Creating an Amazon RDS DB instance

The basic building block of Amazon RDS is the DB instance, where you create your databases. You choose the engine-specific characteristics of the DB instance when you create it. You also choose the storage capacity, CPU, memory, and so on, of the AWS instance on which the database server runs.

Important

Before you can create or connect to a DB instance, you must complete the tasks in Setting up for Amazon RDS.

Console

You can create a DB instance by using the AWS Management Console with Easy Create enabled or not enabled. With Easy Create enabled, you specify only the DB engine type, DB instance size, and DB instance identifier. Easy Create uses the default setting for other configuration options. With Easy Create not enabled, you specify more configuration options when you create a database, including ones for availability, security, backups, and maintenance.

Note

In the following procedure, Standard Create is enabled, and Easy Create isn't enabled. This procedure uses Microsoft SQL Server as an example.

For examples that use Easy Create to walk you through creating and connecting to sample DB instances for each engine, see Getting started with Amazon RDS. For an example that uses the original console to create a DB instance, see Original console example.

To create a DB instance

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.

2. In the upper-right corner of the Amazon RDS console, choose the AWS Region in which you want to create the DB instance.

3. In the navigation pane, choose Databases.

4. Choose Create database.

5. In Choose a database creation method, select Standard Create.

6. In Engine options, choose the engine type: MariaDB, Microsoft SQL Server, MySQL, Oracle, or PostgreSQL. Microsoft SQL Server is shown here.

   

7. For Edition, if you're using Oracle or SQL Server choose the DB engine edition that you want to use.

   MySQL has only one option for the edition, and MariaDB and PostgreSQL have none.

8. For Version, choose the engine version.

9. In Templates, choose the template that matches your use case. If you choose Production, the following are preselected in a later step:

   • Multi-AZ failover option

   • Provisioned IOPS storage option

   • Enable deletion protection option

   We recommend these features for any production environment.

   Note

   Template choices vary by edition.

10. To enter your master password, do the following:

    1. In the Settings section, open Credential Settings.

    2. Clear the Auto generate a password check box.

    3. (Optional) Change the Master username value and enter the same password in Master password and Confirm password.

    By default, the new DB instance uses an automatically generated password for the master user.

11. For the remaining sections, specify your DB instance settings. For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

12. Choose Create database.

    If you chose to use an automatically generated password, the View credential details button appears on the Databases page.

    To view the master user name and password for the DB instance, choose View credential details.

    

    To connect to the DB instance as the master user, use the user name and password that appear.

    Important

    You can't view the master user password again. If you don't record it, you might have to change it. If you need to change the master user password after the DB instance is available, modify the DB instance to do so. For more information about modifying a DB instance, see Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance.

13. For Databases, choose the name of the new DB instance.

    On the RDS console, the details for the new DB instance appear. The DB instance has a status of creating until the DB instance is created and ready for use. When the state changes to available, you can connect to the DB instance. Depending on the DB instance class and storage allocated, it can take several minutes for the new instance to be available.

    

AWS CLI

To create a DB instance by using the AWS CLI, call the create-db-instance command with the following parameters. This example uses Microsoft SQL Server.

For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

• --db-instance-identifier

• --db-instance-class

• --db-security-groups

• --db-subnet-group

• --engine

• --master-username

• --master-user-password

• --allocated-storage

• --backup-retention-period

Example

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds create-db-instance 
    --engine sqlserver-se \
    --db-instance-identifier mymsftsqlserver \
    --allocated-storage 250 \
    --db-instance-class db.t3.large \
    --db-security-groups mydbsecuritygroup \
    --db-subnet-group mydbsubnetgroup \
    --master-username masterawsuser \
    --master-user-password masteruserpassword \
    --backup-retention-period 3

For Windows:

aws rds create-db-instance ^
    --engine sqlserver-se ^
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance ^
    --allocated-storage 250 ^
    --db-instance-class db.t3.large ^
    --db-security-groups mydbsecuritygroup ^
    --db-subnet-group mydbsubnetgroup ^
    --master-username masterawsuser ^ 
    --master-user-password masteruserpassword ^
    --backup-retention-period 3

This command produces output similar to the following.

