How do I create a read replica for an Amazon RDS database?

Last updated: 2019-01-14

I want to scale up a read-heavy database. How do I create a read replica for my Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) database instance?


To create a read replica, see Creating a Read Replica. If you use PostgreSQL, see Working with PostgreSQL Read Replicas.

You can also create a read replica in a different AWS Region by selecting a different Region when creating the read replica. This can help you serve clients in different geographic regions more quickly. For more detailed information, see Creating a Read Replica in a Different AWS Region.

It's a best practice to create a read replica when you don't expect a heavy DB load. This is because the read replica creation process might cause I/O latency until it's completed. To reduce I/O latency during read replica creation and on your master DB instance, you can use a High Availability (Multi-AZ) for Amazon RDS.

Note: To maximize performance, configure a read replica so that it's identical to its master database. When creating a read replica in the Amazon RDS console, the settings selected by default are those of the master database.

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