How to calculate hours month usage on Amazon RDS and Pricing

Question

I never used Amazon EC2 or RDS Service. I am trying to calculate my cost using http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html

I searched a little but could locate answers to some basic things. Can you help me out with this:

1. What does DB Instance mean? 1 Database = 1 Instance or 1 Connection = 1 Instance
2. How to calculate hours/month usage? It should depend on the transfer rates or processing time. Is there a way I can get rough Idea about it?
3. What if I already have my DB Ready and want to upload it directly (it would be few GBs) then how will it be calculated.

I am new to Amazon EC2. Got some idea but not specifically what I am looking for. Can someone help me out here?

Answer 1

1. When you create a database what happens is that you basically create a database instance to store your data, so only they say that one database = one instance but it is not totally different from the normal instance you create as here you cannot SSH into them instead you connect to them using the port number. For example: mysql -h mysql–instance1.123456789012.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com -P 3306 -u mymasteruser -p

2. Standard transfer rates include the data that is being uploaded, where transferring few GB doesn't cost much but you will be paying for it from the moment your instances get created.

3. Hours per month mean that how many hours per month you have your instance active. If you plan to have the instance active 24/7, you may find more cost-effective alternatives. If you run it less often than that, you save money when it's not active. It's billed hourly to your account at the rate specified.