DBINSTANCE  mydbinstance  db.t3.large  sqlserver-se  250  sa  creating  3  ****  n  10.50.2789
SECGROUP  default  active
PARAMGRP  default.sqlserver-se-14  in-sync

RDS API

To create a DB instance by using the Amazon RDS API, call the CreateDBInstance operation with the following parameters. This example uses Microsoft SQL Server.

For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

• AllocatedStorage

• BackupRetentionPeriod

• DBInstanceClass

• DBInstanceIdentifier

• DBSecurityGroups

• DBSubnetGroup

• Engine

• MasterUsername

• MasterUserPassword

Example

https://rds.amazonaws.com/
    ?Action=CreateDBInstance
    &AllocatedStorage=250
    &BackupRetentionPeriod=3
    &DBInstanceClass=db.t3.large
    &DBInstanceIdentifier=mydbinstance
    &DBSecurityGroups.member.1=mysecuritygroup
    &DBSubnetGroup=mydbsubnetgroup
    &Engine=sqlserver-se
    &MasterUserPassword=masteruserpassword
    &MasterUsername=masterawsuser
    &SignatureMethod=HmacSHA256
    &SignatureVersion=4
    &Version=2014-10-31
    &X-Amz-Algorithm=AWS4-HMAC-SHA256
    &X-Amz-Credential=AKIADQKE4SARGYLE/20140305/us-west-1/rds/aws4_request
    &X-Amz-Date=20140305T185838Z
    &X-Amz-SignedHeaders=content-type;host;user-agent;x-amz-content-sha256;x-amz-date
    &X-Amz-Signature=b441901545441d3c7a48f63b5b1522c5b2b37c137500c93c45e209d4b3a064a3

Settings for DB instances

In the following table, you can find details about settings that you choose when you create a DB instance. The table also shows the DB engines for which each setting is supported.

You can create a DB instance using the console, the create-db-instance CLI command, or the CreateDBInstance RDS API operation.

