Restoring from a DB snapshot - Amazon Relational Database Service
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Restoring from a DB snapshot

This section shows how to restore from a DB snapshot.

Amazon RDS creates a storage volume snapshot of your DB instance, backing up the entire DB instance and not just individual databases. You can create a new DB instance by restoring from a DB snapshot. You provide the name of the DB snapshot to restore from, and then provide a name for the new DB instance that is created from the restore. You can't restore from a DB snapshot to an existing DB instance; a new DB instance is created when you restore.

You can use the restored DB instance as soon as its status is available. The DB instance continues to load data in the background. This is known as lazy loading.

If you access data that hasn't been loaded yet, the DB instance immediately downloads the requested data from Amazon S3, and then continues loading the rest of the data in the background. For more information, see Amazon EBS snapshots.

To help mitigate the effects of lazy loading on tables to which you require quick access, you can perform operations that involve full-table scans, such as SELECT *. This allows Amazon RDS to download all of the backed-up table data from S3.

You can restore a DB instance and use a different storage type than the source DB snapshot. In this case, the restoration process is slower because of the additional work required to migrate the data to the new storage type. If you restore to or from magnetic storage, the migration process is the slowest. That's because magnetic storage doesn't have the IOPS capability of Provisioned IOPS or General Purpose (SSD) storage.

You can use Amazon CloudFormation to restore a DB instance from a DB instance snapshot. For more information, see AWS::RDS::DBInstance in the Amazon CloudFormation User Guide.

Note

You can't restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot that is both shared and encrypted. Instead, you can make a copy of the DB snapshot and restore the DB instance from the copy. For more information, see Copying a DB snapshot.

For information about restoring a DB instance with an RDS Extended Support version, see Restoring a DB instance or a Multi-AZ DB cluster with Amazon RDS Extended Support.

Parameter group considerations

We recommend that you retain the DB parameter group for any DB snapshots you create, so that you can associate your restored DB instance with the correct parameter group.

The default DB parameter group is associated with the restored instance, unless you choose a different one. No custom parameter settings are available in the default parameter group.

You can specify the parameter group when you restore the DB instance.

For more information about DB parameter groups, see Working with parameter groups.

Security group considerations

When you restore a DB instance, the default virtual private cloud (VPC), DB subnet group, and VPC security group are associated with the restored instance, unless you choose different ones.

  • If you're using the Amazon RDS console, you can specify a custom VPC security group to associate with the instance or create a new VPC security group.

  • If you're using the Amazon CLI, you can specify a custom VPC security group to associate with the instance by including the --vpc-security-group-ids option in the restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshot command.

  • If you're using the Amazon RDS API, you can include the VpcSecurityGroupIds.VpcSecurityGroupId.N parameter in the RestoreDBInstanceFromDBSnapshot action.

As soon as the restore is complete and your new DB instance is available, you can also change the VPC settings by modifying the DB instance. For more information, see Modifying an Amazon RDS DB instance.

Option group considerations

When you restore a DB instance, the default DB option group is associated with the restored DB instance in most cases.

The exception is when the source DB instance is associated with an option group that contains a persistent or permanent option. For example, if the source DB instance uses Oracle Transparent Data Encryption (TDE), the restored DB instance must use an option group that has the TDE option.

If you restore a DB instance into a different VPC, you must do one of the following to assign a DB option group:

  • Assign the default option group for that VPC group to the instance.

  • Assign another option group that is linked to that VPC.

  • Create a new option group and assign it to the DB instance. With persistent or permanent options, such as Oracle TDE, you must create a new option group that includes the persistent or permanent option.

For more information about DB option groups, see Working with option groups.

Resource tagging considerations

When you restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot, RDS checks whether you specify new tags. If yes, the new tags are added to the restored DB instance. If there are no new tags, RDS adds the tags from the source DB instance at the time of snapshot creation to the restored DB instance.

For more information, see Copying tags to DB instance snapshots.

