MariaDB on Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS supports DB instances running several versions of MariaDB. You can use the following major versions:

For more information about minor version support, see MariaDB on Amazon RDS Versions.

You first use the Amazon RDS management tools or interfaces to create an Amazon RDS MariaDB DB instance. You can then use the Amazon RDS tools to perform management actions for the DB instance, such as reconfiguring or resizing the DB instance, authorizing connections to the DB instance, creating and restoring from backups or snapshots, creating Multi-AZ secondaries, creating Read Replicas, and monitoring the performance of the DB instance. You use standard MariaDB utilities and applications to store and access the data in the DB instance.

MariaDB is available in all of the AWS Regions. For more information about AWS Regions, see Regions and Availability Zones.

You can use Amazon RDS for MariaDB databases to build HIPAA-compliant applications. You can store healthcare-related information, including protected health information (PHI), under an executed Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with AWS. For more information, see HIPAA Compliance. AWS Services in Scope have been fully assessed by a third-party auditor and result in a certification, attestation of compliance, or Authority to Operate (ATO). For more information, see AWS Services in Scope by Compliance Program.

Before creating your first DB instance, you should complete the steps in the setting up section of this guide. For more information, see Setting Up for Amazon RDS.

Common Management Tasks for MariaDB on Amazon RDS

The following are the common management tasks you perform with an Amazon RDS DB instance running MariaDB, with links to relevant documentation for each task.

There are also advanced administrative tasks for working with DB instances running MariaDB. For more information, see the following documentation:

MariaDB on Amazon RDS Versions

For MariaDB, version numbers are organized as version X.Y.Z. In Amazon RDS terminology, X.Y denotes the major version, and Z is the minor version number. For Amazon RDS implementations, a version change is considered major if the major version number changes, for example going from version 10.0 to 10.1. A version change is considered minor if only the minor version number changes, for example going from version 10.0.17 to 10.0.24.

Amazon RDS currently supports the following versions of MariaDB:

You can specify any currently supported MariaDB version when creating a new DB instance. You can specify the major version (such as MariaDB 10.2), and any supported minor version for the specified major version. If no version is specified, Amazon RDS defaults to a supported version, typically the most recent version. If a major version is specified but a minor version is not, Amazon RDS defaults to a recent release of the major version you have specified. To see a list of supported versions, as well as defaults for newly created DB instances, use the describe-db-engine-versions AWS CLI command.

For information about the Amazon RDS deprecation policy for MariaDB, see Amazon RDS FAQs.

Version and Feature Support on Amazon RDS

MariaDB 10.3 Support on Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS supports the following versions of MariaDB 10.3:

Amazon RDS supports the following new features for your DB instances running MariaDB version 10.3 or later:

For a list of all MariaDB 10.3 features and their documentation, see Changes & Improvements in MariaDB 10.3 and Release Notes - MariaDB 10.3 Series on the MariaDB website.

For a list of unsupported features, see Features Not Supported.

MariaDB 10.2 Support on Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS supports the following versions of MariaDB 10.2:

Amazon RDS supports the following new features for your DB instances running MariaDB version 10.2 or later:

For a list of all MariaDB 10.2 features and their documentation, see Changes & Improvements in MariaDB 10.2 and Release Notes - MariaDB 10.2 Series on the MariaDB website.

For a list of unsupported features, see Features Not Supported.

MariaDB 10.1 Support on Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS supports the following versions of MariaDB 10.1:

Amazon RDS supports the following new features for your DB instances running MariaDB version 10.1 or later:

For a list of all MariaDB 10.1 features and their documentation, see Changes & Improvements in MariaDB 10.1 and Release Notes - MariaDB 10.1 Series on the MariaDB website.

For a list of unsupported features, see Features Not Supported.

MariaDB 10.0 Support on Amazon RDS

Amazon RDS supports the following versions of MariaDB 10.0:

For a list of all MariaDB 10.0 features and their documentation, see Changes & Improvements in MariaDB 10.0 and Release Notes - MariaDB 10.0 Series on the MariaDB website.

For a list of unsupported features, see Features Not Supported.

Features Not Supported

The following MariaDB features are not supported on Amazon RDS:

To deliver a managed service experience, Amazon RDS doesn't provide shell access to DB instances, and it restricts access to certain system procedures and tables that require advanced privileges. Amazon RDS supports access to databases on a DB instance using any standard SQL client application. Amazon RDS doesn't allow direct host access to a DB instance by using Telnet, Secure Shell (SSH), or Windows Remote Desktop Connection.

Supported Storage Engines for MariaDB on Amazon RDS

While MariaDB supports multiple storage engines with varying capabilities, not all of them are optimized for recovery and data durability. InnoDB (for version 10.2 and higher) and XtraDB (for version 10.0 and 10.1) are the recommended and supported storage engines for MariaDB DB instances on Amazon RDS. Amazon RDS features such as Point-In-Time Restore and snapshot restore require a recoverable storage engine and are supported only for the recommended storage engine for the MariaDB version. Amazon RDS also supports Aria, although using Aria might have a negative impact on recovery in the event of an instance failure. However, if you need to use spatial indexes to handle geographic data on MariaDB 10.1 or 10.0, you should use Aria because spatial indexes are not supported by XtraDB. On MariaDB 10.2 and higher, the InnoDB storage engine supports spatial indexes.

Other storage engines are not currently supported by Amazon RDS for MariaDB.

MariaDB Security on Amazon RDS

Security for Amazon RDS MariaDB DB instances is managed at three levels:

When you create an Amazon RDS DB instance, the master user has the following default privileges:

For more information about these privileges, see User Account Management in the MariaDB documentation.

