Deleting an Aurora DB cluster Deletion protection for Aurora clusters Deleting a stopped Aurora cluster Deleting Aurora MySQL clusters that are read replicas The final snapshot when deleting a cluster Deleting a DB instance from an Aurora DB cluster

Deleting Aurora DB clusters and DB instances

You can delete an Aurora DB cluster when you no longer need it. Deleting the cluster removes the cluster volume containing all your data. Before deleting the cluster, you can save a snapshot of your data. You can restore the snapshot later to create a new cluster containing the same data.

You can also delete DB instances from a cluster while preserving the cluster itself and the data that it contains. Deleting DB instances can help you reduce your charges if the cluster isn't busy, or you don't need the computation capacity of multiple DB instances.

Topics

Deleting an Aurora DB cluster
Deletion protection for Aurora clusters
Deleting a stopped Aurora cluster
Deleting Aurora MySQL clusters that are read replicas
The final snapshot when deleting a cluster
Deleting a DB instance from an Aurora DB cluster

Deleting an Aurora DB cluster

Aurora doesn't provide a single-step method to delete a DB cluster. This design choice is intended to prevent you from accidentally losing data or taking your application offline. Aurora applications are typically mission-critical and require high availability. Thus, Aurora makes it easy to scale the capacity of the cluster up and down by adding and removing DB instances. Removing the DB cluster itself requires you to make a separate deletion.

Use the following general procedure to remove all the DB instances from a cluster and then delete the cluster itself.

Delete any reader instances in the cluster. Use the procedure in Deleting a DB instance from an Aurora DB cluster.

If the cluster has any reader instances, deleting one of the instances only reduces the computation capacity of the cluster. Deleting the reader instances first ensures that the cluster remains available throughout the procedure and doesn't perform unnecessary failover operations.
Delete the writer instance from the cluster. Again, use the procedure in Deleting a DB instance from an Aurora DB cluster.

When you delete the DB instances, the cluster and its associated cluster volume remain even after you delete all the DB instances.
Delete the DB cluster.
- AWS Management Console – Choose the cluster, then choose Delete from the Actions menu. You can choose the following options to preserve the data from the cluster in case you need it later:
  - Create a final snapshot of the cluster volume. The default setting is to create a final snapshot.
  - Retain automated backups. The default setting is not to retain automated backups.
    
    Note
    Automated backups for Aurora Serverless v1 DB clusters aren't retained.
  Aurora also requires you to confirm that you intend to delete the cluster.
- CLI and API – Call the delete-db-cluster CLI command or DeleteDBCluster API operation. You can choose the following options to preserve the data from the cluster in case you need it later:
  - Create a final snapshot of the cluster volume.
  - Retain automated backups.
    
    Note
    Automated backups for Aurora Serverless v1 DB clusters aren't retained.

Topics

Deleting an empty Aurora cluster
Deleting an Aurora cluster with a single DB instance
Deleting an Aurora cluster with multiple DB instances

Deleting an empty Aurora cluster

You can delete an empty DB cluster using the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or Amazon RDS API.

Tip

You can keep a cluster with no DB instances to preserve your data without incurring CPU charges for the cluster. You can quickly start using the cluster again by creating one or more new DB instances for the cluster. You can perform Aurora-specific administrative operations on the cluster while it doesn't have any associated DB instances. You just can't access the data or perform any operations that require connecting to a DB instance.

To delete a DB cluster

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.
In the navigation pane, choose Databases, and then choose the DB cluster that you want to delete.
For Actions, choose Delete.
To create a final DB snapshot for the DB cluster, choose Create final snapshot?. This is the default setting.
If you chose to create a final snapshot, enter the Final snapshot name.
To retain automated backups, choose Retain automated backups. This is not the default setting.
Enter delete me in the box.
Choose Delete.

To delete an empty Aurora DB cluster by using the AWS CLI, call the delete-db-cluster command.

Suppose that the empty cluster deleteme-zero-instances was only used for development and testing and doesn't contain any important data. In that case, you don't need to preserve a snapshot of the cluster volume when you delete the cluster. The following example demonstrates that a cluster doesn't contain any DB instances, and then deletes the empty cluster without creating a final snapshot or retaining automated backups.


