Managing an Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance - Amazon Relational Database Service
Working with container databases (CDBs) in RDS Custom for OracleWorking with high availability features for RDS Custom for OracleCustomizing your RDS Custom environmentModifying your DB instanceChanging the character set of an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instanceSetting the NLS_LANG value in RDS Custom for OracleSupport for Transparent Data EncryptionTagging RDS Custom for Oracle resourcesDeleting an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance

Managing an Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance

Amazon RDS Custom supports a subset of the usual management tasks for Amazon RDS DB instances. Following, you can find instructions for the supported RDS Custom for Oracle management tasks using the AWS Management Console and the AWS CLI.

Working with container databases (CDBs) in RDS Custom for Oracle

You can either create your RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance with the Oracle multitenant architecture (custom-oracle-ee-cdb or custom-oracle-se2-cdb engine type) or with the traditional non-CDB architecture (custom-oracle-ee or custom-oracle-se2 engine type). When you create a container database (CDB), it contains one pluggable database (PDB) and one PDB seed. You can create additional PDBs manually using Oracle SQL.

PDB and CDB names

When you create an RDS Custom for Oracle CDB instance, you specify a name for the initial PDB. By default, your initial PDB is named ORCL. You can choose a different name.

By default, your CDB is named RDSCDB. You can choose a different name. The CDB name is also the name of your Oracle system identifier (SID), which uniquely identifies the memory and processes that manage your CDB. For more information about the Oracle SID, see Oracle System Identifier (SID) in Oracle Database Concepts.

You can't rename existing PDBs using Amazon RDS APIs. You also can't rename the CDB using the modify-db-instance command.

PDB management

In the RDS Custom for Oracle shared responsibility model, you are responsible for managing PDBs and creating any additional PDBs. RDS Custom doesn't restrict the number of PDBs. You can manually create, modify, and delete PDBs by connecting to the CDB root and running a SQL statement. Create PDBs on an Amazon EBS data volume to prevent the DB instance from going outside the support perimeter.

To modify your CDBs or PDBs, complete the following steps:

  1. Pause automation to prevent interference with RDS Custom actions.

  2. Modify your CDB or PDBs.

  3. Back up any modified PDBs.

  4. Resume RDS Custom automation.

Automatic recovery of the CDB root

RDS Custom keeps the CDB root open in the same way as it keeps a non-CDB open. If the state of the CDB root changes, the monitoring and recovery automation attempts to recover the CDB root to the desired state. You receive RDS event notifications when the root CDB is shut down (RDS-EVENT-0004) or restarted (RDS-EVENT-0006), similar to the non-CDB architecture. RDS Custom attempts to open all PDBs in READ WRITE mode at DB instance startup. If some PDBs can't be opened, RDS Custom publishes the following event: tenant database shutdown.

Working with high availability features for RDS Custom for Oracle

To support replication between RDS Custom for Oracle DB instances, you can configure high availability (HA) with Oracle Data Guard. The primary DB instance automatically synchronizes data to the standby instances. This feature is supported only in Enterprise Edition.

You can configure your high availability environment in the following ways:

  • Configure standby instances in different Availability Zones (AZs) to be resilient to AZ failures.

  • Place your standby databases in mounted or read-only mode.

  • Fail over or switch over from the primary database to a standby database with no data loss.

  • Migrate data by configuring high availability for your on-premises instance, and then failing over or switching over to the RDS Custom standby database.

To learn how to configure high availability, see the whitepaper Build high availability for Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle using read replicas. You can perform the following tasks:

  • Use a virtual private network (VPN) tunnel to encrypt data in transit for your high availability instances. Encryption in transit isn't configured automatically by RDS Custom.

  • Configure Oracle Fast-Failover Observer (FSFO) to monitor your high availability instances.

  • Allow the observer to perform automatic failover when necessary conditions are met.

Customizing your RDS Custom environment

RDS Custom for Oracle includes built-in features that allow you to customize your DB instance environment without pausing automation. For example, you can use RDS APIs to customize your environment as follows:

  • Create and restore DB snapshots to create a clone environment.

  • Create read replicas.

  • Modify storage settings.

  • Change the CEV to apply release updates

For some customizations, such as changing the character set, you can't use the RDS APIs. In these cases, you need to change the environment manually by accessing your Amazon EC2 instance as the root user or logging in to your Oracle database as SYSDBA.

To customize your instance manually, you must pause and resume RDS Custom automation. This pause ensures that your customizations don't interfere with RDS Custom automation. In this way, you avoid breaking the support perimeter, which places the instance in the unsupported-configuration state until you fix the underlying issues. Pausing and resuming are the only supported automation tasks when you modify an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance.

General steps for customizing your RDS Custom environment

To customize your RDS Custom DB instance, complete the following steps:

  1. Pause RDS Custom automation for a specified period using the console or CLI.

  2. Identify your underlying Amazon EC2 instance.

  3. Connect to your underlying Amazon EC2 instance using SSH keys or AWS Systems Manager.

  4. Verify your current configuration settings at the database or operating system layer.

    You can validate your changes by comparing the initial configuration to the changed configuration. Depending on the type of customization, use OS tools or database queries.

  5. Customize your RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance as needed.

  6. Reboot your instance or database, if required.

    Note

    In an on-premises Oracle CDB, you can preserve a specified open mode for PDBs using a built-in command or after a startup trigger. This mechanism brings PDBs to a specified state when the CDB restarts. When opening your CDB, RDS Custom automation discards any user-specified preserved states and attempts to open all PDBs. If RDS Custom can't open all PDBs, the following event is issued: The following PDBs failed to open: list-of-PDBs.

  7. Verify your new configuration settings by comparing them with the previous settings.

  8. Resume RDS Custom automation in either of the following ways:

    • Resume automation manually.

    • Wait for the pause period to end. In this case, RDS Custom resumes monitoring and instance recovery automatically.

  9. Verify the RDS Custom automation framework

    If you followed the preceding steps correctly, RDS Custom starts an automated backup. The status of the instance in the console shows Available.

For best practices and step-by-step instructions, see the AWS blog posts Make configuration changes to an Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle instance: Part 1 and Recreate an Amazon RDS Custom for Oracle database: Part 2.

Pausing and resuming your RDS Custom DB instance

You can pause and resume automation for your DB instance using the console or CLI.

To pause or resume RDS Custom automation

  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 RDS Custom DB instance that you want to modify.

  3. Choose Modify. The Modify DB instance page appears.

  4. For RDS Custom automation mode, choose one of the following options:

    • Paused pauses the monitoring and instance recovery for the RDS Custom DB instance. Enter the pause duration that you want (in minutes) for Automation mode duration. The minimum value is 60 minutes (default). The maximum value is 1,440 minutes.

    • Full automation resumes automation.

  5. Choose Continue to check the summary of modifications.

    A message indicates that RDS Custom will apply the changes immediately.

  6. If your changes are correct, choose Modify DB instance. Or choose Back to edit your changes or Cancel to cancel your changes.

    On the RDS console, the details for the modification appear. If you paused automation, the Status of your RDS Custom DB instance indicates Automation paused.

  7. (Optional) In the navigation pane, choose Databases, and then your RDS Custom DB instance.

    In the Summary pane, RDS Custom automation mode indicates the automation status. If automation is paused, the value is Paused. Automation resumes in num minutes.

To pause or resume RDS Custom automation, use the modify-db-instance AWS CLI command. Identify the DB instance using the required parameter --db-instance-identifier. Control the automation mode with the following parameters:

  • --automation-mode specifies the pause state of the DB instance. Valid values are all-paused, which pauses automation, and full, which resumes it.

  • --resume-full-automation-mode-minutes specifies the duration of the pause. The default value is 60 minutes.

Note

Regardless of whether you specify --no-apply-immediately or --apply-immediately, RDS Custom applies modifications asynchronously as soon as possible.

In the command response, ResumeFullAutomationModeTime indicates the resume time as a UTC timestamp. When the automation mode is all-paused, you can use modify-db-instance to resume automation mode or extend the pause period. No other modify-db-instance options are supported.

The following example pauses automation for my-custom-instance for 90 minutes.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance \
    --automation-mode all-paused \
    --resume-full-automation-mode-minutes 90

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance ^
    --automation-mode all-paused ^
    --resume-full-automation-mode-minutes 90

The following example extends the pause duration for an extra 30 minutes. The 30 minutes is added to the original time shown in ResumeFullAutomationModeTime.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance \
    --automation-mode all-paused \
    --resume-full-automation-mode-minutes 30

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance ^
    --automation-mode all-paused ^
    --resume-full-automation-mode-minutes 30

The following example resumes full automation for my-custom-instance.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance \
    --automation-mode full \

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance ^
    --automation-mode full

In the following partial sample output, the pending AutomationMode value is full.

{
    "DBInstance": {
        "PubliclyAccessible": true,
        "MasterUsername": "admin",
        "MonitoringInterval": 0,
        "LicenseModel": "bring-your-own-license",
        "VpcSecurityGroups": [
            {
                "Status": "active",
                "VpcSecurityGroupId": "0123456789abcdefg"
            }
        ],
        "InstanceCreateTime": "2020-11-07T19:50:06.193Z",
        "CopyTagsToSnapshot": false,
        "OptionGroupMemberships": [
            {
                "Status": "in-sync",
                "OptionGroupName": "default:custom-oracle-ee-19"
            }
        ],
        "PendingModifiedValues": {
            "AutomationMode": "full"
        },
        "Engine": "custom-oracle-ee",
        "MultiAZ": false,
        "DBSecurityGroups": [],
        "DBParameterGroups": [
            {
                "DBParameterGroupName": "default.custom-oracle-ee-19",
                "ParameterApplyStatus": "in-sync"
            }
        ],
        ...
        "ReadReplicaDBInstanceIdentifiers": [],
        "AllocatedStorage": 250,
        "DBInstanceArn": "arn:aws:rds:us-west-2:012345678912:db:my-custom-instance",
        "BackupRetentionPeriod": 3,
        "DBName": "ORCL",
        "PreferredMaintenanceWindow": "fri:10:56-fri:11:26",
        "Endpoint": {
            "HostedZoneId": "ABCDEFGHIJKLMNO",
            "Port": 8200,
            "Address": "my-custom-instance.abcdefghijk.us-west-2.rds.amazonaws.com"
        },
        "DBInstanceStatus": "automation-paused",
        "IAMDatabaseAuthenticationEnabled": false,
        "AutomationMode": "all-paused",
        "EngineVersion": "19.my_cev1",
        "DeletionProtection": false,
        "AvailabilityZone": "us-west-2a",
        "DomainMemberships": [],
        "StorageType": "gp2",
        "DbiResourceId": "db-ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVW",
        "ResumeFullAutomationModeTime": "2020-11-07T20:56:50.565Z",
        "KmsKeyId": "arn:aws:kms:us-west-2:012345678912:key/aa111a11-111a-11a1-1a11-1111a11a1a1a",
        "StorageEncrypted": false,
        "AssociatedRoles": [],
        "DBInstanceClass": "db.m5.xlarge",
        "DbInstancePort": 0,
        "DBInstanceIdentifier": "my-custom-instance",
        "TagList": []
    }

Modifying your RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance

Modifying an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance is similar to modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance. You can change settings such as the following:

Requirements and limitations when modifying your DB instance storage

Consider the following requirements and limitations when you modify the storage for an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance:

  • The minimum allocated storage for RDS Custom for Oracle is 40 GiB, and the maximum is 64 TiB.

  • As with Amazon RDS, you can't decrease the allocated storage. This is a limitation of Amazon EBS volumes.

  • Storage autoscaling isn't supported for RDS Custom DB instances.

  • Any storage volumes that you attach manually to your RDS Custom DB instance are outside the support perimeter.

    For more information, see RDS Custom support perimeter.

  • Magnetic (standard) Amazon EBS storage isn't supported for RDS Custom. You can choose only the io1, gp2, or gp3 SSD storage types.

For more information about Amazon EBS storage, see Amazon RDS DB instance storage. For general information about storage modification, see Working with storage for Amazon RDS DB instances.

Requirements and limitations when modifying your DB instance class

Consider the following requirements and limitations when you modify the instance class for an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance:

  • Your DB instance must be in the available state.

  • Your DB instance must have a minimum of 100 MiB of free space on the root volume, data volume, and binary volume.

  • You can assign only a single elastic IP (EIP) to your RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance when using the default elastic network interface (ENI). If you attach multiple ENIs to your DB instance, the modify operation fails.

  • All RDS Custom for Oracle tags must be present.

  • If you use RDS Custom for Oracle replication, note the following requirements and limitations:

    • For primary DB instances and read replicas, you can change the instance class for only one DB instance at a time.

    • If your RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance has an on-premises primary or replica database, make sure to manually update private IP addresses on the on-premises DB instance after the modification completes. This action is necessary to preserve Oracle DataGuard functionality. RDS Custom for Oracle publishes an event when the modification succeeds.

