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RDS Performance Insights will end support on November 30, 2025! But there's no need to panic even if you're a free user

This is Onkai Yuta (@fat47) from the Service Reliability Group (SRG) of the Media Headquarters.
#SRG(Service Reliability Group) mainly provides cross-sectional support for the infrastructure of our media services, improving existing services, launching new ones, contributing to OSS, etc.
This article summarizes how people who have been using the free version of RDS Performance Insights can switch to the standard (free) version of CloudWatch Database Insights and use it without any problems.
I hope this helps in some way.
 

Conclusion first

💡
Those who have been using the free version of Performance Insights in their Aurora MySQL environment will likely have little trouble if they switch to the free version (Standard) of CloudWatch Database Insights.

End of support for RDS Performance Insights

I found out about the end of support by reading this article from Classmethod.
According to the article, the RDS and Aurora documentation states that Performance Insights will end of life on November 30, 2025.
https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/WhatsNew.html
 
I was using RDS Performance Insights with the free limit of 7 days of data history storage, so I decided to look into what the future holds.

About CloudWatch Database Insights

This is CloudWatch's integrated database monitoring feature, announced last December.
 
To enable this, you need to enable it on a per-RDS or Aurora cluster basis, but in most cases it will already be enabled in the "Standard" setting in your existing cluster environment.
At the time of release, it only supported Aurora, but in February of this year it was expanded to support all RDS engines.
 
For Standard, 7-day data retention is free and some features are availableYou can.
In the case of Advanced, in addition to the Standard features, more detailed analysis functions are available,
Data retention is possible for a minimum of 15 months.
 

CloudWatch Database Insights Advanced Pricing

You can check the prices here.
https://aws.amazon.com/jp/cloudwatch/pricing/?nc1=h_ls
The prices for the Tokyo region are as follows:
Database instance configuration typeCost (per vCPU/ACU-hour, per instance)
Monitored Provisioned Instances (vCPU-hours) – RDS and Aurora DatabasesUSD 0.0125
Monitored Aurora Serverless v2 Instances (ACU-hours)USD 0.003125
 
For example, if you were using an Advanced cluster with a total of 16 vCPUs, your monthly bill would be $144.

So, will this affect me since I was using the free version of Performance Insights?

I used the free version of Performance Insights to analyze my Aurora MySQL environment.
This is the traditional Performance Insights screen.
 
Personally, the three research features I use most often in Performance Insights are:
  1. Checking Average Active Sessions (AAS)
  1. View Top SQL and Top Waits by Dimension
  1. Check queries with high AAS and see what is taking time
 
This survey will also be covered in this year's new graduate training, so be sure to check it out.
 
Let's take a look at the functions of each.
This is the per-instance screen from CloudWatch Database Insights.
It's almost the same as Performance Insight, but we'll take a look at each one separately.
 

1. Check Average Active Sessions (AAS)

 

2. Check Top SQL and Top Waits by Dimension

3. Check the queries with high AAS and see what is taking time

You can click on a specific query to see what the wait is for.
 
From the above, I have realized that for the scope of my everyday use, I would not have any problems migrating to CloudWatch Database Insights.
however,If you were using RDS Oracle Database or SQL Server, you could check the execution plan from Performance Insight, but please note that you cannot check it unless you set it to Advanced in CloudWatch Database Insights.It seems necessary.

Conclusion

I was worried when I heard that support for Performance Insights was ending, but I was relieved to hear that there seems to be no impact if I migrate to CloudWatch Database Insights.
One thing to note is thatVerify that your cluster is enabled for CloudWatch Database Insights Standard.It seems like it would be better to do that.
We found that in existing clusters, if the Performance Insights enable/disable settings were not consistent for each instance, CloudWatch Database Insights was not automatically enabled.
 
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