# AWS RDS Burst Balance

## What Burst Balance Applies To <a href="#what-burst-balance-applies-to" id="what-burst-balance-applies-to"></a>

* Burst balance only applies to General Purpose SSD storage (gp2). It does not apply to Magnetic storage, or Provisioned IOPS (io1).

### Baseline Performance <a href="#baseline-performance" id="baseline-performance"></a>

* Every SSD comes with a baseline performance, measured in IOPS (I/O (input/output) per second).
* Each GB of storage provides 3 IOPS of baseline performance.
  * There is a minimum of 100 IOPS. So any SSD between 20-33 GB will have a baseline performance of 100 IOPS.
  * There is a maximum of 16,000 IOPS. So any SSD above 5340 GB will have a baseline performance of 16,000 IOPS.
  * Examples: 500 GB has 1,500 IOPS, 1,000 GB has 3,000 IOPS.
* This baseline performance is guaranteed for your SSD. You will have this level of IOPS even if you have no burst balance remaining.

### Burst <a href="#burst" id="burst"></a>

* Bursting is having your SSD go over the baseline performance for a certain period of time.
* The burst duration is dependent on the burst balance, which is related to how much it’s gone over the baseline, as well as the size of the SSD.
* SSDs below 1,000 GB are able to burst to a maximum of 3,000 IOPS.
* SSDs that are 1,000 GB and above do not have a maximum IOPS that they can burst to.
  * For this, the documentation says that burst is not relevant for SSDs above 1,000 GB. The phrase “not relevant” can be a little vague. Does it mean there’s no burst at all? Or does it mean it can burst to any value? From personal experience, the highest IOPS value I have seen my 1,000 GB SSD burst to is 15,000 IOPS).

### Burst Balance <a href="#burst-balance" id="burst-balance"></a>

* When the IOPS usage of your SSD goes above the baseline, burst balance is used.
* When the IOPS usage goes below the baseline, burst balance is regenerated.
* If your burst balance reaches 0%, your SSD will not perform any higher than the baseline IOPS. This can cause severe issues with your application performance if it relies too much on burst.
* I feel that the actual calculations for this aren’t that important to know, because I don’t think you should be planning too much around using the burst balance due to the dangers of hitting 0%. Burst balance should be treated as a safety net, not something to be used regularly

### Resource:

* [NG Wee Thia Joel Blog](https://joelngwt.github.io/2021/08/27/understanding-aws-rds-burst-balance.html)


---

# Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation

If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question.

Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter:

```
GET https://docs.arkannis.net/cloud/aws/rds/aws-rds-burst-balance.md?ask=<question>
```

The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language.
The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation.

Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.