Console setting	Setting description	CLI option and RDS API parameter	Supported DB engines
Allocated storage	The amount of storage to allocate for your DB instance (in gigabytes). In some cases, allocating a higher amount of storage for your DB instance than the size of your database can improve I/O performance. For more information, see Amazon RDS DB instance storage.	CLI option: --allocated-storage API parameter: AllocatedStorage	All
Auto minor version upgrade	Enable auto minor version upgrade to enable your DB instance to receive preferred minor DB engine version upgrades automatically when they become available. Amazon RDS performs automatic minor version upgrades in the maintenance window.	CLI option: --auto-minor-version-upgrade --no-auto-minor-version-upgrade API parameter: AutoMinorVersionUpgrade	All except SQL Server
Availability zone	The Availability Zone for your DB instance. Use the default value of No Preference unless you want to specify an Availability Zone. For more information, see Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones .	CLI option: --availability-zone API parameter: AvailabilityZone	All
Backup retention period	The number of days that you want automatic backups of your DB instance to be retained. For any nontrivial DB instance, set this value to 1 or greater. For more information, see Working with backups.	CLI option: --backup-retention-period API parameter: BackupRetentionPeriod	All
Backup window	The time period during which Amazon RDS automatically takes a backup of your DB instance. Unless you have a specific time that you want to have your database backed up, use the default of No Preference. For more information, see Working with backups.	CLI option: --preferred-backup-window API parameter: PreferredBackupWindow	All
Character set	The character set for your DB instance. The default value of AL32UTF8 for the DB character set is for the Unicode 5.0 UTF-8 Universal character set. You can't change the DB character set after you create the DB instance. The DB character set is different from the national character set, which is called the NCHAR character set. Unlike the DB character set, the NCHAR character set specifies the encoding for NCHAR data types (NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, and NCLOB) columns without affecting database metadata. For more information, see Oracle character sets supported in Amazon RDS.	CLI option: --character-set-name API parameter: CharacterSetName	Oracle
Collation	A server-level collation for your DB instance. For more information, see Server-level collation for Microsoft SQL Server.	CLI option: --character-set-name API parameter: CharacterSetName	SQL Server
Copy tags to snapshots	This option copies any DB instance tags to a DB snapshot when you create a snapshot. For more information, see Tagging Amazon RDS resources.	CLI option: --copy-tags-to-snapshot --no-copy-tags-to-snapshot RDS API parameter: CopyTagsToSnapshot	All
Database port	The port that you want to access the DB instance through. The default port is shown. If you use a DB security group with your DB instance, this port value must be the same one that you provided when creating the DB security group. Note The firewalls at some companies block connections to the default MariaDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL ports. If your company firewall blocks the default port, enter another port for your DB instance.	CLI option: --port RDS API parameter: Port	All
Database authentication	The database authentication option that you want to use. Choose Password authentication to authenticate database users with database passwords only. Choose Password and IAM DB authentication to authenticate database users with database passwords and user credentials through IAM users and roles. For more information, see IAM database authentication for MySQL and PostgreSQL. This option is only supported for MySQL and PostgreSQL. Choose Password and Kerberos authentication to authenticate database users with database passwords and Kerberos authentication through an AWS Managed Microsoft AD created with AWS Directory Service. Next, choose the directory or choose Create a new Directory. For more information, see one of the following: Using Kerberos authentication for MySQL Using Kerberos authentication with Amazon RDS for Oracle Using Kerberos authentication with Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL	IAM: CLI option: --enable-iam-database-authentication --no-enable-iam-database-authentication RDS API parameter: EnableIAMDatabaseAuthentication Kerberos: CLI option: --domain --domain-iam-role-name RDS API parameter: Domain DomainIAMRoleName	MySQL Oracle PostgreSQL
DB engine version	The version of database engine that you want to use.	CLI option: --engine-version RDS API parameter: EngineVersion	All
DB instance class	The configuration for your DB instance. For example, a db.t3.small instance class has 2 GiB memory, 2 vCPUs, 1 virtual core, a variable ECU, and a moderate I/O capacity. If possible, choose an instance class large enough that a typical query working set can be held in memory. When working sets are held in memory the system can avoid writing to disk, which improves performance. For more information, see DB instance classes.	CLI option: --db-instance-class RDS API parameter: DBInstanceClass	All
DB instance identifier	The name for your DB instance. Name your DB instances in the same way that you name your on-premises servers. Your DB instance identifier can contain up to 63 alphanumeric characters, and must be unique for your account in the AWS Region you chose. You can add some intelligence to the name, such as including the AWS Region and DB engine you chose, for example sqlsrvr-instance1.	CLI option: --db-instance-identifier RDS API parameter: DBInstanceIdentifier	All
DB parameter group	A parameter group for your DB instance. You can choose the default parameter group or you can create a custom parameter group. For more information, see Working with DB parameter groups.	CLI option: --db-parameter-group-name RDS API parameter: DBParameterGroupName	All
Deletion protection	Enable deletion protection to prevent your DB instance from being deleted. If you create a production DB instance with the AWS Management Console, deletion protection is enabled by default. For more information, see Deleting a DB instance.	CLI option: --deletion-protection --no-deletion-protection RDS API parameter: DeletionProtection	All
Encryption	Enable Encryption to enable encryption at rest for this DB instance. For more information, see Encrypting Amazon RDS resources.	CLI option: --storage-encrypted --no-storage-encrypted RDS API parameter: StorageEncrypted	All
Enhanced Monitoring	Enable enhanced monitoring to enable gathering metrics in real time for the operating system that your DB instance runs on. For more information, see Enhanced Monitoring.	CLI options: --monitoring-interval --monitoring-role-arn RDS API parameters: MonitoringInterval MonitoringRoleArn	All
Initial database name	The name for the database on your DB instance. If you don't provide a name, Amazon RDS doesn't create a database on the DB instance (except Oracle). The name can't be a word reserved by the database engine, and has other constraints depending on the DB engine. MariaDB and MySQL: It must contain 1–64 alphanumeric characters. Oracle: It must contain 1–8 alphanumeric characters. It can't be NULL. The default value is ORCL. It must begin with a letter. PostgreSQL: It must contain 1–63 alphanumeric characters. It must begin with a letter or an underscore. Subsequent characters can be letters, underscores, or digits (0-9).	CLI option: --db-name RDS API parameter: DBName	All except SQL Server
