RDS databases on gp2 storage
RDS storage uses the same volume types as EBS, and gp2 still costs more per gibibyte than gp3 for the same baseline performance.
What this problem is
An RDS instance's storage uses the same volume types as EBS, and the same price difference applies: gp3 costs less per gibibyte than gp2 and delivers baseline performance independent of allocated size.
On RDS, the side effect of gp2's model is even more common than on EC2. Because gp2's IOPS scales with size, the known recipe for getting performance out of a database was to allocate more storage than the data needed — inflating the volume to buy IOPS. Databases sized that way pay for gibibytes that exist only for that.
Converting gp2 to gp3 on RDS is performed by AWS itself, with the database online. It is a storage modification, not a data migration: no dump, no restore, no endpoint change.
How we detect it
We list database instances with DescribeDBInstances, which reports each one's storage type and allocated size. The comparison is between what gp2 storage costs today and what the same size would cost as gp3.
- RDS databases on gp2 storage
What it costs
RDS gp2 storage runs about $0.115 per GiB-month and gp3 about $0.092 per GiB-month (us-east-1) — around 20% apart. Across 2 TB allocated that is roughly $47 a month.
Public AWS list prices, us-east-1, subject to change. The figure in your report is computed against your resources in your regions.
How it appears in the report
An illustrative example, with invented resources and figures. In the report each finding carries the real resource, its region, and the fix command where a safe one exists.
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