Using Amazon RDS

To create an Amazon RDS DB Instance with .NET

1. Create an Amazon RDS DB Instance. You can create an RDS DB Instance in one of the following ways:

   • Create an RDS DB Instance when you create a new application version. For instructions using the AWS Elastic Beanstalk console, see Creating New Applications.

   • Create an RDS DB Instance when you launch a new environment with an existing application version. For instructions using the AWS Elastic Beanstalk console, see Launching New Environments.

   • If you already deployed an application to AWS Elastic Beanstalk, you can create an RDS DB Instance and attach it to an existing environment. For instructions using the AWS Elastic Beanstalk console, see Step 4: Deploy New Version.

2. Download and install a database driver for your development environment.

3. Establish a database connection in your code using your Amazon RDS DB Instance's connectivity information. You can access your connectivity information using application settings. The following shows how you would connect to the database on an RDS instance.

   NameValueCollection appConfig = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings;
   
   string dbname = appConfig["RDS_DB_NAME"];
   string username = appConfig["RDS_USERNAME"];
   string password = appConfig["RDS_PASSWORD"];
   string hostname = appConfig["RDS_HOSTNAME"];
   string port = appConfig["RDS_PORT"];

   Build your connection string:

   string cs = "server=" + hostname + ";user=" + username + ";database=" + dbname + ";port=" + port + ";password=" + password + ";";

   The following connection string is an example using MySQL.

   "server=mydbinstance.abcdefghijkl.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com;user=sa;database=mydb;port=3306;password=******;";

4. Deploy your updated application to your existing AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment. For information on how to deploy a new application version to an existing environment using the Elastic Beanstalk Console, see Step 4: Deploy New Version. For information on how to deploy your application using Visual Studio, see Develop, Test, and Deploy.

To use an existing Amazon RDS DB Instance and .NET from your AWS Elastic Beanstalk application

1. Create an AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment in one of the following ways:

   • Create a new application with a new environment. For instructions using the Elastic Beanstalk console, see Creating New Applications. For instructions using Visual Studio, see Develop, Test, and Deploy. You do not need to create an RDS DB Instance with this environment because you already have an existing RDS DB Instance.

   • Launch a new environment with an existing application version. For instructions using the Elastic Beanstalk console, see Launching New Environments. You do not need to create an RDS DB Instance with this environment because you already have an existing RDS DB Instance.

2. Configure your Amazon RDS DB Security Group to allow access from the Amazon EC2 security group used by your AWS Elastic Beanstalk application. For instructions on how to find the name of your EC2 security group using the AWS Management Console, see Amazon EC2 Security Groups. For more information, go to the "Authorizing Network Access to an Amazon EC2 Security Group" section of Working with DB Security Groups in the Amazon Relational Database Service User Guide.

3. Download and install a database driver for your development environment.

4. Create a connection string using your Amazon RDS DB Instance's public DNS name, port number, and (optionally) database name and login credentials. The following example shows a connection string that would connect to a database, mydb, on an RDS instance at mydbinstance.abcdefghijkl.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com using port 3306, with the user name "sa" and the password "mypassword".

   string cs = "server=mydbinstance.abcdefghijkl.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com;user=sa;database=mydb;port=3306;password=******;";

5. Deploy your updated application to your existing AWS Elastic Beanstalk environment. For information on how to deploy a new application version to an existing environment using the Elastic Beanstalk Console, see Step 4: Deploy New Version. For information on how to deploy your application using Visual Studio, see Develop, Test, and Deploy.