Settings for DB instances

Allocated storage

The amount of storage to allocate for your DB instance (in gibibytes). In some cases, allocating a higher amount of storage for your DB instance than the size of your database can improve I/O performance.

For more information, see Amazon RDS DB instance storage.

CLI option:

--allocated-storage

API parameter:

AllocatedStorage

All

If you choose Oracle multitenant architecture, RDS for Oracle creates a container database (CDB). If you don't choose this option, RDS for Oracle creates a non-CDB. A non-CDB uses the traditional Oracle database architecture. A CDB can contain pluggable databases (PDBs) whereas a non-CDB cannot.

Oracle Database 21c uses the CDB architecture only. Oracle Database 19c can use either the CDB or non-CDB architecture. Releases lower than Oracle Database 19c use the non-CDB architecture only.

For more information, see Overview of RDS for Oracle CDBs.

CLI option:

--engine oracle-ee-cdb (Oracle multitenant)

--engine oracle-se2-cdb (Oracle multitenant)

--engine oracle-ee (traditional)

--engine oracle-se2 (traditional)

API parameter:

Engine

Oracle

These settings are only valid when you choose Oracle multitenant architecture for Architecture settings. Choose either of the following additional settings:

Regardless of which configuration you choose, your CDB contains a single initial PDB. In the multi-tenant configuration, you can create more PDBs later using RDS APIs.

For more information, see Overview of RDS for Oracle CDBs.

CLI option:

--multi-tenant (multi-tenant configuration)

--no-multi-tenant (single-tenant configuration)

API parameter:

MultiTenant

Oracle

Choose Enable auto minor version upgrade to enable your DB instance to receive preferred minor DB engine version upgrades automatically when they become available. This is the default behavior. Amazon RDS performs automatic minor version upgrades in the maintenance window. If you don't choose Enable auto minor version upgrade, your DB instance isn't upgraded automatically when new minor versions become available.

For more information, see Automatically upgrading the minor engine version.

CLI option:

--auto-minor-version-upgrade

--no-auto-minor-version-upgrade

API parameter:

AutoMinorVersionUpgrade

The Availability Zone for your DB instance. Use the default value of No Preference unless you want to specify an Availability Zone.

For more information, see Regions, Availability Zones, and Local Zones.

CLI option:

--availability-zone

API parameter:

AvailabilityZone

Amazon KMS key

Only available if Encryption is set to Enable encryption. Choose the Amazon KMS key to use for encrypting this DB instance. For more information, see Encrypting Amazon RDS resources.

CLI option:

--kms-key-id

API parameter:

KmsKeyId

Enter a name for an Amazon License Manager license configuration. The name must be 100 characters or less, and only include a-z, A-Z, and 0-9.

For more information, see Integrating with Amazon License Manager.

CLI option:

For more information, see Amazon License Manager CLI.

API parameter:

For more information, see Amazon License Manager API.

Choose Enable replication in another Amazon Region to create backups in an additional Region for disaster recovery.

Then choose the Destination Region for the additional backups.

Not available when creating a DB instance. For information on enabling cross-Region backups using the Amazon CLI or RDS API, see Enabling cross-Region automated backups for Amazon RDS.

Oracle

PostgreSQL

SQL Server

The number of days that you want automatic backups of your DB instance to be retained. For any nontrivial DB instance, set this value to 1 or greater.

For more information, see Introduction to backups.

CLI option:

--backup-retention-period

API parameter:

BackupRetentionPeriod

Choose Amazon Web Services Cloud to store automated backups and manual snapshots in the parent Amazon Region. Choose Outposts (on-premises) to store them locally on your Outpost.

This option setting applies only to RDS on Outposts. For more information, see Creating DB instances for Amazon RDS on Amazon Outposts.

CLI option:

--backup-target

API parameter:

BackupTarget

The time period during which Amazon RDS automatically takes a backup of your DB instance. Unless you have a specific time that you want to have your database backed up, use the default of No Preference.

For more information, see Introduction to backups.

