Amazon RDS FAQs

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a managed service that makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud. It provides cost-efficient and resizable capacity, while managing time-consuming database administration tasks, freeing you to focus on your applications and business.

Amazon RDS gives you access to the capabilities of a familiar RDS for PostgreSQL, RDS for MySQL, RDS for MariaDB, RDS for SQL Server, RDS for Oracle, or RDS for Db2 database. This means that the code, applications, and tools you already use today with your existing databases should work seamlessly with Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS can automatically back up your database and keep your database software up to date with the latest version. You benefit from the flexibility of being able to scale the compute resources or storage capacity associated with your relational database instance. In addition, Amazon RDS makes it easy to use replication to enhance database availability, improve data durability, or scale beyond the capacity constraints of a single database instance for read-heavy database workloads. As with all AWS services, there are no upfront investments required, and you pay only for the resources you use.

Amazon Web Services provides a number of database alternatives for developers. Amazon RDS enables you to run a fully managed and fully featured relational database while offloading database administration. Using one of our many relational database AMIs on Amazon EC2 allows you to manage your own relational database in the cloud. There are important differences between these alternatives that may make one more appropriate for your use case. See Cloud Databases with AWS for guidance on which solution is best for you.

Yes, you can run Amazon RDS on premises using Amazon RDS on Outposts. Please see the Amazon RDS on Outposts FAQs for additional information.

Yes, Amazon RDS specialists are available to answer questions and provide support. Contact Us and you’ll hear back from us in one business day to discuss how AWS can help your organization.

You can set up a connection between an EC2 compute instance and a new Amazon RDS database using the Amazon RDS console. On the “Create database” page, select “Connect to an EC2 compute resource” option in the Connectivity Section. When you select this option, Amazon RDS automates the manual networking set up tasks such as creating a VPC, security groups, subnets, and ingress/egress rules to establish a connection between your application and database.

Additionally, you can set up a connection between an existing Amazon RDS database and an EC2 compute instance. To do so, open the RDS console, select an RDS database from the database list page, and choose “Set up EC2 connection” from the "Action" menu dropdown list. Amazon RDS automatically sets up your related network settings to enable a secure connection between the selected EC2 instance and the RDS database.

This connectivity automation improves productivity for new users and application developers. Users can now quickly and seamlessly connect an application or a client using SQL on an EC2 compute instance to an RDS database within minutes.

You can set up a connection between an AWS Lambda function and an Amazon RDS or Amazon Aurora database from the Amazon RDS console. On the RDS console, select an RDS or Aurora database from the database list page, and choose “Set up Lambda connection” from the "Action" menu. Amazon RDS automatically sets up your related network settings to enable a secure connection between the selected Lambda function and the RDS or Aurora database.

We recommend that you use RDS Proxy during this connection set up. You can set up this connection either by using an existing RDS Proxy or using a new RDS Proxy that you can auto create during the connection. This connectivity set up automation can improve productivity for new users and application developers. Users can now quickly and seamlessly connect a serverless application or Lambda function to an RDS or Aurora database within minutes.

You can think of a DB instance as a database environment in the cloud with the compute and storage resources you specify. You can create and delete DB instances, define/refine infrastructure attributes of your DB instance(s), and control access and security via the AWS Management Console, Amazon RDS APIs, and AWS Command Line Interface. You can run one or more DB instances and each DB instance can support one or more databases or database schemas, depending on engine type.

DB instances are simple to create using either the AWS Management Console, Amazon RDS APIs, or AWS Command Line Interface. To launch a DB instance using the AWS Management Console, click "RDS" and then the “Launch DB Instance” button on the Instances tab. From there, you can specify the parameters for your DB instance, including DB engine and version, license model, instance type, storage type and amount, and primary user credentials.

You also have the ability to change your DB instance’s backup retention policy, preferred backup window, and scheduled maintenance window. Alternatively, you can create your DB instance using the CreateDBInstance API or create-db-instance command.

Once your DB instance is available, you can retrieve its endpoint via the DB instance description in the AWS Management Console, DescribeDBInstances API or describe-db-instances command. Using this endpoint, you can construct the connection string required to connect directly with your DB instance using your favorite database tool or programming language. In order to allow network requests to your running DB instance, you will need to authorize access. For a detailed explanation of how to construct your connection string and get started, please refer to our Getting Started Guide.

By default, customers are allowed to have up to a total of 40 Amazon RDS DB instances. Of those 40, up to 10 can be RDS for Oracle or RDS for SQL Server DB instances under the "License Included" model. All 40 can be used for Amazon Aurora, RDS for PostgreSQL, RDS for MySQL, RDS for MariaDB, and RDS for Oracle under the Bring Your Own Licence (BYOL) model. Note that RDS for SQL Server has a limit of up to 100 databases on a single DB instance. To learn more, see the Amazon RDS for SQL Server User Guide.

• RDS for Amazon Aurora: No limit imposed by software
• RDS for MySQL: No limit imposed by software
• RDS for MariaDB: No limit imposed by software
• RDS for Oracle: 1 database per instance; no limit on the number of schemas per database imposed by software
• RDS for SQL Server: Up to 100 databases per instance
• RDS for PostgreSQL: No limit imposed by software
• RDS for Db2: Up to 50 database per instance

The following are a number of ways to import data into Amazon RDS:

• MySQL: mysqldump or mysqlimport utilities
• Oracle: Data Pump, import/export, or SQL Loader
• SQL Server: Import/Export Wizard, full backup files (.bak), or Bulk Copy Program (BCP)
• PostgreSQL: pg_dump

For more information on data import and export, refer to the Data Import Guide for MySQL, the Data Import Guide for Oracle, the Data Import Guide for SQL Server, the Data Import Guide for PostgreSQL, or the Data Import Guide for Db2.

