This topic describes the instance families of ApsaraDB RDS. ApsaraDB RDS supports the shared instance family, general-purpose instance family, and dedicated instance family.
Instance families
Instance family | Description | Scenarios |
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Shared instance family |
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General-purpose instance family |
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You do not require high performance stability. |
Dedicated instance family |
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You use databases as core systems in sectors such as finance, e-commerce, public affairs, and large-sized or medium-sized Internet services. |

Instance types
For more information about the supported instance types and their specifications, such as the number of cores, memory capacity, storage capacity, maximum number of connections, and IOPS, see Primary ApsaraDB RDS instance types.Pricing
For more information about the prices of different instance types, visit the ApsaraDB RDS buy page.
Change of the instance family
You can change the instance type of your RDS instance between a dedicated instance type and a general-purpose instance type based on your business requirements.
For more information about how to change the instance type of your RDS instance to an instance type that belongs to a different instance family, see the following topics:
FAQ
A general-purpose RDS instance and a dedicated RDS instance are allocated the same number of cores and the same amount of memory. Why does the general-purpose RDS instance support a larger maximum number of connections and deliver higher IOPS than the dedicated RDS instance?
A dedicated RDS instance exclusively occupies the allocated CPU and memory resources, whereas a general-purpose RDS instance exclusively occupies only the allocated memory resources. Therefore, a general-purpose RDS instance delivers higher performance than a dedicated RDS instance due to flexible resource scheduling. However, a dedicated RDS instance provides higher performance stability than a general-purpose RDS instance. For more information, see the "Instance families" section of the topic.