CLI option:

--preferred-backup-window

API parameter:

PreferredBackupWindow

Certificate authority

The certificate authority (CA) for the server certificate used by the DB instance.

For more information, see Using SSL/TLS to encrypt a connection to a DB instance or cluster.

CLI option:

--ca-certificate-identifier

RDS API parameter:

CACertificateIdentifier

All

The character set for your DB instance. The default value of AL32UTF8 for the DB character set is for the Unicode 5.0 UTF-8 Universal character set. You can't change the DB character set after you create the DB instance.

In a single-tenant configuration, a non-default DB character set affects only the PDB, not the CDB. For more information, see Single-tenant configuration of the CDB architecture.

The DB character set is different from the national character set, which is called the NCHAR character set. Unlike the DB character set, the NCHAR character set specifies the encoding for NCHAR data types (NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, and NCLOB) columns without affecting database metadata.

For more information, see RDS for Oracle character sets.

CLI option:

--character-set-name

API parameter:

CharacterSetName

A server-level collation for your DB instance.

For more information, see Server-level collation for Microsoft SQL Server.

CLI option:

--character-set-name

API parameter:

CharacterSetName

This option copies any DB instance tags to a DB snapshot when you create a snapshot.

For more information, see Tagging Amazon RDS resources.

CLI option:

--copy-tags-to-snapshot

--no-copy-tags-to-snapshot

RDS API parameter:

CopyTagsToSnapshot

The database authentication option that you want to use.

Choose Password authentication to authenticate database users with database passwords only.

Choose Password and IAM DB authentication to authenticate database users with database passwords and user credentials through users and roles. For more information, see IAM database authentication for MariaDB, MySQL, and PostgreSQL. This option is only supported for MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Choose Password and Kerberos authentication to authenticate database users with database passwords and Kerberos authentication through an Amazon Managed Microsoft AD created with Amazon Directory Service. Next, choose the directory or choose Create a new Directory.

For more information, see one of the following:

IAM:

CLI option:

--enable-iam-database-authentication

--no-enable-iam-database-authentication

RDS API parameter:

EnableIAMDatabaseAuthentication

Kerberos:

CLI option:

--domain

--domain-iam-role-name

RDS API parameter:

Domain

DomainIAMRoleName

Varies by authentication type

Choose Amazon RDS if you don't need to customize your environment.

Choose Amazon RDS Custom if you want to customize the database, OS, and infrastructure. For more information, see Working with Amazon RDS Custom.

For the CLI and API, you specify the database engine type.

Oracle

SQL Server

The port that you want to access the DB instance through. The default port is shown.

CLI option:

--port

RDS API parameter:

Port

The version of database engine that you want to use.

CLI option:

--engine-version

RDS API parameter:

EngineVersion

The configuration for your DB instance. For example, a db.t3.small DB instance class has 2 GiB memory, 2 vCPUs, 1 virtual core, a variable ECU, and a moderate I/O capacity.

If possible, choose a DB instance class large enough that a typical query working set can be held in memory. When working sets are held in memory, the system can avoid writing to disk, which improves performance. For more information, see DB instance classes.

In RDS for Oracle, you can select Include additional memory configurations. These configurations are optimized for a high ratio of memory to vCPU. For example, db.r5.6xlarge.tpc2.mem4x is a db.r5.8x DB instance that has 2 threads per core (tpc2) and 4x the memory of a standard db.r5.6xlarge DB instance. For more information, see RDS for Oracle DB instance classes.

CLI option:

--db-instance-class

RDS API parameter:

DBInstanceClass

The name for your DB instance. Name your DB instances in the same way that you name your on-premises servers. Your DB instance identifier can contain up to 63 alphanumeric characters, and must be unique for your account in the Amazon Region you chose.

CLI option:

--db-instance-identifier

RDS API parameter:

DBInstanceIdentifier

A parameter group for your DB instance. You can choose the default parameter group, or you can create a custom parameter group.

If you are using the BYOL model for RDS for Db2, before creating a DB instance, you must first create a custom parameter group that contains your IBM Site ID and IBM Customer ID. For more information, see Bring Your Own License for Db2.

