Additional RDS Functionality in the AWS Management Console

We’ve added some very handy new functionality to the RDS tab of the AWS Management Console. Here’s a quick tour.

First, you can create a new DB Instance from any of your existing snapshots. You can click this button:

Or you can right-click on one of your snapshots:

After you provide the parameters, Amazon RDS will create a new DB Instance for you:

As you can see, you can choose to create the new instance in a different Availability Zone, on a different DB instance class, and so forth. You could, for example, create a snapshot of a production database running on one of the larger instance classes and then create a DB Instance using a smaller instance class for some light-duty testing.

Second, you can create a new DB Instance as of any point in time that falls within the backup retention period of any of your existing DB Instances. Again, you can get to this from a button or a right-click on one of your existing DB Instances:

After you provide the parameters, Amazon RDS will create a new DB Instance for you:

If you accidentally break your production database when you check in and run some new code, you can use this feature to create a new instance representing the state of the database as it was immediately preceding the change.

Both of these features will make it even easier for you to use the Relational Database Service.

— Jeff;