Amazon Cuts Prices On DynamoDB Database Service

Under the new pricing scheme, provisioned throughput costs for both read requests and write requests have been reduced by 35 percent. The company is also introducing a new reserved capacity model that offers further discounts as high as 85 percent when customers reserve their read and write capacity for one or three years. Reserving capacity for one year corresponds to an added discount of 70 percent.

In addition, indexed storage costs are being reduced by 75 percent. All data will continue to be stored on solid-state drives and will be automatically replicated across multiple distinct availability zones.

"DynamoDB runs on a fleet of SSD-backed storage servers that are specifically designed to support DynamoDB," wrote CTO Werner Vogels in his blog. "This allows us to tune both our hardware and our software to ensure that the end-to-end service is both cost-efficient and highly performant. We've been working hard over the past year to improve storage density and bring down the costs of our underlying hardware platform. We have also made significant improvements to our software by optimizing our storage engine, replication system and various other internal components."

Vogels also noted that his team is capitalizing on the rapid growth of the service and the resulting economies of scale.

Under the new structure, provisioned throughput on the U.S. East Coast would move from 1 cent per hour per 10 write units or 50 read units to .65 of 1 cent for the same volume. Indexed storage moves from $1 per GB per month to 25 cents per GB per month. The numbers may be fractionally higher in other regions.

All reductions became effective on March 1 and are automatically applied.

PUBLISHED MARCH 8, 2013