For more information, see Parameter groups for Amazon RDS.

CLI option:

--db-parameter-group-name

RDS API parameter:

DBParameterGroupName

The DB subnet group you want to use for the DB cluster.

Choose Automatic setup to let RDS select a compatible DB subnet group. If none exist, RDS creates a new subnet group for your cluster.

For more information, see Working with DB subnet groups.

CLI option:

--db-subnet-group-name

RDS API parameter:

DBSubnetGroupName

Use a dedicated log volume (DLV) to store database transaction logs on a storage volume that's separate from the volume containing the database tables.

For more information, see Using a dedicated log volume (DLV).

CLI option:

--dedicated-log-volume

RDS API parameter:

DedicatedLogVolume

Enable deletion protection to prevent your DB instance from being deleted. If you create a production DB instance with the Amazon Web Services Management Console, deletion protection is enabled by default.

For more information, see Deleting a DB instance.

CLI option:

--deletion-protection

--no-deletion-protection

RDS API parameter:

DeletionProtection

Enable Encryption to enable encryption at rest for this DB instance.

For more information, see Encrypting Amazon RDS resources.

CLI option:

--storage-encrypted

--no-storage-encrypted

RDS API parameter:

StorageEncrypted

Enable enhanced monitoring to enable gathering metrics in real time for the operating system that your DB instance runs on.

For more information, see Monitoring OS metrics with Enhanced Monitoring.

CLI options:

--monitoring-interval

--monitoring-role-arn

RDS API parameters:

MonitoringInterval

MonitoringRoleArn

Choose the database engine to be used for this DB instance.

CLI option:

--engine

RDS API parameter:

Engine

The name for the database on your DB instance. If you don't provide a name, Amazon RDS doesn't create a database on the DB instance (except for Oracle and PostgreSQL). The name can't be a word reserved by the database engine, and has other constraints depending on the DB engine.

Db2:

MariaDB and MySQL:

Oracle:

PostgreSQL:

CLI option:

--db-name

RDS API parameter:

DBName

Valid values for the license model:

CLI option:

--license-model

RDS API parameter:

LicenseModel

All

Log exports

The types of database log files to publish to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

For more information, see Publishing database logs to Amazon CloudWatch Logs.

CLI option:

--enable-cloudwatch-logs-exports

RDS API parameter:

EnableCloudwatchLogsExports

All

The 30-minute window in which pending modifications to your DB instance are applied. If the time period doesn't matter, choose No Preference.

For more information, see The Amazon RDS maintenance window.

CLI option:

--preferred-maintenance-window

RDS API parameter:

PreferredMaintenanceWindow

Select Manage master credentials in Amazon Secrets Manager to manage the master user password in a secret in Secrets Manager.

Optionally, choose a KMS key to use to protect the secret. Choose from the KMS keys in your account, or enter the key from a different account.

For more information, see Password management with Amazon RDS and Amazon Secrets Manager.

CLI option:

--manage-master-user-password | --no-manage-master-user-password

--master-user-secret-kms-key-id

RDS API parameter:

ManageMasterUserPassword

MasterUserSecretKmsKeyId

The password for your master user account. The password has the following number of printable ASCII characters (excluding /, ", a space, and @) depending on the DB engine:

CLI option:

--master-user-password

RDS API parameter:

MasterUserPassword

The name that you use as the master username to log in to your DB instance with all database privileges. Note the following naming restrictions:

You can't change the master username after you create the DB instance.

For Db2, we recommend that you use the same master username as your self-managed Db2 instance name.

For more information on privileges granted to the master user, see Master user account privileges.

CLI option:

--master-username

RDS API parameter:

MasterUsername

Enable Microsoft SQL Server Windows authentication, then Browse Directory to choose the directory where you want to allow authorized domain users to authenticate with this SQL Server instance using Windows Authentication.

CLI options:

--domain

--domain-iam-role-name

RDS API parameters:

Domain

DomainIAMRoleName

SQL Server

Create a standby instance to create a passive secondary replica of your DB instance in another Availability Zone for failover support. We recommend Multi-AZ for production workloads to maintain high availability.

