Tutorial: Managing a MySQL DB instance environment from development to production - Amazon Relational Database Service
IntroductionPrerequisitesAdd Amazon RDS tags to categorize your DB instance as a development environmentIncrease the storage capacity of a DB instance to accommodate growing data needsCreate read replicas to enhance the resilience and availability of a DB instanceUpdate Amazon RDS tags to categorize a DB instance as a production environment

Tutorial: Managing a MySQL DB instance environment from development to production

Introduction

A common scenario when managing an Amazon RDS DB instance involves the oversight of its lifecycle from initial development through to production deployment. This tutorial offers guidance to handle key tasks to ensure your database performs optimally and adapts to meet your evolving operational needs. Additionally, it outlines options to synchronize changes made between your development and production environments to ensure consistency and reliability.

By completing these steps, you learn:

  • How to perform specific tasks with MySQL DB instances, such as adding and updating Amazon RDS tags, expanding storage, creating read replicas, and deleting resources.

  • How to synchronize updates from a production environment to a development environment for comprehensive testing and validation.

To complete this tutorial, carry out the following tasks:

  1. Create a MySQL DB instance.

  2. Add Amazon RDS tags to categorize your DB instance as a development environment.

  3. Increase the storage capacity of your DB instance to accommodate increased workloads.

  4. Create read replicas to enhance the resilience and availability of your DB instance.

  5. Update Amazon RDS tags to categorize your DB instance as a production environment.

  6. Delete DB instance that you no longer need so that they don’t incur additional costs.

  7. Next Steps: Synchronize your development instance with production for consistency across environments

Prerequisites

Before you begin, complete the steps in the following sections:

Add Amazon RDS tags to categorize your DB instance as a development environment

To categorize the DB instance as a development environment, add an Amazon RDS tag to the instance you created. An Amazon RDS tag is a key-value pair that you define and associate with your RDS instance. Tagging your AWS resources helps distinguish between your development and production AWS resources. For more information on Amazon RDS tags, see Tagging Amazon RDS resources.

  1. In the Amazon RDS console, choose Databases.

  2. Select the DB instance you want to tag.

  3. In the details section, scroll to the Tags section.

  4. Choose Manage tags and selectdd new tag.

  5. Enter a value for Tag key and Value. For instance, you might use the tag key environment with the value dev to specify that the database instance is part of the development environment.

  6. Choose Add new tagand Save changes.

Your DB instance is now tagged as a development environment. This makes it easier to identify the DB instance and to manage costs associated with this resource.

Increase the storage capacity of a DB instance to accommodate growing data needs

Next, modify the storage capacity of the MySQL DB instance to accommodate additional data. Initially, the storage capacity of your DB instance is set to meet the immediate needs of your application. However, as data volumes grow, it might be necessary to adjust the storage settings to ensure the database’s continued performance and stability. This process involves increasing the allocated storage of your DB instance. For more information on modifying the storage capacity of your DB instance, see Working with storage for Amazon RDS DB instances.

  1. In the Amazon RDS console, choose Databases.

  2. Select the DB instance you want to modify.

  3. Choose Modify..

  4. In Storage, increase the Allocated Storage.The modified storage value must be greater than the current one.

  5. Choose Continue.

  6. In Scheduling of modifications, you can either choose Apply immediately to apply the storage changes to the DB instance immediately or choose Apply during the next scheduled maintenance window to apply the changes during the next maintenance window.

  7. When the settings are as you want them, choose Modify DB instance.

The storage capacity of your DB instance is now increased. This enables it to effectively handle larger data volumes and ensures continued performance and stability as your application's data needs grow.

Create read replicas to enhance the resilience and availability of a DB instance

Create a read replica of the MySQL DB instance. Read replicas enhance the resilience and availability of your DB instance. To reduce the read traffic on your primary DB instance, create a read replica of your DB instance. This routes queries to the read replica, which can help distribute the load and improve overall database performance. For more information on DB instance read replicas, see Working with DB instance read replicas.

Before a MySQL DB instance can serve as a replication source, automatic backups must be enabled on the source DB instance. This can be done by setting the backup retention period to a value other than 0. For more information on MySQL read replicas, see Working with MySQL read replicas.

  1. In the Amazon RDS console, choose Databases.

  2. Select the DB instance you want to use as the source for the read replica

  3. In Actions, select Create read replica.

  4. For DB instance identifier, enter a name for the read replica in all lowercase letters.

  5. Choose your instance configuration. We recommend that you use the same or larger DB instance class and storage type as the source DB instance for the read replica.

  6. Forw AWS Region, specify the destination Region for the read replica.

  7. Leave the default settings or modify them as your use case requires. For information about each available setting, see Creating an Amazon RDS DB instance.

