What is the primary purpose of Amazon RDS Read Replicas?

Amazon RDS Read Replicas are designed specifically to improve the scalability of applications by offloading read operations from the primary database instance. When you have a read-heavy workload, such as applications that require frequent querying of data, using Read Replicas allows these read requests to be distributed across multiple database instances. This separation helps reduce the load on the primary instance, thereby enhancing its performance for write operations and overall responsiveness.

By directing read traffic to Read Replicas, you can scale out the reading capabilities of your database architecture effectively without impacting the performance of write operations that typically occur on the primary database. Although Read Replicas offer benefits that can contribute to high availability and performance, their primary purpose is to improve the efficiency and speed of read operations by providing additional resources tailored for this specific task.

This design aligns well with common database usage patterns, where read operations can significantly outnumber write operations, making it essential to optimize read performance for applications that rely heavily on data retrieval.