Amazon linux AMI and Percona server 5.6 don't appear to be compatible right out of the box. MySQL won't start after successful install.
In Perconas docs it does say that it is supported.
Steps to get to the below:
yum install http://www.percona.com/downloads/percona-release/percona-release-0.0-1.x86_64.rpm
yum install Percona-Server-server-56
Which installs the client + shared 56 libraries as well.
Some more accurate logs.
[root@* ec2-user]# mysql
ERROR 2002 (HY000): Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (2)
[root@* ec2-user]# service mysql restart
ERROR! MySQL (Percona Server) PID file could not be found!
Starting MySQL (Percona Server).......... ERROR! The server quit without updating PID file (/var/lib/mysql/ip-172-30-0-92.pid).
On the most recent Amazon Linux AMI, I was able to start the server after running these commands:
yum install 'perl(Data::Dumper)'
yum reinstall Percona-Server-server-56
If the perl-Data-Dumper package is not installed, mysql_install_db fails to run and perform the initial setup.
The Percona-Server-server-56 package should declare a dependency on perl-Data-Dumper, but you can work around that error (and avoid the reinstall) by installing it first.