License	The license model: Choose license-included for Microsoft SQL Server. Choose license-included or bring-your-own-license for Oracle.	CLI option: --license-model RDS API parameter: LicenseModel	SQL Server Oracle
Maintenance window	The 30-minute window in which pending modifications to your DB instance are applied. If the time period doesn't matter, choose No Preference. For more information, see The Amazon RDS maintenance window.	CLI option: --preferred-maintenance-window RDS API parameter: PreferredMaintenanceWindow	All
Master password	The password for your master user account. The password has the following number of printable ASCII characters (excluding /, ", a space, and @) depending on the DB engine: Oracle: 8–30 MariaDB and MySQL: 8–41 SQL Server and PostgreSQL: 8–128	CLI option: --master-user-password RDS API parameter: MasterUserPassword	All
Master username	The name that you use as the master user name to log on to your DB instance with all database privileges. It can contain 1–16 alphanumeric characters and underscores. Its first character must be a letter. It can't be a word reserved by the database engine. For more information on privileges granted to the master user, see the following topics: MariaDB security on Amazon RDS Microsoft SQL Server security MySQL security on Amazon RDS Oracle security Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL versions and extensions	CLI option: --master-username RDS API parameter: MasterUsername	All
Microsoft SQL Server Windows Authentication	Enable Microsoft SQL Server Windows authentication, then Browse Directory to choose the directory where you want to allow authorized domain users to authenticate with this SQL Server instance using Windows Authentication.	CLI options: --domain --domain-iam-role-name RDS API parameters: Domain DomainIAMRoleName	SQL Server
Multi-AZ deployment	Create a standby instance to create a passive secondary replica of your DB instance in another Availability Zone for failover support. We recommend Multi-AZ for production workloads to maintain high availability. For development and testing, you can choose Do not create a standby instance. For more information, see High availability (Multi-AZ) for Amazon RDS.	CLI option: --multi-az --no-multi-az RDS API parameter: MultiAZ	All
National character set (NCHAR)	The national character set for your DB instance, commonly called the NCHAR character set. You can set the national character set to either AL16UTF16 (default) or UTF-8. You can't change the national character set after you create the DB instance. The national character set is different from the DB character set. Unlike the DB character set, the national character set specifies the encoding only for NCHAR data types (NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, and NCLOB) columns without affecting database metadata. For more information, see Oracle character sets supported in Amazon RDS.	CLI option: --nchar-character-set-name API parameter: NcharCharacterSetName	Oracle
Option group	An option group for your DB instance. You can choose the default option group or you can create a custom option group. For more information, see Working with option groups.	CLI option: --option-group-name RDS API parameter: OptionGroupName	All
Performance Insights	Enable Performance Insights to monitor your DB instance load so that you can analyze and troubleshoot your database performance. Choose a retention period to determine how much rolling data history to keep. The default of seven days is in the free tier. Long-term retention (two years) is priced per vCPU per month. Choose a master key to use to protect the key used to encrypt this database volume. Choose from the master keys in your account, or enter the key from a different account. For more information, see Using Amazon RDS Performance Insights.	CLI options: --enable-performance-insights --no-enable-performance-insights --performance-insights-retention-period --performance-insights-kms-key-id RDS API parameters: EnablePerformanceInsights PerformanceInsightsRetentionPeriod PerformanceInsightsKMSKeyId	All
Public access	Publicly accessible to give the DB instance a public IP address, meaning that it's accessible outside the VPC. To be publicly accessible, the DB instance also has to be in a public subnet in the VPC. Not publicly accessible to make the DB instance accessible only from inside the VPC. For more information, see Hiding a DB instance in a VPC from the internet. To connect to a DB instance from outside of its Amazon VPC, the DB instance must be publicly accessible, access must be granted using the inbound rules of the DB instance's security group, and other requirements must be met. For more information, see Can't connect to Amazon RDS DB instance. If your DB instance is isn't publicly accessible, you can also use an AWS Site-to-Site VPN connection or an AWS Direct Connect connection to access it from a private network. For more information, see Internetwork traffic privacy.	CLI option: --publicly-accessible --no-publicly-accessible RDS API parameter: PubliclyAccessible	All
Storage autoscaling	Enable storage autoscaling to enable Amazon RDS to automatically increase storage when needed to avoid having your DB instance run out of storage space. Use Maximum storage threshold to set the upper limit for Amazon RDS to automatically increase storage for your DB instance. The default is 1,000 GiB. For more information, see Managing capacity automatically with Amazon RDS storage autoscaling.	CLI option: --max-allocated-storage RDS API parameter: MaxAllocatedStorage	All
Storage type	The storage type for your DB instance. For more information, see Amazon RDS storage types.	CLI option: --storage-type RDS API parameter: StorageType	All
Subnet group	This setting depends on the platform that you are on. If you are a new customer to AWS, choose default, which is the default DB subnet group that was created for your account. If you are creating a DB instance on the earlier E2-Classic platform, you might want your DB instance in a specific VPC. In this case, choose the DB subnet group that you created for that VPC.	CLI option: --db-subnet-group-name RDS API parameter: DBSubnetGroupName	All
Time zone	The time zone for your DB instance. If you don't choose a time zone, your DB instance uses the default time zone. You can't change the time zone after the DB instance is created. For more information, see Local time zone for Microsoft SQL Server DB instances.	CLI option: --timezone RDS API parameter: Timezone	SQL Server
Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)	This setting depends on the platform that you are on. If you are a new customer to AWS, choose the default VPC shown. If you are creating a DB instance on the earlier E2-Classic platform that doesn't use a VPC, choose Not in VPC. For more information, see Amazon Virtual Private Cloud VPCs and Amazon RDS.	For the CLI and API, you specify the VPC security group IDs.	All
VPC security group	If you are a new customer to AWS, Create new to create a new VPC security group. Otherwise, Choose existing, then choose from security groups that you previously created. When you choose Create new in the RDS console, a new security group is created. This new security group has an inbound rule that allows access to the DB instance from the IP address detected in your browser. For more information, see Working with DB security groups (EC2-Classic platform).	CLI option: --vpc-security-group-ids RDS API parameter: VpcSecurityGroupIds	All

