Just How "Global" is Amazon Aurora?

Amazon Aurora is a cloud-based relational database engine that combines the speed and reliability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. However, it may not be considered as a truly "global" database due to its limitations in global availability, performance, and consistency. Amazon Aurora's architecture is decades old and was not designed to support scalable inter-regional operation. It relies on a single write node for all global writes and can only extend read replicas to one other region. Additionally, it does not offer serializable isolation, low latency, and non-zero RTO. A true global database should focus on these two challenges: everything will fail, and the speed of light is constrained. CockroachDB was conceived as a global database from the beginning and has a sharp focus on these issues.