Posted On: Dec 20, 2016

Starting today, you can migrate your Amazon RDS for MySQL version 5.6 database snapshot to an RDS for MariaDB 10.1 database instance with a few clicks in the AWS Management Console.

MariaDB is a popular open source relational database created by the original developers of MySQL. Amazon RDS makes it easy to set up, operate, and scale MariaDB deployments in the cloud. This feature makes it easy for you to test your MySQL-compatible application with MariaDB as well as take advantage of additional features available in MariaDB. 

After using the AWS console to create the DB snapshot in the region where the Amazon RDS MySQL 5.6 instance is located, you then select the snapshot and migrate it to create a new MariaDB 10.1 DB instance. The new DB instance will be populated with the data from the original DB instance.

If you would like to create your new RDS for MariaDB instance in another region or AWS account, you can copy the DB snapshot from one region to another region or share the DB snapshot with another AWS account. Because MariaDB replication is compatible with MySQL, once you have migrated your DB Instance, you can also choose to set up replication between your existing MySQL instance and your new MariaDB instance.  

To learn more about migrating your DB instance to RDS for MariaDB, please refer to the Amazon RDS User Guide