instance types.

Upgrade specifications

If your workloads grow over time, you can upgrade the specifications of your RDS instance at any time. For more information, see Change the specifications of an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance.