Creating an RDS for SQL Server Developer Edition DB instance

Launching Developer Edition instance on RDS for SQL Server follows a two-step process: first create a CEV with create-custom-db-engine-version, Once your custom engine version is in the available state, you can create Amazon RDS database instances using the CEV.

Key differences for Developer Edition instance creation

Parameter	Developer Edition
--engine	sqlserver-dev-ee (Enterprise Edition capabilities) or sqlserver-dev-se (Standard Edition capabilities, SQL Server 2025 only)
--engine-version	Custom engine version (e.g., 17.00.4045.5.cev-dev-ss2025-cu5)
--license-model	bring-your-own-license

AWS CLI

To create a SQL Server Developer Edition DB instance, use the create-db-instance command with the following parameters:

The following options are required:

• --db-instance-identifier

• --db-instance-class

• --engine – sqlserver-dev-ee (Enterprise Edition capabilities) or sqlserver-dev-se (Standard Edition capabilities, SQL Server 2025 only)

• --region

Examples:

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds create-db-instance \
--db-instance-identifier my-dev-sqlserver \
--db-instance-class db.m6i.xlarge \
--engine sqlserver-dev-ee \
--engine-version 17.00.4045.5.cev-dev-ss2025-cu5 \
--allocated-storage 200 \
--master-username admin \
--master-user-password changeThisPassword \
--license-model bring-your-own-license \
--vpc-security-group-ids sg-xxxxxxxxx \
--db-subnet-group-name my-db-subnet-group \
--backup-retention-period 7 \
--region us-west-2

For Windows:

aws rds create-db-instance ^
--db-instance-identifier my-dev-sqlserver ^
--db-instance-class db.m6i.xlarge ^
--engine sqlserver-dev-ee ^
--engine-version 17.00.4045.5.cev-dev-ss2025-cu5 ^
--allocated-storage 200 ^
--master-username admin ^
--master-user-password master_user_password ^
--license-model bring-your-own-license ^
--vpc-security-group-ids sg-xxxxxxxxx ^
--db-subnet-group-name my-db-subnet-group ^
--backup-retention-period 7 ^
--region us-west-2

Note

For Developer Edition (Standard Edition capabilities), use --engine sqlserver-dev-se with a sqlserver-dev-se CEV version.

Refer to Creating a DB instance to create using the AWS console.