$ aws rds describe-db-clusters --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-zero-instances --output text \
  --query '*[].["Cluster:",DBClusterIdentifier,DBClusterMembers[*].["Instance:",DBInstanceIdentifier,IsClusterWriter]]
Cluster:        deleteme-zero-instances

$ aws rds delete-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-zero-instances \
  --skip-final-snapshot \
  --delete-automated-backups
{
  "DBClusterIdentifier": "deleteme-zero-instances",
  "Status": "available",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

To delete an empty Aurora DB cluster by using the Amazon RDS API, call the DeleteDBCluster operation.

Deleting an Aurora cluster with a single DB instance

You can delete the last DB instance, even if the DB cluster has deletion protection enabled. In this case, the DB cluster itself still exists and your data is preserved. You can access the data again by attaching a new DB instance to the cluster.

The following example shows how the delete-db-cluster command doesn't work when the cluster still has any associated DB instances. This cluster has a single writer DB instance. When we examine the DB instances in the cluster, we check the IsClusterWriter attribute of each one. The cluster could have zero or one writer DB instance. A value of true signifies a writer DB instance. A value of false signifies a reader DB instance. The cluster could have zero, one, or many reader DB instances. In this case, we delete the writer DB instance using the delete-db-instance command. As soon as the DB instance goes into deleting state, we can delete the cluster also. For this example also, suppose that the cluster doesn't contain any data worth preserving. Therefore, we don't create a snapshot of the cluster volume or retain automated backups.


$ aws rds delete-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-writer-only --skip-final-snapshot
An error occurred (InvalidDBClusterStateFault) when calling the DeleteDBCluster operation:
  Cluster cannot be deleted, it still contains DB instances in non-deleting state.

$ aws rds describe-db-clusters --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-writer-only \
  --query '*[].[DBClusterIdentifier,Status,DBClusterMembers[*].[DBInstanceIdentifier,IsClusterWriter]]'
[
    [
        "deleteme-writer-only",
        "available",
        [
            [
                "instance-2130",
                true
            ]
        ]
    ]
]

$ aws rds delete-db-instance --db-instance-identifier instance-2130
{
  "DBInstanceIdentifier": "instance-2130",
  "DBInstanceStatus": "deleting",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

$ aws rds delete-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-writer-only \
  --skip-final-snapshot \
  --delete-automated-backups
{
  "DBClusterIdentifier": "deleteme-writer-only",
  "Status": "available",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

Deleting an Aurora cluster with multiple DB instances

If your cluster contains multiple DB instances, typically there is a single writer instance and one or more reader instances. The reader instances help with high availability, by being on standby to take over if the writer instance encounters a problem. You can also use reader instances to scale the cluster up to handle a read-intensive workload without adding overhead to the writer instance.

To delete a cluster with multiple reader DB instances, you delete the reader instances first and then the writer instance. Deleting the writer instance leaves the cluster and its data in place. You delete the cluster through a separate action.

For the procedure to delete an Aurora DB instance, see Deleting a DB instance from an Aurora DB cluster.
For the procedure to delete the writer DB instance in an Aurora cluster, see Deleting an Aurora cluster with a single DB instance.
For the procedure to delete an empty Aurora cluster, see Deleting an empty Aurora cluster.

This CLI example shows how to delete a cluster containing both a writer DB instance and a single reader DB instance. The describe-db-clusters output shows that instance-7384 is the writer instance and instance-1039 is the reader instance. The example deletes the reader instance first, because deleting the writer instance while a reader instance still existed would cause a failover operation. It doesn't make sense to promote the reader instance to a writer if you plan to delete that instance also. Again, suppose that these db.t2.small instances are only used for development and testing, and so the delete operation skips the final snapshot and doesn't retain automated backups..


$ aws rds delete-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-writer-and-reader --skip-final-snapshot

An error occurred (InvalidDBClusterStateFault) when calling the DeleteDBCluster operation:
  Cluster cannot be deleted, it still contains DB instances in non-deleting state.

