Starting an Amazon RDS DB instance that was previously stopped - Amazon Relational Database Service

Starting an Amazon RDS DB instance that was previously stopped

This topic explains how to start an Amazon RDS DB instance that was previously stopped, outlining the necessary steps and key considerations for resuming use of the database.

You can stop your Amazon RDS DB instance temporarily to save money. After you stop your DB instance, you can restart it to begin using it again. For more information about stopping a DB instance, see Stopping an Amazon RDS DB instance temporarily.

When you start a DB instance that you previously stopped, the DB instance retains information such as the following:

  • Instance ID

  • Domain Name Server (DNS) endpoint

  • DB parameter group

  • VPC security group

  • DB option group

Amazon RDS bills in one-second increments for database instances and attached storage. There is a 10-minute minimum charge when an instance is started.

To start the instance, the Amazon RDS service performs actions such as the following:

  • Provisioning the underlying Amazon EC2 instance

  • Starting the RDS processes

  • Starting the database engine processes

  • Attaching the EBS storage volumes

  • Enabling Performance Insights if it was previously enabled

  • Recovering the DB instance (recovery occurs even after a normal shutdown)

The time to start your DB instance varies depending on factors such as the instance class, network state, DB engine type, database size, and the database state when the instance was shut down. The startup process can take minutes to hours. We recommend that you consider the variability in startup time when creating your availability plan.

To start 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 navigation pane, choose Databases, and then choose the DB instance that you want to start.

  3. For Actions, choose Start.

To start a DB instance by using the AWS CLI, call the start-db-instance command with the following option:

  • --db-instance-identifier – The name of the DB instance.

Example 
aws rds start-db-instance --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance

To start a DB instance by using the Amazon RDS API, call the StartDBInstance operation with the following parameter:

  • DBInstanceIdentifier – The name of the DB instance.