Connecting to your RDS Custom DB instance using Session Manager - Amazon Relational Database Service

Connecting to your RDS Custom DB instance using Session Manager

After you create your RDS Custom DB instance, you can connect to it using AWS Systems Manager Session Manager. This is the preferred technique when your DB instance isn't publicly accessible.

Session Manager allows you to access Amazon EC2 instances through a browser-based shell or through the AWS CLI. For more information, see AWS Systems Manager Session Manager.

To connect to your DB instance using Session Manager

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Databases, and then choose the RDS Custom DB instance to which you want to connect.

  3. Choose Configuration.

  4. Note the Resource ID for your DB instance. For example, the resource ID might be db-ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS0123456.

  5. Open the Amazon EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/.

  6. In the navigation pane, choose Instances.

  7. Look for the name of your EC2 instance, and then click the instance ID associated with it. For example, the instance ID might be i-abcdefghijklm01234.

  8. Choose Connect.

  9. Choose Session Manager.

  10. Choose Connect.

    A window opens for your session.

You can connect to your RDS Custom DB instance using the AWS CLI. This technique requires the Session Manager plugin for the AWS CLI. To learn how to install the plugin, see Install the Session Manager plugin for the AWS CLI.

To find the DB resource ID of your RDS Custom DB instance, use aws rds describe-db-instances.

aws rds describe-db-instances \
    --query 'DBInstances[*].[DBInstanceIdentifier,DbiResourceId]' \
    --output text

The following sample output shows the resource ID for your RDS Custom instance. The prefix is db-.

db-ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS0123456

To find the EC2 instance ID of your DB instance, use aws ec2 describe-instances. The following example uses db-ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS0123456 for the resource ID.

aws ec2 describe-instances \
    --filters "Name=tag:Name,Values=db-ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRS0123456" \
    --output text \
    --query 'Reservations[*].Instances[*].InstanceId'

The following sample output shows the EC2 instance ID.

i-abcdefghijklm01234

Use the aws ssm start-session command, supplying the EC2 instance ID in the --target parameter.

aws ssm start-session --target "i-abcdefghijklm01234"

A successful connection looks like the following.

Starting session with SessionId: yourid-abcdefghijklm1234
[ssm-user@ip-123-45-67-89 bin]$