In a Multi-AZ deployment, Amazon RDS automatically provisions and maintains a synchronous standby replica in a different Availability Zone. The primary DB instance is synchronously replicated across Availability Zones to a standby replica to provide data redundancy, eliminate I/O freezes, and minimize latency spikes during system backups. Running a DB instance with high availability can enhance availability during planned system maintenance and help protect your databases against DB instance failure and Availability Zone disruption.

Creating Multi-AZ deployment

You can choose the option of selecting a multi-AZ deployment when creating a DB instance or you can also choose the option of modifying an existing db instance to become a multi-AZ DB instance. The following diagram shows the option where we are modifying an existing option. But the same option is also available during the creation of the DB instance.

How Multi-AZ works

In the event of a planned or unplanned outage of your DB instance, Amazon RDS automatically switches to a standby replica in another Availability Zone if you have enabled Multi-AZ. The time it takes for the failover to complete depends on the database activity and other conditions at the time the primary DB instance became unavailable. Failover times are typically 60-120 seconds. However, large transactions or a lengthy recovery process can increase failover time.

Multi-AZ deployments for Oracle, PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MariaDB DB instances use Amazon’s failover technology. SQL Server DB instances use SQL Server Mirroring.