Turning Performance Insights on and off for Aurora - Amazon Aurora
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Turning Performance Insights on and off for Aurora

You can turn on Performance Insights for your DB cluster or instance within a cluster when you create it. If needed, you can turn it off later by modifying your DB cluster from the console. Turning Performance Insights on and off doesn't cause downtime, a reboot, or a failover.

If you are managing Performance Insights for individual DB instances in a DB cluster and the retention period and Amazon KMS key are set to different values for different instances, your DB cluster is heterogenous with respect to Performance Insights. In such cases, you can't modify the DB cluster to manage Performance Insights at the cluster level.

Note

Performance Schema is an optional performance tool used by Aurora MySQL. If you turn Performance Schema on or off, you need to reboot. If you turn Performance Insights on or off, however, you don't need to reboot. For more information, see Overview of the Performance Schema for Performance Insights on Aurora MySQL.

If you use Performance Insights with Aurora global databases, turn on Performance Insights individually for the DB instances in each Amazon Web Services Region. For details, see Monitoring an Amazon Aurora global database with Amazon RDS Performance Insights.

The Performance Insights agent consumes limited CPU and memory on the DB host. When the DB load is high, the agent limits the performance impact by collecting data less frequently.

Console

In the console, you can turn Performance Insights on or off when you create a DB cluster. Enabling Performance Insights at the cluster level allows you manage Performance Insights settings and options at the cluster level. Cluster level settings apply to all DB instances the cluster.

Note

By deselecting the Enable Performance Insights option, you can manage Performance Insights settings for individual DB instances within the cluster.

Turning Performance Insights on or off when creating a DB cluster

After creating a new DB cluster, turn on Performance Insights by choosing Enable Performance Insights in the Performance Insights section. Enabling Performance Insights at the cluster level applies to all DB instances in the cluster. Deselect the option to turn off Performance Insights at the cluster level. You can later modify Performance Insights for individual DB instances in the cluster.

To create a DB cluster, follow the instructions for your DB engine in Creating an Amazon Aurora DB cluster.

The following screenshot shows the Performance Insights section.

Turn on Performance Insights during DB cluster creation with console.

If you choose Enable Performance Insights, you have the following options:

  • Retention – The amount of time to retain Performance Insights data. The retention setting in the free tier is Default (7 days). To retain your performance data for longer, specify 1–24 months. For more information about retention periods, see Pricing and data retention for Performance Insights.

  • Amazon KMS key – Specify your Amazon KMS key. Performance Insights encrypts all potentially sensitive data using your KMS key. Data is encrypted in flight and at rest. For more information, see Changing an Amazon KMS policy for Performance Insights.

Turning Performance Insights on or off when modifying a DB instance or DB cluster

In the console, you can modify a DB instance in a DB cluster to manage Performance Insights. You can also manage Performance Insights at the DB cluster level.

Note

You can't choose to manage Performance Insights at the cluster level if the cluster is heterogenous with respect to Performance Insights. To manage Performance Insights at the cluster level, change the Performance Insights settings for each instance so they match. You can now choose to manage Performance Insights at the cluster level when you modify your cluster.

To manage Performance Insights for a DB instance or DB cluster using the console

  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/rds/.

  2. Choose Databases.

  3. Choose a DB instance or DB cluster, and choose Modify.

  4. In the Performance Insights section, select Enable Performance Insights or deselect the option to disable Performance Insights.

    Select if you want to enable Performance Insights at cluster or instance level.

    If you choose Enable Performance Insights, you have the following options:

    • Retention – The amount of time to retain Performance Insights data. The retention setting in the free tier is Default (7 days). To retain your performance data for longer, specify 1–24 months. For more information about retention periods, see Pricing and data retention for Performance Insights.

    • Amazon KMS key – Specify your KMS key. Performance Insights encrypts all potentially sensitive data using your KMS key. Data is encrypted in flight and at rest. For more information, see Encrypting Amazon Aurora resources.

    Modify Performance Insights during DB cluster modifying with console.

  5. Choose Continue.

  6. For Scheduling of Modifications, choose Apply immediately. If you choose Apply during the next scheduled maintenance window, your instance ignores this setting and turns on Performance Insights immediately.

  7. Choose Modify instance.

You can't manage Performance Insights for an individual DB instance in a DB cluster that already has Performance Insights managed at the cluster level.

Modify Performance Insights for heterogenous DB cluster.
Amazon CLI

When you use the create-db-instance Amazon CLI command, turn on Performance Insights by specifying --enable-performance-insights. Or turn off Performance Insights by specifying --no-enable-performance-insights.

You can also specify these values using the following Amazon CLI commands:

To manage Performance Insights for a DB cluster using the Amazon CLI

  • Call the modify-db-cluster Amazon CLI command and supply the following values:

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

    • --enable-performance-insights to turn on or --no-enable-performance-insights to turn off

    The following example turns on Performance Insights for sample-db-cluster.

    For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

    aws rds modify-db-cluster \
    --db-cluster-identifier sample-db-instance \
    --enable-performance-insights

    For Windows:

    aws rds modify-db-cluster ^
    --db-cluster-identifier sample-db-instance ^
    --enable-performance-insights
To manage Performance Insights for a DB instance in your DB cluster using the Amazon CLI

  • Call the modify-db-instance Amazon CLI command and supply the following values:

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

    • --enable-performance-insights to turn on or --no-enable-performance-insights to turn off

    The following example turns on Performance Insights for sample-db-instance.

    For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

    aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier sample-db-instance \
    --enable-performance-insights

    For Windows:

    aws rds modify-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier sample-db-instance ^
    --enable-performance-insights

When you turn on Performance Insights in the CLI, you can optionally specify the number of days to retain Performance Insights data with the --performance-insights-retention-period option. You can specify 7, month * 31 (where month is a number from 1–23), or 731. For example, if you want to retain your performance data for 3 months, specify 93, which is 3 * 31. The default is 7 days. For more information about retention periods, see Pricing and data retention for Performance Insights.

The following example turns on Performance Insights for sample-db-cluster and specifies that Performance Insights data is retained for 93 days (3 months).

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds modify-db-cluster \
    --db-cluster-identifier sample-db-instance \
    --enable-performance-insights \
    --performance-insights-retention-period 93

For Windows:

aws rds modify-db-cluster ^
    --db-cluster-identifier sample-db-instance ^
    --enable-performance-insights ^
    --performance-insights-retention-period 93

If you specify a retention period such as 94 days, which isn't a valid value, RDS issues an error.

An error occurred (InvalidParameterValue) when calling the CreateDBInstance operation: 
Invalid Performance Insights retention period. Valid values are: [7, 31, 62, 93, 124, 155, 186, 217, 
248, 279, 310, 341, 372, 403, 434, 465, 496, 527, 558, 589, 620, 651, 682, 713, 731]
Note

You can only toggle Performance Insights for an instance in a DB cluster where Performance Insights is not managed at the cluster level.

RDS API

When you create a new DB instance in your DB cluster using the CreateDBInstance operation Amazon RDS API operation, turn on Performance Insights by setting EnablePerformanceInsights to True. To turn off Performance Insights, set EnablePerformanceInsights to False.

You can also specify the EnablePerformanceInsights value using the following API operations:

When you turn on Performance Insights, you can optionally specify the amount of time, in days, to retain Performance Insights data with the PerformanceInsightsRetentionPeriod parameter. You can specify 7, month * 31 (where month is a number from 1–23), or 731. For example, if you want to retain your performance data for 3 months, specify 93, which is 3 * 31. The default is 7 days. For more information about retention periods, see Pricing and data retention for Performance Insights.