For development and testing, you can choose Do not create a standby instance.

For more information, see Configuring and managing a Multi-AZ deployment for Amazon RDS.

CLI option:

--multi-az

--no-multi-az

RDS API parameter:

MultiAZ

The national character set for your DB instance, commonly called the NCHAR character set. You can set the national character set to either AL16UTF16 (default) or UTF-8. You can't change the national character set after you create the DB instance.

The national character set is different from the DB character set. Unlike the DB character set, the national character set specifies the encoding only for NCHAR data types (NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, and NCLOB) columns without affecting database metadata.

For more information, see RDS for Oracle character sets.

CLI option:

--nchar-character-set-name

API parameter:

NcharCharacterSetName

The IP addressing protocols supported by the DB instance.

IPv4 (the default) to specify that resources can communicate with the DB instance only over the Internet Protocol version 4 (IPv4) addressing protocol.

Dual-stack mode to specify that resources can communicate with the DB instance over IPv4, Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6), or both. Use dual-stack mode if you have any resources that must communicate with your DB instance over the IPv6 addressing protocol. Also, make sure that you associate an IPv6 CIDR block with all subnets in the DB subnet group that you specify.

For more information, see Amazon RDS IP addressing.

CLI option:

--network-type

RDS API parameter:

NetworkType

All

An option group for your DB instance. You can choose the default option group or you can create a custom option group.

For more information, see Working with option groups.

CLI option:

--option-group-name

RDS API parameter:

OptionGroupName

All

Enable Performance Insights to monitor your DB instance load so that you can analyze and troubleshoot your database performance.

Choose a retention period to determine how much Performance Insights data history to keep. 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.

Choose a KMS key to use to protect the key used to encrypt this database volume. Choose from the KMS keys in your account, or enter the key from a different account.

For more information, see Monitoring DB load with Performance Insights on Amazon RDS.

CLI options:

--enable-performance-insights

--no-enable-performance-insights

--performance-insights-retention-period

--performance-insights-kms-key-id

RDS API parameters:

EnablePerformanceInsights

PerformanceInsightsRetentionPeriod

PerformanceInsightsKMSKeyId

Provisioned IOPS

The Provisioned IOPS (I/O operations per second) value for the DB instance. This setting is available only if you choose one of the following for Storage type:

For more information, see Amazon RDS DB instance storage.

CLI option:

--iops

RDS API parameter:

Iops

All

Yes to give the DB instance a public IP address, meaning that it's accessible outside the VPC. To be publicly accessible, the DB instance also has to be in a public subnet in the VPC.

No to make the DB instance accessible only from inside the VPC.

For more information, see Hiding a DB instance in a VPC from the internet.

To connect to a DB instance from outside of its VPC, the DB instance must be publicly accessible. Also, access must be granted using the inbound rules of the DB instance's security group. In addition, other requirements must be met. For more information, see Can't connect to Amazon RDS DB instance.

If your DB instance isn't publicly accessible, use an Amazon Site-to-Site VPN connection or an Amazon Direct Connect connection to access it from a private network. For more information, see Internetwork traffic privacy.

CLI option:

--publicly-accessible

--no-publicly-accessible

RDS API parameter:

PubliclyAccessible

Select Enable RDS Extended Support to allow supported major engine versions to continue running past the RDS end of standard support date.

When you create a DB instance, Amazon RDS defaults to RDS Extended Support. To prevent the creation of a new DB instance after the RDS end of standard support date and to avoid charges for RDS Extended Support, disable this setting. Your existing DB instances won't incur charges until the RDS Extended Support pricing start date.

For more information, see Amazon RDS Extended Support with Amazon RDS.

CLI option:

--engine-lifecycle-support

RDS API parameter:

EngineLifecycleSupport

MySQL

PostgreSQL

RDS Proxy

Choose Create an RDS Proxy to create a proxy for your DB instance. Amazon RDS automatically creates an IAM role and a Secrets Manager secret for the proxy.

For more information, see Using Amazon RDS Proxy.

