Creating a one-time database backup
We're now going to show you how to make a one-off snapshot of your database. You might opt to do this if you have a specific requirement around keeping a point in time backup of your DB. You might also want to take a snapshot for the purpose of creating a new working copy of your dataset.
Getting ready
In order to proceed you're going to need the following:
- The identifier for the RDS instance you wish to back up
- A unique identifier that you'd like to assign to this snapshot
The snapshot identifier has some constraints:
- It needs to start with a letter
- It must not be longer than 255 characters
Note
If your primary database isn't running in a multi-AZ configuration then be aware that creating a snapshot will cause an outage. In a multi-AZ configuration the snapshot is taken on the standby instance so no outage occurs.
How to do it...
Type the following AWS CLI command to initiate the creation of a snapshot. You'll need to wait for a few minutes for the snapshot to complete...