    • You can't modify your RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance class when the primary or read replica DB instances have FSFO (Fast-Start Failover) configured.

How RDS Custom creates your DB instance when you modify the instance class

When you modify your instance class, RDS Custom creates your DB instance as follows:

  • Creates the Amazon EC2 instance.

  • Creates the root volume from the latest DB snapshot. RDS Custom for Oracle doesn't retain information added to the root volume after the latest DB snapshot.

  • Creates Amazon CloudWatch alarms.

  • Creates an Amazon EC2 SSH key pair if you have deleted the original key pair. Otherwise, RDS Custom for Oracle retains the original key pair.

  • Creates new resources using the tags that are attached to your DB instance when you initiate the modification. RDS Custom doesn't transfer tags to the new resources when they are attached directly to underlying resources.

  • Transfers the binary and data volumes with the most recent modifications to the new DB instance.

  • Transfers the elastic IP address (EIP). If the DB instance is publicly accessible, then RDS Custom temporarily attaches a public IP address to the new DB instance before transferring the EIP. If the DB instance isn't publicly accessible, RDS Custom doesn't create public IP addresses.

Modifying your RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance

You can modify the DB instance class or storage using the console, AWS CLI, or RDS API.

To modify an RDS Custom for Oracle 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.

  3. Choose the DB instance that you want to modify.

  4. Choose Modify.

  5. (Optional) In Instance configuration, choose a value for DB instance class. For supported classes, see DB instance class support for RDS Custom for Oracle.

  6. (Optional) In Storage, make the following changes as needed:

    1. Enter a new value for Allocated storage. It must be greater than the current value, and from 40 GiB–64 TiB.

    2. Change the value for Storage type to General Purpose SSD (gp2), General Purpose SSD (gp3), or Provisioned IOPS (io1).

    3. If you use Provisioned IOPS (io1) or General Purpose SSD (gp3), you can change the Provisioned IOPS value.

  7. (Optional) In Additional configuration, make the following changes as needed:

    1. For Option group, choose a new option group. For more information, see Working with option groups in RDS Custom for Oracle.

  8. Choose Continue.

  9. Choose Apply immediately or Apply during the next scheduled maintenance window.

  10. Choose Modify DB instance.

To modify the storage for an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance, use the modify-db-instance AWS CLI command. Set the following parameters as needed:

  • --db-instance-class – A new instance class. For supported classes, see DB instance class support for RDS Custom for Oracle.

  • --allocated-storage – Amount of storage to be allocated for the DB instance, in gibibytes. It must be greater than the current value, and from 40–65,536 GiB.

  • --storage-type – The storage type: gp2, gp3, or io1.

  • --iops – Provisioned IOPS for the DB instance, if using the io1 or gp3 storage types.

  • --apply-immediately – Use --apply-immediately to apply the storage changes immediately.

    Or use --no-apply-immediately (the default) to apply the changes during the next maintenance window.

The following example changes the DB instance class of my-cfo-instance to db.m5.16xlarge. The command also changes the storage size to 1 TiB, storage type to io1, Provisioned IOPS to 3000, and option group to cfo-ee-19-mt.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier my-cfo-instance \
    --db-instance-class db.m5.16xlarge \
    --storage-type io1 \
    --iops 3000 \
    --allocated-storage 1024 \
    --option-group cfo-ee-19-mt \
    --apply-immediately

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier my-cfo-instance ^
    --db-instance-class db.m5.16xlarge ^
    --storage-type io1 ^
    --iops 3000 ^
    --allocated-storage 1024 ^
    --option-group cfo-ee-19-mt ^
    --apply-immediately

Changing the character set of an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance

RDS Custom for Oracle defaults to the character set US7ASCII. You might want to specify different character sets to meet language or multibyte character requirements. When you use RDS Custom for Oracle, you can pause automation and then change the character set of your database manually.

Changing the character set of an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance has the following requirements:

  • You can only change the character on a newly provisioned RDS Custom instance that has an empty or starter database with no application data. For all other scenarios, change the character set using DMU (Database Migration Assistant for Unicode).

  • You can only change to a character set supported by RDS for Oracle. For more information, see Supported DB character sets.