  8. Choose Create read replica..

The read replica appears underneath your source DB instance on the Databases page in the RDS console. It shows Replica in the Role column.

Update Amazon RDS tags to categorize a DB instance as a production environment

When your DB instance is ready to move from the development phase to production, it is important to update its tags to reflect its transition. To align your DB instance with your operational and monitoring strategies, update the initial tags to indicate that the DB instance is now part of the production environment. This ensures better visibility and management of the database.

  1. In the Amazon RDS console, choose Databases.

  2. Select the DB instance you want to update

  3. In the details section, scroll to the Tags section.

  4. Select Manage Tags.

  5. Remove your initial tag signifying a development environment.

  6. SelectAdd new tag.

  7. Enter a new value for Tag key and Value. For instance, you might use the tag key environment with the value prod to specify that the DB instance is part of the production environment.

  8. Choose Add new tag and Save changes.

The tag on your DB instance is updated to signify the database’s transition to a production environment.

Delete a DB instance when it is no longer needed to avoid incurring additional costs

Before the end of this tutorial, it is crucial to address the management of your resources. If you have any resources that are no longer required, you should proceed to delete them to prevent incurring additional costs and optimize your cloud environment.

  1. In the Amazon RDS console, choose Databases.

  2. Select the DB instance you want to delete

  3. In Actions, select Delete. Deleting a DB instance will permanently delete the instance with all its content and related resources. .

  4. Confirm the deletion of the DB instance and select Delete.

Alternatively, if you choose to maintain your DB instance for future use, you can continue to manage it as part of your production environment. This involves maintaining a synchronized development environment to facilitate comprehensive testing and validation. For more information, see Next Steps: Synchronize your development instance with production for consistency across environments.

Next Steps: Synchronize your development instance with production for consistency across environments

Create a development environment

To manage a production environment, it’s important to maintain a synchronized development environment for comprehensive testing and validation. To create a new development environment, first create a DB snapshot of the current production DB instance. A DB snapshot captures the entire DB instance by creating a storage volume snapshot. For instructions on how to create a DB snapshot on the Amazon RDS console, see Creating a DB snapshot for a Single-AZ DB instance for Amazon RDS.

After you create the DB snapshot of your production environment, create a new DB instance for your development environment by restoring a DB snapshot. Restored DB instances are automatically associated with the default DB parameter and option groups. However, you can apply a custom parameter group and option group by specifying them during a restore. For instructions on restoring a DB snapshot, see Tutorial: Restore an Amazon RDS DB instance from a DB snapshot.

Finally, designate the new DB instance as your new development environment by updating its Amazon RDS tags. For guidance on updating Amazon RDS tags to reflect this change, see the previous section Update Amazon RDS tags to categorize a DB instance as a production environment.

You now have a new development environment that mirrors the database configuration of your production environment.

Synchronize a development environment with production environment

Once your new development environment is established, it is necessary to keep it synchronized with any changes that occur in the production environment. This ensures that your development environment accurately reflects the current state of production, which is essential for effective testing, validation, and troubleshooting. Amazon RDS provides a variety of different ways to keep your development environment up to date with your production environment. For more information on these options, see Orchestrating database refreshes for Amazon RDS and Amazon Aurora.

One of the primary ways in which you can synchronize your development and production environments is through creating and restoring DB snapshots. A DB snapshot allows you to create a development environment that reflects the database configuration of the production environment during the time the snapshot was created. For more information on DB snapshots, see Managing manual backups. For more information on restoring a DB instance, see Restoring to a DB instance.

DB snapshots are particularly valuable for the following use cases.

  • Initial setup of a development environment: DB snapshots are useful to create the initial development environment for testing as it provides a consistent baseline that mirrors the exact state of the production environment at the time of the snapshot.

  • High traffic applications: In production environments where continuous operation is critical, using Multi-AZ deployments for snapshots avoids I/O suspension on the primary database, ensuring uninterrupted performance and high availability.

  • Sharing data across different RDS accounts: DB snapshots can be shared across different AWS accounts, facilitating the transfer of data between accounts or regions. This is useful for collaborative projects or scenarios where data needs to be shared for various purposes. For more information, see Sharing a DB snapshot for Amazon RDS.

In this tutorial, you explored essential tasks for managing your DB instance throughout its lifecycle. You learned how to create a DB instance, add and update Amazon RDS tags, expand storage, and create read replicas. You also learned ways to build on these fundamental operations and manage your production environment effectively. This included establishing a development environment for testing and synchronizing it with the production environment for consistency. These tasks help maintain a resilient and scalable database infrastructure, ensuring your Amazon RDS environment operates efficiently.