AWS News Blog
HAQM RDS Price Reduction for Multi-AZ Deployments
When you create a Multi-AZ Database Instance using the HAQM Relational Database Service, we automatically create a standby instance which maintains an up-to-date copy of the primary database. If the primary database goes down due to a instance, storage, or network issue, HAQM RDS automatically initiates a failover from primary to secondary and also creates a fresh secondary for you. Here’s the basic architecture (see my Multi-AZ blog post for more information):

Today we are making the Multi-AZ deployment model an even better value, with price reductions ranging from 15% to 32%. As an example, here are the old and new On-Demand prices for an m1.small RDS Database Instance running MySQL or Oracle (BYOL) in a Multi-AZ deployment:
Region | Old Price | New Price | Savings |
US East (Northern Virginia) | $0.180 | $0.153 | 15% |
US West (Northern California) | $0.230 | $0.167 | 27% |
US West (Oregon) | $0.180 | $0.153 | 15% |
AWS GovCloud (US) | $0.240 | $0.187 | 22% |
Europe (Ireland) | $0.230 | $0.167 | 27% |
Asia Pacific (Singapore) | $0.230 | $0.196 | 15% |
Asia Pacific (Tokyo) | $0.240 | $0.204 | 15% |
Asia Pacific (Sydney) | $0.230 | $0.196 | 15% |
South America (So Paulo) | $0.300 | $0.204 | 32% |
This price reduction takes effect February 1, 2013 and represents our continued commitment to make AWS a better and better value over time.
— Jeff;