Original console example

You can create a DB instance with the original AWS Management Console. This example uses Microsoft SQL Server.

To launch a SQL Server DB instance

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.

2. In the upper-right corner of the Amazon RDS console, choose the AWS Region in which you want to create the DB instance.

3. In the navigation pane, choose Databases.

   If the navigation pane is closed, choose the menu icon at the top left to open it.

4. Choose Create database to open the Select engine page.

5. Choose the Microsoft SQL Server icon.

   

6. Choose the SQL Server DB engine edition that you want to use. The SQL Server editions that are available vary by AWS Region.

7. For some editions, the Use Case step asks if you are planning to use the DB instance you are creating for production. If you are, choose Production. If you choose Production, the following are all preselected in a later step:

   • Multi-AZ failover option

   • Provisioned IOPS storage option

   • Enable deletion protection option

   We recommend these features for any production environment.

8. Choose Next to continue. The Specify DB Details page appears.

   On the Specify DB Details page, specify your DB instance information. For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

   

9. Choose Next to continue. The Configure Advanced Settings page appears.

   On the Configure Advanced Settings page, provide additional information that Amazon RDS needs to launch the DB instance. For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

   

10. Choose Launch DB Instance.

11. On the final page of the wizard, choose Close.

On the RDS console, the new DB instance appears in the list of DB instances. The DB instance has a status of creating until the DB instance is ready to use. When the state changes to available, you can connect to the DB instance. Depending on the DB instance class and the amount of storage, it can take up to 20 minutes before the new instance is available.