{"id":7104,"date":"2022-12-29T17:12:42","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T17:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rax-stg-wp-aws.com\/blogs\/rds-instance-and-read-replica\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T19:27:51","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T19:27:51","slug":"rds-instance-and-read-replica","status":"publish","type":"blogs","link":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/blogs\/rds-instance-and-read-replica\/","title":{"rendered":"RDS Instance and Read Replica"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>INTRODUCTION<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The blog discusses how to configure Relational Database Service (RDS) instances and their read replica. It also explains how to promote read replicas to a new standalone instance.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Read replica is useful when we have reporting applications that are only using the select command on the database. Read replicas cannot be used for the update or delete operation and these are just used for reporting purposes. However, before getting into the configuration steps, let\u2019s understand RDS a little better.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Amazon RDS: What is RDS?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>As mentioned above, RDS is an acronym for relational database service.<\/li>\n<li>It uses SQL<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Supported Engines: PostgresSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, Aurora<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Launched within a VPC and usually in a private subnet.<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Storage by EBS<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Backup: Automated with point-in-time recovery.<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Can monitor through cloud watch and Configure RDS events.&nbsp;<\/li>\n<li>&#8211;&nbsp;&nbsp; &nbsp;Can take snapshots across regions.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>Now, let\u2019s proceed with the RDS configuration.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Assuming we already have an Amazon account. The next step is to create an RDS instance from the RDS console.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture1_18.png\" alt=\"rds pic 1 \" \/><\/p>\n<p>Once we click on create database button, a user gets redirected to the next screen as shown in the following snapshot.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture2_17.png\" alt=\"rds pic 2 \" \/><\/p>\n<p>We will go with the Standard create and thereafter select the engine type. For this scenario, I have chosen the MySQL engine and version 5.7.40 Also depending on the requirements you can choose a template type. In this example, I have opted for the Free tier option as we are illustrating it for learning purposes only.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture3_17.png\" alt=\"rds pic 3 \" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture4_14.png\" alt=\"rds pic 4\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture5_15.png\" alt=\"rds pic 5\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Once the above steps are completed, you need to provide database and admin credentials.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture6_9.png\" alt=\"rds pic 6 \" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>&nbsp;Now fill in the instance configuration, storage, and connectivity information.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture7_8.png\" alt=\"rds pic 7\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture8_7.png\" alt=\"rds pic 8\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture9_7.png\" alt=\"rds pic 9\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture10_6.png\" alt=\"rds pic 10\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture11_6.png\" alt=\"rds pic 11\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nYou need to fill in the VPC, subnet group, and security group or you can choose the default values as well. In the authentication field, password authentication is used. Also, as we are using the free tier not all options are available for use.<\/p>\n<p>\nNow click on create database and it will take a while to complete the configuration. One can keep refreshing the page to see the progress&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture12_5.png\" alt=\"rds pic 12\" \/><\/p>\n<p>\nOnce the database is successfully created, select only that database for which a read replica needs to be created. It can be created from the action drop-down menu and by selecting \u201cCreate read Replica\u201d.<br \/>\n&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture13_5.png\" alt=\"rds pic 13\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nNow you will see the following screen pop-up to fill out the required information. In my example, I am choosing the default values to keep things simple. The DB identifier field cannot be left blank.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture14_4.png\" alt=\"rds pic 14\" \/><\/p>\n<p>After clicking on the read replica button, you will see the following screen. you can track the progress of the read replica of our RDS instance. Once it is complete, move to the next step and promote the read replica to a standalone database.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture15_1.png\" alt=\"rds pic 15\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;This creates the read replica and can be promoted as a standalone DB as you can see in the following snippet. It will take you to the next screen and just click on the button to create a standalone DB.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture16_0.png\" alt=\"rds pic 16\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<br \/>\nAs your read replica is promoted to a standalone DB it is now available for all the operations like Select\/insert\/update as it is a complete database. Also you will notice that &nbsp;database-1 link and dbreplica are no longer available (as you can see in the previous image), dbreplica is now a separate entity.&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_article_images\/26258-body-Picture17_1.png\" alt=\"rds  pic 17\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Conclusion<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I hope you will find the above steps useful in creating read replica and promote it to read write standalone instance. In the next part, I will discuss backup\/recovery and failover on RDS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RDS Instance and Read replica<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":7106,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","nid":"26258","content_type":"blog","created_by":"10130","authored_on":"2023-11-18T17:12:42+00:00","field_article_industries":"","tag_category":"Technical","field_blog_author_text":"by VInay Kumar, Oracle Database Administrator, Rackspace Technology","seo_description":"Explore RDS instance configuration, read replica setup, and tips for promoting replicas to standalone instances for efficient database management.","field_featured_image":"","insights_image":"\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/blog_technical_images\/26258-insights_image-database-technical-blog-2-insights.jpg","field_partners":"","rxt_platforms":"Amazon Web Services (AWS)","product":"","publisheddate":"2022-12-29T17:12:42","rxt_solutions":"Databases","opengraph_tag":"","x_tag":"","teaser_flag":"Technical Blog","seo_titile":"RDS Instance and Read Replica | Rackspace Technology","field_topics":"","field_slug":"rds-instance-and-read-replica","footnotes":""},"categories":[178],"tags":[204],"class_list":["post-7104","blogs","type-blogs","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-technical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/7104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/blogs"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/7104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8978,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/blogs\/7104\/revisions\/8978"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rackspace.com\/en-gb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}