$ aws rds describe-db-clusters --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-writer-and-reader --output text \
  --query '*[].["Cluster:",DBClusterIdentifier,DBClusterMembers[*].["Instance:",DBInstanceIdentifier,IsClusterWriter]]
Cluster:        deleteme-writer-and-reader
Instance:       instance-1039  False
Instance:       instance-7384   True

$ aws rds delete-db-instance --db-instance-identifier instance-1039
{
  "DBInstanceIdentifier": "instance-1039",
  "DBInstanceStatus": "deleting",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

$ aws rds delete-db-instance --db-instance-identifier instance-7384
{
  "DBInstanceIdentifier": "instance-7384",
  "DBInstanceStatus": "deleting",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

$ aws rds delete-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-writer-and-reader \
  --skip-final-snapshot \
  --delete-automated-backups
{
  "DBClusterIdentifier": "deleteme-writer-and-reader",
  "Status": "available",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

The following example shows how to delete a DB cluster containing a writer DB instance and multiple reader DB instances. It uses concise output from the describe-db-clusters command to get a report of the writer and reader instances. Again, we delete all reader DB instances before deleting the writer DB instance. It doesn't matter what order we delete the reader DB instances in.

Suppose that this cluster with several DB instances does contain data worth preserving. Thus, the delete-db-cluster command in this example includes the --no-skip-final-snapshot and --final-db-snapshot-identifier parameters to specify the details of the snapshot to create. It also includes the --no-delete-automated-backups parameter to retain automated backups.


$ aws rds describe-db-clusters --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-multiple-readers --output text \
  --query '*[].["Cluster:",DBClusterIdentifier,DBClusterMembers[*].["Instance:",DBInstanceIdentifier,IsClusterWriter]]
Cluster:        deleteme-multiple-readers
Instance:       instance-1010   False
Instance:       instance-5410   False
Instance:       instance-9948   False
Instance:       instance-8451   True

$ aws rds delete-db-instance --db-instance-identifier instance-1010
{
  "DBInstanceIdentifier": "instance-1010",
  "DBInstanceStatus": "deleting",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

$ aws rds delete-db-instance --db-instance-identifier instance-5410
{
  "DBInstanceIdentifier": "instance-5410",
  "DBInstanceStatus": "deleting",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

$ aws rds delete-db-instance --db-instance-identifier instance-9948
{
  "DBInstanceIdentifier": "instance-9948",
  "DBInstanceStatus": "deleting",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

$ aws rds delete-db-instance --db-instance-identifier instance-8451
{
  "DBInstanceIdentifier": "instance-8451",
  "DBInstanceStatus": "deleting",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

$ aws rds delete-db-cluster --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-multiple-readers \
  --no-delete-automated-backups \
  --no-skip-final-snapshot \
  --final-db-snapshot-identifier deleteme-multiple-readers-final-snapshot
{
  "DBClusterIdentifier": "deleteme-multiple-readers",
  "Status": "available",
  "Engine": "aurora-mysql"
}

The following example shows how to confirm that Aurora created the requested snapshot. You can request details for the specific snapshot by specifying its identifier deleteme-multiple-readers-final-snapshot. You can also get a report of all snapshots for the cluster that was deleted by specifying the cluster identifier deleteme-multiple-readers. Both of those commands return information about the same snapshot.


$ aws rds describe-db-cluster-snapshots \
  --db-cluster-snapshot-identifier deleteme-multiple-readers-final-snapshot
{
    "DBClusterSnapshots": [
        {
            "AvailabilityZones": [],
            "DBClusterSnapshotIdentifier": "deleteme-multiple-readers-final-snapshot",
            "DBClusterIdentifier": "deleteme-multiple-readers",
            "SnapshotCreateTime": "11T01:40:07.354000+00:00",
            "Engine": "aurora-mysql",
...

$ aws rds describe-db-cluster-snapshots --db-cluster-identifier deleteme-multiple-readers
{
    "DBClusterSnapshots": [
        {
            "AvailabilityZones": [],
            "DBClusterSnapshotIdentifier": "deleteme-multiple-readers-final-snapshot",
            "DBClusterIdentifier": "deleteme-multiple-readers",
            "SnapshotCreateTime": "11T01:40:07.354000+00:00",
            "Engine": "aurora-mysql",
...

