The Challenge
If you run anything on Amazon RDS, you already know the pattern: an engine version you've been happily running for years quietly slips into its end of standard support, and suddenly you're staring down either a forced upgrade or a hefty Extended Support bill.
AWS Extended Support pricing kicks in the moment a major version hits EOL, and it isn't cheap — we're talking a per-vCPU-hour uplift on top of your normal RDS spend, applied automatically to every instance still running an unsupported version. For a fleet of any meaningful size, missing an EOL date by even a quarter can quietly turn into five or six figures of avoidable spend.
The information is technically out there in AWS's docs, but managing this across a fleet of different database engines is the sort of drudgery that nobody actually tackles until things break—especially since scheduling maintenance for mission-critical RDS databases usually comes with non-negotiable delays from the business side.
Raptive was approaching exactly that crossroads. Its team had begun scoping what it would take to manually document and track out-of-date RDS engines across its fleet, a time-intensive effort with no built-in way to stay current as new EOL dates rolled in.
The Solution
Rather than build and maintain its own tracking system in-house, Raptive turned to CloudFlow, DoiT Cloud Intelligence's automation engine for FinOps and CloudOps workflows.
For Raptive, the task was tracking RDS engines approaching end of standard support across their fleet of 30+ databases.
They deployed a DoiT CloudFlow template that automates this on a schedule. The flow scans all RDS instances across all accounts and available AWS regions, and sends an alert to a pre-configured recipient if an RDS engine is going to reach end of standard support within the next six months (configurable).
Today the flow is fully operational, delivering Raptive weekly reports on which database engines are still running versions approaching end of standard support.
Results
- 37 databases automatically covered across all AWS regions, and counting
- ~$10k/year annual extended support costs prevented
Cloudflow's new RDS End of Life alerts have allowed us to be more proactive on keeping our database instances up-to-date. The new solution gives us internal visibility ahead of time so that we can prepare for upgrades, instead of having to upgrade under pressure while incurring extended support costs.
Jon Fairbanks, Site Reliability Engineering Manager
Impact
Now having enough notice on soon-to-be out-of-date RDS engines, Raptive has the internal visibility to plan upgrades ahead of time, rather than scrambling once support ends.
A six-month heads-up turns that from an emergency into a planning exercise. Engineering teams get a runway to schedule maintenance windows, test application compatibility, and upgrade on their own terms, instead of getting paged the week support ends.
Today, the flow automatically covers over 30 RDS instances across all of Raptive's AWS regions, and has helped them avoid roughly $10k in annual extended support costs that would otherwise have quietly accrued.
Raptive no longer needs to dedicate engineering resources to building or maintaining that tracking system in-house, and can rely on DoiT Cloud Intelligence to keep the flow running long-term.
Want to set this up for your own environment? The RDS Engines Nearing EOL template is available directly in DoiT Cloud Intelligence. Just open CloudFlow, click on the Templates tab, and search "RDS Engines Nearing EOL" to get started.
Learn more about CloudFlow and DoiT Cloud Intelligence
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Cloudflow's new RDS End of Life alerts have allowed us to be more proactive on keeping our database instances up-to-date. The new solution gives us internal visibility ahead of time so that we can prepare for upgrades, instead of having to upgrade under pressure while incurring extended support costs.
Jon Fairbanks, Site Reliability Engineering Manager
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