To change the character set of an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance

  1. Pause RDS Custom automation. For more information, see Pausing and resuming your RDS Custom DB instance.

  2. Log in to your database as a user with SYSDBA privileges.

  3. Restart the database in restricted mode, change the character set, and then restart the database in normal mode.

    Run the following script in your SQL client:

    SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE;
STARTUP RESTRICT;
ALTER DATABASE CHARACTER SET INTERNAL_CONVERT AL32UTF8;
SHUTDOWN IMMEDIATE;
STARTUP;
SELECT VALUE FROM NLS_DATABASE_PARAMETERS WHERE PARAMETER = 'NLS_CHARACTERSET';

    Verify that the output shows the correct character set:

    VALUE
--------
AL32UTF8

  4. Resume RDS Custom automation. For more information, see Pausing and resuming your RDS Custom DB instance.

Setting the NLS_LANG value in RDS Custom for Oracle

A locale is a set of information addressing linguistic and cultural requirements that corresponds to a given language and country. To specify locale behavior for Oracle software, set the NLS_LANG environment variable on your client host. This variable sets the language, territory, and character set used by the client application in a database session.

For RDS Custom for Oracle, you can set only the language in the NLS_LANG variable: the territory and character use defaults. The language is used for Oracle database messages, collation, day names, and month names. Each supported language has a unique name, for example, American, French, or German. If language is not specified, the value defaults to American.

After you create your RDS Custom for Oracle database, you can set NLS_LANG on your client host to a language other than English. To see a list of languages supported by Oracle Database, log in to your RDS Custom for Oracle database and run the following query:

SELECT VALUE FROM V$NLS_VALID_VALUES WHERE PARAMETER='LANGUAGE' ORDER BY VALUE;

You can set NLS_LANG on the host command line. The following example sets the language to German for your client application using the Z shell on Linux.

export NLS_LANG=German

Your application reads the NLS_LANG value when it starts and then communicates it to the database when it connects.

For more information, see Choosing a Locale with the NLS_LANG Environment Variable in the Oracle Database Globalization Support Guide.

Support for Transparent Data Encryption

RDS Custom supports Transparent Data Encryption (TDE) for RDS Custom for Oracle DB instances.

However, you can't enable TDE using an option in a custom option group as you can in RDS for Oracle. You turn on TDE manually. For information about using Oracle Transparent Data Encryption, see Securing stored data using Transparent Data Encryption in the Oracle documentation.

Tagging RDS Custom for Oracle resources

You can tag RDS Custom resources as with Amazon RDS resources, but with some important differences:

  • Don't create or modify the AWSRDSCustom tag that's required for RDS Custom automation. If you do, you might break the automation.

  • The Name tag is added to RDS Custom resources with prefix value of do-not-delete-rds-custom. Any customer-passed value for the key is overwritten.

  • Tags added to RDS Custom DB instances during creation are propagated to all other related RDS Custom resources.

  • Tags aren't propagated when you add them to RDS Custom resources after DB instance creation.

For general information about resource tagging, see Tagging Amazon RDS resources.

Deleting an RDS Custom for Oracle DB instance

To delete an RDS Custom DB instance, do the following:

  • Provide the name of the DB instance.

  • Clear the option to take a final DB snapshot of the DB instance.

  • Choose or clear the option to retain automated backups.

You can delete an RDS Custom DB instance using the console or the CLI. The time required to delete the DB instance can vary depending on the backup retention period (that is, how many backups to delete) and how much data is deleted.

To delete an RDS Custom 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 RDS Custom DB instance that you want to delete. RDS Custom DB instances show the role Instance (RDS Custom).

  3. For Actions, choose Delete.

  4. To retain automated backups, choose Retain automated backups.

  5. Enter delete me in the box.

  6. Choose Delete.

You delete an RDS Custom DB instance by using the delete-db-instance AWS CLI command. Identify the DB instance using the required parameter --db-instance-identifier. The remaining parameters are the same as for an Amazon RDS DB instance, with the following exceptions:

  • --skip-final-snapshot is required.

  • --no-skip-final-snapshot isn't supported.

  • --final-db-snapshot-identifier isn't supported.

The following example deletes the RDS Custom DB instance named my-custom-instance, and retains automated backups.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds delete-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance \
    --skip-final-snapshot \
    --no-delete-automated-backups

For Windows:

aws rds delete-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier my-custom-instance ^
    --skip-final-snapshot ^
    --no-delete-automated-backups