In addition, AWS Database Migration Service can help you securely migrate databases to AWS.

The Amazon RDS maintenance window is your opportunity to control when DB instance modifications, database engine version upgrades, and software patching occurs, in the event they are requested or required. If a maintenance event is scheduled for a given week, it will be initiated during the maintenance window you identify.

Maintenance events that require Amazon RDS to take your DB instance offline are scale compute operations (which generally take only a few minutes from start-to-finish), database engine version upgrades, and required software patching. Required software patching is automatically scheduled only for patches that are security and durability related. Such patching occurs infrequently (typically once every few months) and should seldom require more than a fraction of your maintenance window.

If you do not specify a preferred weekly maintenance window when creating your DB instance, a 30-minute default value is assigned. If you wish to modify when maintenance is performed on your behalf, you can do so by modifying your DB instance in the AWS Management Console, the ModifyDBInstance API, or the modify-db-instance command. Each of your DB instances can have different preferred maintenance windows, if you so choose.

Running your DB instance as a Multi-AZ deployment can further reduce the impact of a maintenance event. Please refer to the Amazon RDS User Guide for more information on maintenance operations.

For production databases, we encourage you to enable Enhanced Monitoring, which provides access to over 50 CPU, memory, file system, and disk I/O metrics. You can enable these features on a per-instance basis and you can choose the granularity (all the way down to 1 second). High levels of CPU utilization can reduce query performance and in this case, you may want to consider scaling your DB instance class. For more information on monitoring your DB instance, refer to the Amazon RDS User Guide.

If you are using RDS for MySQL or MariaDB, you can access the slow query logs for your database to determine if there are slow-running SQL queries and, if so, the performance characteristics of each. You could set the "slow_query_log" DB Parameter and query the mysql.slow_log table to review the slow-running SQL queries. Please refer to the Amazon RDS User Guide to learn more.

If you are using RDS for Oracle, you can use the Oracle trace file data to identify slow queries. For more information on accessing trace file data, please refer to Amazon RDS User Guide. 

If you are using RDS for SQL Server, you can use the client side SQL Server traces to identify slow queries. For information on accessing server side trace file data, please refer to Amazon RDS User Guide.

For the list of supported database engine versions, please refer to the documentation for each engine:

• Amazon Aurora
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
• Amazon RDS for MySQL
• Amazon RDS for MariaDB
• Amazon RDS for SQL Server
• Amazon RDS for Oracle
• Amazon RDS for Db2

Refer to the FAQs page for each Amazon RDS database engine for specifics on version numbering:

• Amazon RDS for MySQL
• Amazon RDS for MariaDB
• Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL
• Amazon RDS for Oracle
• Amazon RDS for SQL Server
• Amazon Aurora
• Amazon RDS for Db2

Over time, Amazon RDS adds support for new major and minor database engine versions. The number of new versions supported will vary based on the frequency and content of releases and patches from the engine’s vendor or development organization and the outcome of a thorough vetting of these releases and patches by our database engineering team. However, as a general guidance, we aim to support new engine versions within 5 months of their general availability.

You can specify any currently supported version (major and minor) when creating a new DB instance via the Launch DB Instance operation in the AWS Management Console or the CreateDBInstance API. Please note that not every database engine version is available in every AWS region.

Amazon RDS strives to keep your database instance up to date by providing you with newer versions of the supported database engines. After a new version of a database engine is released by the vendor or development organization, it is thoroughly tested by our database engineering team before it is made available in Amazon RDS.

We recommend that you keep your database instance upgraded to the most current minor version as it will contain the latest security and functionality fixes. Unlike major version upgrades, minor version upgrades only include database changes that are backward-compatible with previous minor versions (of the same major version) of the database engine. 

If a new minor version does not contain fixes that would benefit Amazon RDS customers, we may choose not to make it available in Amazon RDS. Soon after a new minor version is available in Amazon RDS, we will set it to be the preferred minor version for new DB instances. 

To manually upgrade a database instance to a supported engine version, use the Modify DB Instance command on the AWS Management Console or the ModifyDBInstance API and set the DB Engine Version parameter to the desired version. By default, the upgrade will be applied during your next maintenance window. You can also choose to upgrade immediately by selecting the Apply Immediately option in the console API.

If we determine that a new engine minor version contains significant bug fixes compared to a previously released minor version, we will schedule automatic upgrades for DB instances that have the Auto Minor Version Upgrade setting to “Yes”. These upgrades will be scheduled to occur during customer-specified maintenance windows.

We schedule them so you can plan around them because downtime is required to upgrade a DB engine version, even for Multi-AZ instances. If you wish to turn off automatic minor version upgrades you can do so by setting the Auto Minor Version Upgrade setting to “No”.

In the case of RDS for Oracle and RDS for SQL Server, if the upgrade to the next minor version requires a change to a different edition, then we may not schedule automatic upgrades even if you have enabled the Auto Minor Version Upgrade setting. The determination on whether to schedule automatic upgrades in such situations will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Since major version upgrades involve some compatibility risk, they will not occur automatically and must be initiated by you (except in the case of major version deprecation, see below). For more information about upgrading a DB instance to a new DB engine version, refer to the Amazon RDS User Guide.

Yes. You can do so by creating a DB snapshot of your existing DB instance, restoring from the DB snapshot to create a new DB instance, and then initiating a version upgrade for the new DB instance. You can then experiment safely on the upgraded copy of your DB instance before deciding whether or not to upgrade your original DB instance.

For more information about restoring a DB snapshot, refer to the Amazon RDS User Guide.