Options for the Microsoft SQL Server database engine

In this section, you can find descriptions for options that are available for Amazon RDS instances running the Microsoft SQL Server DB engine. To enable these options, you add them to an option group, and then associate the option group with your DB instance. For more information, see Working with option groups.

If you're looking for optional features that aren't added through RDS option groups (such as SSL, Microsoft Windows Authentication, and Amazon S3 integration), see Additional features for Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon RDS.

Amazon RDS supports the following options for Microsoft SQL Server DB instances.

Listing the available options for SQL Server versions and editions

You can use the describe-option-group-options AWS CLI command to list the available options for SQL Server versions and editions, and the settings for those options.

The following example shows the options and option settings for SQL Server 2019 Enterprise Edition. The --engine-name option is required.

aws rds describe-option-group-options --engine-name sqlserver-ee --major-engine-version 15.00

The output resembles the following:

{
    "OptionGroupOptions": [
        {
            "Name": "MSDTC",
            "Description": "Microsoft Distributed Transaction Coordinator",
            "EngineName": "sqlserver-ee",
            "MajorEngineVersion": "15.00",
            "MinimumRequiredMinorEngineVersion": "4043.16.v1",
            "PortRequired": true,
            "DefaultPort": 5000,
            "OptionsDependedOn": [],
            "OptionsConflictsWith": [],
            "Persistent": false,
            "Permanent": false,
            "RequiresAutoMinorEngineVersionUpgrade": false,
            "VpcOnly": false,
            "OptionGroupOptionSettings": [
                {
                    "SettingName": "ENABLE_SNA_LU",
                    "SettingDescription": "Enable support for SNA LU protocol",
                    "DefaultValue": "true",
                    "ApplyType": "DYNAMIC",
                    "AllowedValues": "true,false",
                    "IsModifiable": true,
                    "IsRequired": false,
                    "MinimumEngineVersionPerAllowedValue": []
                },
        ...

        {
            "Name": "TDE",
            "Description": "SQL Server - Transparent Data Encryption",
            "EngineName": "sqlserver-ee",
            "MajorEngineVersion": "15.00",
            "MinimumRequiredMinorEngineVersion": "4043.16.v1",
            "PortRequired": false,
            "OptionsDependedOn": [],
            "OptionsConflictsWith": [],
            "Persistent": true,
            "Permanent": false,
            "RequiresAutoMinorEngineVersionUpgrade": false,
            "VpcOnly": false,
            "OptionGroupOptionSettings": []
        }
    ]
}