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Initiating the SQL Server switchover - Amazon Relational Database Service

Initiating the SQL Server switchover

You can switch over an RDS for SQL Server read replica to the primary role, and the former primary DB instance to a replica role.

Before initiating a switchover, verify the following:

  • The ReplicaLag CloudWatch metric is zero or near zero.

  • No long-running transactions are active on the primary database.

  • Your application connection strings are configured to handle the endpoint change, or you have a plan to update them after the switchover.

  • You have verified that the replica is in a healthy state (status is available).

You can initiate the switchover using the Amazon RDS console, the AWS CLI, or the Amazon RDS API.

To switch over a SQL Server read replica to the primary DB role

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

  2. In the Amazon RDS console, choose Databases.

    The Databases pane appears. Each read replica shows Replica in the Role column.

  3. Choose the read replica that you want to switch over to the primary role.

  4. For Actions, choose Switch over replica.

  5. Choose I acknowledge. Then choose Switch over replica.

  6. On the Databases page, monitor the progress of the switchover.

    When the switchover completes, the role of the switchover target changes from Replica to Source.

To switch over a SQL Server replica to the primary DB role, use the AWS CLI switchover-read-replica command. The following examples make the SQL Server replica named replica-to-be-made-primary into the new primary DB instance.

Example

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds switchover-read-replica \
    --db-instance-identifier replica-to-be-made-primary

For Windows:

aws rds switchover-read-replica ^
    --db-instance-identifier replica-to-be-made-primary

To switch over a SQL Server replica to the primary DB role, call the SwitchoverReadReplica operation of the Amazon RDS API with the required parameter DBInstanceIdentifier. This parameter specifies the name of the SQL Server replica that you want to assume the primary DB role.