Launching a Neptune DB cluster using the AWS Management Console

The easiest way to launch a new Neptune DB cluster is to use an AWS CloudFormation template that creates all the required resources for you, as explained in Create a DB cluster.

If you prefer, you can also use the Neptune console to launch a new DB cluster manually, as explained here.

Before you can access the Neptune console to create a Neptune cluster, create an IAM user with the necessary permissions to do so, as explained in Creating an IAM user with permissions for Neptune.

Then, log into the AWS Management Console as that IAM user and follow the steps below to create a new DB cluster:

To launch a Neptune DB cluster using the console

1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, and open the Amazon Neptune console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/neptune/home.

2. Navigate to the Databases page and choose Create database, which opens the Create database page.

3. Under Engine options, the engine type is neptune, and you can choose a specific engine version or accept the default.

4. Under Settings, enter a name for your new DB cluster or accept the default name that is supplied there. This name is used in the endpoint address of the instance, and must satisfy the following constraints:

   • It must contain from 1 to 63 alphanumeric characters or hyphens.

   • Its first character must be a letter.

   • It cannot end with a hyphen or contain two consecutive hyphens.

   • It must be unique across all DB instances in your AWS account in a given AWS Region.

5. Under Templates, choose either Production or Development and Testing.

6. Under DB instance size, choose an instance size. This will determine the processing and memory capacity of the primary write instance of your new DB cluster.

   If you selected the Production template, you can only choose from among the available memory-optimized classes listed, but if you selected the Development and testing, you can also choose from among the more economical burstable classes (see T3 Burstable Instances for a discussion of burstable classes).

   Note

   Starting with Neptune engine release 1.1.0.0 Neptune no longer supports R4 instance types.

7. Under Availability and durability, you can choose whether or not to enable multi-availability-zone (multi-AZ) deployment. The production template enables multi-AZ deployment by default, whereas the development and testing template does not. If multi-AZ deployment is enabled, Neptune locates read-replica instances that you create in different availability zones (AZs) to improve availability.

8. Under Connectivity, select the virtual private cloud (VPC) that will host your new DB cluster from among the available choices. Here you can choose Create new VPC if you want Neptune to create the VPC for you. You must create an Amazon EC2 instance in this same VPC to access the Neptune instance (for more information, see Every Amazon Neptune DB Cluster resides in an Amazon VPC). Note that you can't change the VPC after the DB cluster has been created.

   If you need to, you can further configure connectivity for your cluster under Additional connectivity configuration:

   1. Under Subnet group, you can choose the Neptune DB subnet group to use for the new DB cluster. If your VPC does not yet have any subnet groups, Neptune creates a DB subnet group for you (see Every Amazon Neptune DB Cluster resides in an Amazon VPC).

   2. Under VPC security groups, choose one or more existing VPC security groups to secure network access to the new DB cluster, or choose Create new if you want Neptune to create one for you, and then supply a name for the new VPC security group (see Create a security group using the VPC console).

   3. Under Database port, enter the TCP/IP port that the database will use for application connections. Neptune uses port number 8182 as the default.

9. Under Notebook configuration, choose Create notebook if you want Neptune to create Jupyter notebooks for you in the Neptune workbench (see Use Neptune graph notebooks to get started quickly and Using the Neptune workbench to host Neptune notebooks). You can then choose how the new notebooks should be configured:

   1. Under Notebook instance type, choose from among the available instance classes for your notebook.

   2. Under Notebook name, enter a name for your notebook.

   3. If you want, you can also enter a description of the notebook under Description - optional.

   4. Under IAM role name, either choose to have Neptune create an IAM role for the notebook, and enter a name for the new role, or choose to select an existing IAM role from among the available roles.

   5. Finally, choose whether your notebook connects to the internet directly or through Amazon SageMaker or through a VPC with a NAT gateway. See Connect a Notebook Instance to Resources in a VPC for more information.

10. Under Tags, you can associate up to 50 tags with your new DB cluster.

11. Under Additional configuration, there are more settings that you can make for your new DB cluster (in many cases, you can skip them and accept default values for now):

    Option	What you can do
    DB instance identifier	You can provide a name for the writer instance of the cluster. If you don't, a default identifier based on the cluster name is used. If you do, specify a name that is unique for all DB instances owned by your AWS account in the current region. The DB instance identifier is case insensitive, but stored as all lower-case.
    DB cluster parameter group	Select a DB cluster parameter group to define the default configuration for all DB instances in the cluster. Unless you choose otherwise, Neptune uses a default DB cluster parameter group. For more information about parameter groups, see Amazon Neptune parameter groups.
    DB parameter group	Select a DB parameter group to define the configuration of the primary DB instance in the cluster. Unless you choose otherwise, Neptune uses a default parameter group. For more information about parameter groups, see Parameter groups.
    IAM DB authentication	If you check Enable IAM DB authentication, all access to your database will be authenticated using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). Important This requires that you sign all requests with AWS Signature Version 4 signing. For more information, see Overview of AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) in Amazon Neptune.
    Failover priority	Choose No preference or a priority tier for failover. If you choose a tier and there is contention within it, the replica that is the same size as the primary instance is selected.
    Backup retention period	Choose the length of time, from 1 to 35 days, that Neptune should retain automatic backups of this DB instance. You can only perform a point-in-time restore (PITR) to a time within the backup retention period.
    Copy tags to snapshots	(Enabled by default) This option causes all tags associated with your DB cluster to be copied to any snapshots of it.
    Enable encryption	(Enabled by default) This option causes the data in your DB cluster to be encrypted at rest. If you do, choose the master key used to protect the key that is used to encrypt this database volume. You can select the default aws/rds key, or choose from master keys in your account, or enter the ARN of a key from a different account. You can create a new master encryption key on the Encryption Keys tab of the IAM console. For more information, see Encrypting Neptune Resources at Rest.
    Audit log	Check this if you want audit logs from your DB cluster published to CloudWatch Logs.
    Enable auto minor version upgrade	(Enabled by default) This option causes your DB cluster to be automatically upgraded to new minor engine versions after they are released. The automatic upgrades occur during the maintenance window for the database. See Using AutoMinorVersionUpgrade.
    Maintenance window	You can select a specific period during which you want pending modifications to your DB cluster to happen, such as a change to a DB instance class or an automatic engine patch. Any such maintenance operations are started and completed within the selected period. If you do not select a period, Neptune assigns a maintenance period arbitrarily.
    Enable deletion protection	(Enabled by default) Deletion protection blocks your DB cluster from being deleted. You must explicitly disable it in order to delete the DB cluster.

12. Choose Create database to launch your new Neptune DB cluster and its primary instance.

    On the Amazon Neptune console, the new DB cluster appears in the list of Databases. The DB cluster has a status of Creating until it is created and ready for use. When the state changes to Available, you can connect to the primary instance for your DB cluster. Depending on the DB instance class and store allocated, it can take several minutes for the new instances to be available.

    To view the newly created cluster, choose the Databases view in the Neptune console.

    Note

    If you delete all Neptune DB instances in a DB cluster using the AWS Management Console, the console automatically deletes the DB cluster itself. If you are using the AWS CLI or SDK, you must delete the DB cluster manually after you delete its last instance.

    Make note of the Cluster endpoint value. You need this to connect to your Neptune DB cluster.