Overview

While around 95% of our customers use Engine Yard-managed EC2 instances to run their DBs, many of our top customers have been moved over to Amazon RDS. This will mean that no DB instance will be seen in the UI, and no EC2 will exist to which a Support agent may be able to connect via SSH.

Contents:

• Amazon RDS
  • Identifying Amazon RDS usage
  • Addressing issues with RDS
• Summary
  • FAQ

Amazon RDS

Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is a collection of managed services that makes it simple to set up, operate, and scale databases in the cloud. Since database operations are managed, it is not possible for Support to interact with the system in the same way as they would for a normal EC2 instance running a database, as discussed in the Database Instance Cheat Sheet.

Note: Customers can interact with RDS in the AWS console in a read-only manner unless they have imported their own AWS account.

Identifying Amazon RDS usage

To determine if RDS is being used, follow these steps:

1. In a given environment, check Edit Environment.
2. In the following screen, under Database Provider, you will be able to see whether Amazon RDS is selected.
3. Back in the account UI, select Tools > RDS Management on the top right.
4. In the list of Database Services that appear, click any entry to see more information.

Addressing issues with RDS

In terms of working with RDS, it is Amazon that maintains and manages the instance. Engine Yard will simply generate the connection string for Rails to use. Therefore, any issues with RDS will require that a ticket be raised with Customer Support.

<supportagent>

Any changes made to RDS on the AWS side will require that the database service object is re-discovered using the AWSM console, to ensure that the AWSM backend of Engine Yard is aware of the current status. However, we should thread carefully here since the discovery of RDS is not a bulletproof process... it might make matters worse if you are unsure of what you are doing!

</supportagent>

Note that only PostgreSQL and MySQL are supported as RDS offerings for Engine Yard.

Summary

This article provides methods to identify if Amazon RDS is being used in Engine Yard and how to work with it. It is important to note that when using RDS, Support will need to reference the AWS console for logs and information.

FAQ

1. What is Amazon RDS?
   Amazon RDS is a web service that makes it easier to set up, operate, and scale a relational database in the cloud.
2. What databases are supported by Amazon RDS in Engine Yard?
   Only PostgreSQL and MySQL are supported as RDS offerings in Engine Yard.
3. How can I access logs and information for RDS?
   Support will need to reference the logs and information from the AWS console, as Amazon maintains and manages the instance.