Database optimized ubuntu setup

Hello fellow coders. Currently I'm studying how to use nginx with docker and codeigniter and deploy the entire thing to  Amazon elastic beanstalk.. Pretty much everyone recommends a separate database server which  in amazons case you can pay few bucks more and get a scalable database but that's not fun for me because I want to learn how stuff works in the first place. Obviously the best practice is to setup a new instance and install the database software -in that case Maria db for me -  but is that all you need the do?  What kind of optimization should I make I order to have a production ready database?