Creating a blue/green deployment

RDS copies the blue environment's topology and features to a staging area. If the blue DB instance has read replicas, they are copied as replicas of the green instance. The allocated storage of all green replicas matches the green primary instance, while other storage parameters are inherited from the blue replicas.

When you create a blue/green deployment, you specify the DB cluster to copy in the deployment. The DB cluster you choose is the production DB cluster, and it becomes the DB cluster in the blue environment. RDS copies the blue environment's topology to a staging area, along with its configured features. The DB cluster is copied to the green environment, and RDS configures replication from the DB cluster in the blue environment to the DB cluster in the green environment. RDS also copies all of the DB instances in the DB cluster.

Preparing for a blue/green deployment

There are certain steps you must take before you create a blue/green deployment, depending on the engine that your Aurora DB cluster is running.

Preparing an Aurora MySQL DB cluster for a blue/green deployment

Before you create a blue/green deployment for an Aurora MySQL DB cluster, the cluster must be associated with a custom DB cluster parameter group with binary logging (binlog_format) turned on. Binary logging is required for replication from the blue environment to the green environment. While any binlog format works, we recommend ROW to reduce the risk of replication inconsistencies. For information about creating a custom DB cluster parameter group and setting parameters, see DB cluster parameter groups for Amazon Aurora DB clusters.

After you enable binary logging, make sure to reboot the DB cluster so that your changes take effect. Blue/green deployments require that the writer instance be in sync with the DB cluster parameter group, otherwise creation fails. For more information, see Rebooting a DB instance within an Aurora cluster.

In addition, we recommend changing the binary log retention period to a value other than NULL to prevent binary log files from being purged. For more information, see Setting and showing binary log configuration.

Preparing an Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster for a blue/green deployment

Before you create a blue/green deployment for an Aurora PostgreSQL DB cluster, make sure to do the following.

Specifying changes when creating a blue/green deployment

You can make the following changes to the DB cluster in the green environment when you create the blue/green deployment.

You can make other modifications to the DB cluster and its DB instances in the green environment after it is deployed. For example, you might specify a higher engine version or a different parameter group.

For information about modifying a DB cluster, see Modifying an Amazon Aurora DB cluster.

Specify a higher engine version

You can specify a higher engine version if you want to test a DB engine upgrade. Upon switchover, the database is upgraded to the major or minor DB engine version that you specify.

Specify a different DB parameter group

Specify a DB cluster parameter group that is different from the one used by the DB cluster. You can test how parameter changes affect the DB cluster in the green environment or specify a parameter group for a new major DB engine version in the case of an upgrade.

If you specify a different DB cluster parameter group, the specified parameter group is associated with the DB cluster in the green environment. If you don't specify a different DB cluster parameter group, the DB cluster in the green environment is associated with the same parameter group as the blue DB cluster.

Creating a blue/green deployment

You can create a blue/green deployment using the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the RDS API.

aws rds create-blue-green-deployment \
    --blue-green-deployment-name aurora-blue-green-deployment \
    --source arn:aws:rds:us-east-2:123456789012:cluster:auroradb \
    --target-engine-version 8.0 \
    --target-db-cluster-parameter-group-name mydbclusterparametergroup

aws rds create-blue-green-deployment ^
    --blue-green-deployment-name aurora-blue-green-deployment ^
    --source arn:aws:rds:us-east-2:123456789012:cluster:auroradb ^
    --target-engine-version 8.0 ^
    --target-db-cluster-parameter-group-name mydbclusterparametergroup

Settings for creating blue/green deployments

The following table explains the settings that you can choose when you create a blue/green deployment. For more information about the AWS CLI options, see create-blue-green-deployment. For more information about the RDS API parameters, see CreateBlueGreenDeployment.