Deletion protection for Aurora clusters

You can't delete clusters that have deletion protection enabled. You can delete DB instances within the cluster, but not the cluster itself. That way, the cluster volume containing all your data is safe from accidental deletion. Aurora enforces deletion protection for a DB cluster whether you try to delete the cluster using the console, the AWS CLI, or the RDS API.

Deletion protection is enabled by default when you create a production DB cluster using the AWS Management Console. However, deletion protection is disabled by default if you create a cluster using the AWS CLI or API. Enabling or disabling deletion protection doesn't cause an outage. To be able to delete the cluster, modify the cluster and disable deletion protection. For more information about turning deletion protection on and off, see Modifying the DB cluster by using the console, CLI, and API.

Tip

Even if all the DB instances are deleted, you can access the data by creating a new DB instance in the cluster.

Deleting a stopped Aurora cluster

You can't delete a cluster if it's in the stopped state. In this case, start the cluster before deleting it. For more information, see Starting an Aurora DB cluster.

Deleting Aurora MySQL clusters that are read replicas

For Aurora MySQL, you can't delete a DB instance in a DB cluster if both of the following conditions are true:

The DB cluster is a read replica of another Aurora DB cluster.
The DB instance is the only instance in the DB cluster.

To delete a DB instance in this case, first promote the DB cluster so that it's no longer a read replica. After the promotion completes, you can delete the final DB instance in the DB cluster. For more information, see Replicating Amazon Aurora MySQL DB clusters across AWS Regions.

The final snapshot when deleting a cluster

Throughout this section, the examples show how you can choose whether to take a final snapshot when you delete an Aurora cluster. If you choose to take a final snapshot but the name you specify matches an existing snapshot, the operation stops with an error. In this case, examine the snapshot details to confirm if it represents your current detail or if it is an older snapshot. If the existing snapshot doesn't have the latest data that you want to preserve, rename the snapshot and try again, or specify a different name for the final snapshot parameter.

Deleting a DB instance from an Aurora DB cluster

You can delete a DB instance from an Aurora DB cluster as part of the process of deleting the entire cluster. If your cluster contains a certain number of DB instances, then deleting the cluster requires deleting each of those DB instances. You can also delete one or more reader instances from a cluster while leaving the cluster running. You might do so to reduce compute capacity and associated charges if your cluster isn't busy.

To delete a DB instance, you specify the name of the instance.

You can delete a DB instance using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the RDS API.

Note

When an Aurora Replica is deleted, its instance endpoint is removed immediately, and the Aurora Replica is removed from the reader endpoint. If there are statements running on the Aurora Replica that is being deleted, there is a three-minute grace period. Existing statements can finish during the grace period. When the grace period ends, the Aurora Replica is shut down and deleted.

For Aurora DB clusters, deleting a DB instance doesn't necessarily delete the entire cluster. You can delete a DB instance in an Aurora cluster to reduce compute capacity and associated charges when the cluster isn't busy. For information about the special circumstances for Aurora clusters that have one DB instance or zero DB instances, see Deleting an Aurora cluster with a single DB instance and Deleting an empty Aurora cluster.

Note

You can't delete a DB cluster when deletion protection is enabled for it. For more information, see Deletion protection for Aurora clusters.

You can disable deletion protection by modifying the DB cluster. For more information, see Modifying an Amazon Aurora DB cluster.

To delete a DB instance in a DB cluster

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.
In the navigation pane, choose Databases, and then choose the DB instance that you want to delete.
For Actions, choose Delete.
Enter delete me in the box.
Choose Delete.

To delete a DB instance by using the AWS CLI, call the delete-db-instance command and specify the --db-instance-identifier value.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:


aws rds delete-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance

For Windows:


aws rds delete-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance

To delete a DB instance by using the Amazon RDS API, call the DeleteDBInstance operation and specify the DBInstanceIdentifier parameter.

Note

When the status for a DB instance is deleting, its CA certificate value doesn't appear in the RDS console or in output for AWS CLI commands or RDS API operations. For more information about CA certificates, see Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB cluster.

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