Sharing a DB snapshot for Amazon RDS - Amazon Relational Database Service
Sharing a snapshot

Sharing a DB snapshot for Amazon RDS

Using Amazon RDS, you can share a manual DB snapshot in the following ways:

  • Sharing a manual DB snapshot, whether encrypted or unencrypted, enables authorized AWS accounts to copy the snapshot.

  • Sharing an unencrypted manual DB snapshot enables authorized AWS accounts to directly restore a DB instance from the snapshot instead of taking a copy of it and restoring from that. However, you can't restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot that is both shared and encrypted. Instead, you can make a copy of the DB snapshot and restore the DB instance from the copy.

Note

To share an automated DB snapshot, create a manual DB snapshot by copying the automated snapshot, and then share that copy. This process also applies to AWS Backup–generated resources.

For more information on copying a snapshot, see Copying a DB snapshot for Amazon RDS. For more information on restoring a DB instance from a DB snapshot, see Restoring to a DB instance.

You can share a manual snapshot with up to 20 other AWS accounts.

The following limitations apply when sharing manual snapshots with other AWS accounts:

  • When you restore a DB instance from a shared snapshot using the AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) or Amazon RDS API, you must specify the Amazon Resource Name (ARN) of the shared snapshot as the snapshot identifier.

  • You can't share a DB snapshot that uses an option group with permanent or persistent options, except for Oracle DB instances that have the Timezone or OLS option (or both).

    A permanent option can't be removed from an option group. Option groups with persistent options can't be removed from a DB instance once the option group has been assigned to the DB instance.

    The following table lists permanent and persistent options and their related DB engines.

    Option name Persistent Permanent DB engine
    TDE Yes No Microsoft SQL Server Enterprise Edition
    TDE Yes Yes Oracle Enterprise Edition
    Timezone Yes Yes

    Oracle Enterprise Edition

    Oracle Standard Edition

    Oracle Standard Edition One

    Oracle Standard Edition 2

    For Oracle DB instances, you can copy shared DB snapshots that have the Timezone or OLS option (or both). To do so, specify a target option group that includes these options when you copy the DB snapshot. The OLS option is permanent and persistent only for Oracle DB instances running Oracle version 12.2 or higher. For more information about these options, see Oracle time zone and Oracle Label Security.

  • You can't share a snapshot of a Multi-AZ DB cluster.

See the following topics for information about sharing public snapshots, sharing encrypted snapshots, and stopping snapshot sharing.

Topics

Sharing a snapshot

You can share a DB snapshot using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the RDS API.

Using the Amazon RDS console, you can share a manual DB snapshot with up to 20 AWS accounts. You can also use the console to stop sharing a manual snapshot with one or more accounts.

To share a manual DB snapshot by using the Amazon RDS console

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

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Snapshots.

  3. Select the manual snapshot that you want to share.

  4. For Actions, choose Share snapshot.

  5. Choose one of the following options for DB snapshot visibility.

    • If the source is unencrypted, choose Public to permit all AWS accounts to restore a DB instance from your manual DB snapshot, or choose Private to permit only AWS accounts that you specify to restore a DB instance from your manual DB snapshot.

      Warning

      If you set DB snapshot visibility to Public, all AWS accounts can restore a DB instance from your manual DB snapshot and have access to your data. Do not share any manual DB snapshots that contain private information as Public.

      For more information, see Sharing public snapshots for Amazon RDS.

    • If the source is encrypted, DB snapshot visibility is set as Private because encrypted snapshots can't be shared as public.

      Note

      Snapshots that have been encrypted with the default AWS KMS key can't be shared. For information on how to work around this issue, see Sharing encrypted snapshots for Amazon RDS.

  6. For AWS Account ID, enter the AWS account identifier for an account that you want to permit to restore a DB instance from your manual snapshot, and then choose Add. Repeat to include additional AWS account identifiers, up to 20 AWS accounts.

    If you make an error when adding an AWS account identifier to the list of permitted accounts, you can delete it from the list by choosing Delete at the right of the incorrect AWS account identifier.

    Permit AWS accounts to restore a manual DB snapshot

  7. After you have added identifiers for all of the AWS accounts that you want to permit to restore the manual snapshot, choose Save to save your changes.

To share a DB snapshot, use the aws rds modify-db-snapshot-attribute command. Use the --values-to-add parameter to add a list of the IDs for the AWS accounts that are authorized to restore the manual snapshot.

Example of sharing a snapshot with a single account

The following example enables AWS account identifier 123456789012 to restore the DB snapshot named db7-snapshot.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-snapshot-attribute \
--db-snapshot-identifier db7-snapshot \
--attribute-name restore \
--values-to-add 123456789012

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-snapshot-attribute ^
--db-snapshot-identifier db7-snapshot ^
--attribute-name restore ^
--values-to-add 123456789012
Example of sharing a snapshot with multiple accounts

The following example enables two AWS account identifiers, 111122223333 and 444455556666, to restore the DB snapshot named manual-snapshot1.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-snapshot-attribute \
--db-snapshot-identifier manual-snapshot1 \
--attribute-name restore \
--values-to-add {"111122223333","444455556666"}

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-snapshot-attribute ^
--db-snapshot-identifier manual-snapshot1 ^
--attribute-name restore ^
--values-to-add "[\"111122223333\",\"444455556666\"]"
Note

When using the Windows command prompt, you must escape double quotes (") in JSON code by prefixing them with a backslash (\).

To list the AWS accounts enabled to restore a snapshot, use the describe-db-snapshot-attributes AWS CLI command.

You can also share a manual DB snapshot with other AWS accounts by using the Amazon RDS API. To do so, call the ModifyDBSnapshotAttribute operation. Specify restore for AttributeName, and use the ValuesToAdd parameter to add a list of the IDs for the AWS accounts that are authorized to restore the manual snapshot.

To make a manual snapshot public and restorable by all AWS accounts, use the value all. However, take care not to add the all value for any manual snapshots that contain private information that you don't want to be available to all AWS accounts. Also, don't specify all for encrypted snapshots, because making such snapshots public isn't supported.

To list all of the AWS accounts permitted to restore a snapshot, use the DescribeDBSnapshotAttributes API operation.