Db2 considerations

With the BYOL model, your RDS for Db2 DB instances must be associated with a custom parameter group that contains your IBM Site ID and your IBM Customer ID. Otherwise, attempts to restore a DB instance from a snapshot will fail. For more information, see Bring Your Own License and rdsadmin.restore_database.

Microsoft SQL Server considerations

When you restore an RDS for Microsoft SQL Server DB snapshot to a new instance, you can always restore to the same edition as your snapshot. In some cases, you can also change the edition of the DB instance. The following limitations apply when you change editions:

  • The DB snapshot must have enough storage allocated for the new edition.

  • Only the following edition changes are supported:

    • From Standard Edition to Enterprise Edition

    • From Web Edition to Standard Edition or Enterprise Edition

    • From Express Edition to Web Edition, Standard Edition, or Enterprise Edition

If you want to change from one edition to a new edition that isn't supported by restoring a snapshot, you can try using the native backup and restore feature. SQL Server verifies whether your database is compatible with the new edition based on what SQL Server features you have enabled on the database. For more information, see Importing and exporting SQL Server databases using native backup and restore.

Oracle Database considerations

When you restore an Oracle database from a DB snapshot, consider the following:

  • Before you restore a DB snapshot, you can upgrade it to a later Oracle database release. For more information, see Upgrading an Oracle DB snapshot.

  • If you restore a snapshot of a CDB instance that uses the single-tenant configuration, you can change the PDB name. You can't change the PDB names when your CDB instance uses the multi-tenant configuration. For more information, see Backing up and restoring a CDB.

  • You can't change the CDB name, which is always RDSCDB. This CDB name is the same for all CDB instances.

  • You can't directly interact with the tenant databases in a DB snapshot. If you restore a snapshot of a CDB instance that uses the multi-tenant configuration, you restore all its tenant databases. You can use describe-db-snapshot-tenant-databases to inspect the tenant databases within a DB snapshot before restoring it.

  • If you use Oracle GoldenGate, always retain the parameter group with the compatible parameter. When you restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot, specify a parameter group that has a matching or greater compatible value.

  • You might choose to rename your database when you restore a DB snapshot. If the total size of online redo log is greater than 20GB, RDS might reset your online redo log size to its default settings of 512MB (4 x 128MB). The smaller size allows the restore operation to complete in a reasonable time. You can re-create the online redo logs later and change the size.

Restoring from a snapshot

You can restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot using the Amazon Web Services Management Console, the Amazon CLI, or the RDS API.

Note

You can't reduce the amount of storage when you restore a DB instance. When you increase the allocated storage, it must be by at least 10 percent. If you try to increase the value by less than 10 percent, you get an error. You can't increase the allocated storage when restoring RDS for SQL Server DB instances.

To restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot
  1. Sign in to the Amazon Web Services Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.amazonaws.cn/rds/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Snapshots.

  3. Choose the DB snapshot that you want to restore from.

  4. For Actions, choose Restore snapshot.

  5. On the Restore snapshot page, for DB instance identifier, enter the name for your restored DB instance.

  6. Specify other settings, such as allocated storage size.

    For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

  7. Choose Restore DB instance.

To restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot, use the Amazon CLI command restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshot.

In this example, you restore from a previously created DB snapshot named mydbsnapshot. You restore to a new DB instance named mynewdbinstance. This example also sets the allocated storage size.

You can specify other settings. For information about each setting, see Settings for DB instances.

Example

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshot \ --db-instance-identifier mynewdbinstance \ --db-snapshot-identifier mydbsnapshot \ --allocated-storage 100

For Windows:

aws rds restore-db-instance-from-db-snapshot ^ --db-instance-identifier mynewdbinstance ^ --db-snapshot-identifier mydbsnapshot ^ --allocated-storage 100

This command returns output similar to the following:

DBINSTANCE mynewdbinstance db.t3.small MySQL 50 sa creating 3 n 8.0.28 general-public-license

To restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot, call the Amazon RDS API function RestoreDBInstanceFromDBSnapshot with the following parameters:

  • DBInstanceIdentifier

  • DBSnapshotIdentifier