Not available when creating a DB instance.

MariaDB

MySQL

PostgreSQL

Enable storage autoscaling to enable Amazon RDS to automatically increase storage when needed to avoid having your DB instance run out of storage space.

Use Maximum storage threshold to set the upper limit for Amazon RDS to automatically increase storage for your DB instance. The default is 1,000 GiB.

For more information, see Managing capacity automatically with Amazon RDS storage autoscaling.

CLI option:

--max-allocated-storage

RDS API parameter:

MaxAllocatedStorage

Storage throughput

The storage throughput value for the DB instance. This setting is available only if you choose General purpose SSD (gp3) for Storage type.

For more information, see gp3 storage (recommended).

CLI option:

--storage-throughput

RDS API parameter:

StorageThroughput

The storage type for your DB instance.

If you choose General Purpose SSD (gp3), you can provision additional provisioned IOPS and storage throughput under Advanced settings.

If you choose Provisioned IOPS SSD (io1) or Provisioned IOPS SSD (io2), enter the Provisioned IOPS value.

For more information, see Amazon RDS storage types.

CLI option:

--storage-type

RDS API parameter:

StorageType

A DB subnet group to associate with this DB instance.

For more information, see Working with DB subnet groups.

CLI option:

--db-subnet-group-name

RDS API parameter:

DBSubnetGroupName

The name of your initial PDB in the multi-tenant configuration of the Oracle architecture. This setting is available only if you choose Multi-tenant configuration for Architecture configuration.

The tenant database name must differ from the name of your CDB, which is named RDSCDB. You can't change the CDB name.

CLI option:

--db-name

RDS API parameter:

DBName

Oracle

The name that you use as the master username to log in to your tenant database (PDB) with all database privileges. This setting is available only if you choose Multi-tenant configuration for Architecture configuration.

Note the following naming restrictions:

You can't do the following:

CLI option:

--master-username

RDS API parameter:

MasterUsername

Oracle

The password for the master user account of your tenant database (PDB). This setting is available only if you choose Multi-tenant configuration for Architecture configuration.

The password has 8–30 printable ASCII characters, excluding /, ", a space, and @.

CLI option:

--master-password

RDS API parameter:

MasterPassword

Oracle

The character set of the initial tenant database. This setting is available only if you choose Multi-tenant configuration for Architecture configuration. Only RDS for Oracle CDB instances are supported.

The default value of AL32UTF8 for the tenant database character set is for the Unicode 5.0 UTF-8 Universal character set. You can choose a tenant database character set that is different from the character set of the CDB.

For more information, see RDS for Oracle character sets.

CLI option:

--character-set-name

RDS API parameter:

CharacterSetName

Oracle

The national character set for your tenant database, commonly called the NCHAR character set. This setting is available only if you choose Multi-tenant configuration for Architecture configuration. Only RDS for Oracle CDB instances are supported.

You can set the national character set to either AL16UTF16 (default) or UTF-8. You can't change the national character set after you create the tenant database.

The tenant database national character set is different from the tenant database character set. The national character set specifies the encoding only for columns that use the NCHAR data type (NCHAR, NVARCHAR2, and NCLOB) and doesn't affect database metadata.

For more information, see RDS for Oracle character sets.

CLI option:

--nchar-character-set-name

API parameter:

NcharCharacterSetName

Oracle

The time zone for your DB instance. If you don't choose a time zone, your DB instance uses the default time zone. You can't change the time zone after the DB instance is created.

For more information, see Local time zone for Amazon RDS for Db2 DB instances and Local time zone for Microsoft SQL Server DB instances.

CLI option:

--timezone

RDS API parameter:

Timezone

Db2

SQL Server

RDS Custom for SQL Server

A VPC based on the Amazon VPC service to associate with this DB instance.

For more information, see Amazon VPC and Amazon RDS.

For the CLI and API, you specify the VPC security group IDs.

The security group to associate with the DB instance.

For more information, see Overview of VPC security groups.

CLI option:

--vpc-security-group-ids

RDS API parameter:

VpcSecurityGroupIds