To provide management services for each DB instance, the rdsadmin user is created when the DB instance is created. Attempting to drop, rename, change the password for, or change privileges for the rdsadmin account results in an error.

To allow management of the DB instance, the standard kill and kill_query commands have been restricted. The Amazon RDS commands mysql.rds_kill, mysql.rds_kill_query, and mysql.rds_kill_query_id are provided for use in MariaDB and also MySQL so that you can terminate user sessions or queries on DB instances.

Using SSL with a MariaDB DB Instance

Amazon RDS supports Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) connections with DB instances running the MariaDB database engine.

Amazon RDS creates an SSL certificate and installs the certificate on the DB instance when Amazon RDS provisions the instance. These certificates are signed by a certificate authority. The SSL certificate includes the DB instance endpoint as the Common Name (CN) for the SSL certificate to guard against spoofing attacks.

The public key is stored at https://s3.amazonaws.com/rds-downloads/rds-combined-ca-bundle.pem.

MariaDB uses yaSSL for secure connections in the following versions:

MariaDB uses OpenSSL for secure connections in the following versions:

Amazon RDS for MariaDB supports Transport Layer Security (TLS) versions 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2. The following table shows the TLS support for MySQL versions.

To encrypt connections using the default mysql client, launch the mysql client using the --ssl-ca parameter to reference the public key, as shown in the examples following.

The following example shows how to launch the client using the --ssl-ca parameter for MariaDB 10.2 and later.

mysql -h myinstance.c9akciq32.rds-us-east-1.amazonaws.com
--ssl-ca=[full path]rds-combined-ca-bundle.pem --ssl-mode=REQUIRED

The following example shows how to launch the client using the --ssl-ca parameter for MariaDB 10.1 and earlier.

mysql -h myinstance.c9akciq32.rds-us-east-1.amazonaws.com
--ssl-ca=[full path]rds-combined-ca-bundle.pem --ssl-verify-server-cert

You can require SSL connections for specific users accounts. For example, you can use one of the following statements, depending on your MariaDB version, to require SSL connections on the user account encrypted_user.

For MariaDB 10.2 and later, use the following statement.

ALTER USER 'encrypted_user'@'%' REQUIRE SSL;            
        

For MariaDB 10.1 and earlier, use the following statement.

GRANT USAGE ON *.* TO 'encrypted_user'@'%' REQUIRE SSL;            
        

For more information on SSL connections with MariaDB, see SSL Overview in the MariaDB documentation.

Cache Warming

InnoDB (version 10.2 and later) and XtraDB (versions 10.0 and 10.1) cache warming can provide performance gains for your MariaDB DB instance by saving the current state of the buffer pool when the DB instance is shut down, and then reloading the buffer pool from the saved information when the DB instance starts up. This approach bypasses the need for the buffer pool to "warm up" from normal database use and instead preloads the buffer pool with the pages for known common queries. For more information on cache warming, see Dumping and restoring the buffer pool in the MariaDB documentation.

Cache warming is enabled by default on MariaDB 10.2 and higher DB instances. To enable it, set the innodb_buffer_pool_dump_at_shutdown and innodb_buffer_pool_load_at_startup parameters to 1 in the parameter group for your DB instance. Changing these parameter values in a parameter group affects all MariaDB DB instances that use that parameter group. To enable cache warming for specific MariaDB DB instances, you might need to create a new parameter group for those DB instances. For information on parameter groups, see Working with DB Parameter Groups.

Cache warming primarily provides a performance benefit for DB instances that use standard storage. If you use PIOPS storage, you don't commonly see a significant performance benefit.

CREATE EVENT periodic_buffer_pool_dump 
   ON SCHEDULE EVERY 1 HOUR 
   DO CALL mysql.rds_innodb_buffer_pool_dump_now(); 

Dumping and Loading the Buffer Pool on Demand

You can save and load the cache on demand using the following stored procedures:

Database Parameters for MariaDB

By default, a MariaDB DB instance uses a DB parameter group that is specific to a MariaDB database. This parameter group contains some but not all of the parameters contained in the Amazon RDS DB parameter groups for the MySQL database engine. It also contains a number of new, MariaDB-specific parameters. For more information on the parameters available for the Amazon RDS MariaDB DB engine, see Parameters for MariaDB.

Common DBA Tasks for MariaDB

Killing sessions or queries, skipping replication errors, working with InnoDB (version 10.2 and later) and XtraDB (versions 10.0 and 10.1) tablespaces to improve crash recovery times, and managing the global status history are common DBA tasks you might perform in a MariaDB DB instance. You can handle these tasks just as in an Amazon RDS MySQL DB instance, as described in Common DBA Tasks for MySQL DB Instances. The crash recovery instructions there refer to the MySQL InnoDB engine, but they are applicable to a MariaDB instance running InnoDB or XtraDB as well.

Local Time Zone for MariaDB DB Instances

By default, the time zone for an RDS MariaDB DB instance is Universal Time Coordinated (UTC). You can set the time zone for your DB instance to the local time zone for your application instead.

To set the local time zone for a DB instance, set the time_zone parameter in the parameter group for your DB instance to one of the supported values listed later in this section. When you set the time_zone parameter for a parameter group, all DB instances and Read Replicas that are using that parameter group change to use the new local time zone. For information on setting parameters in a parameter group, see Working with DB Parameter Groups.

After you set the local time zone, all new connections to the database reflect the change. If you have any open connections to your database when you change the local time zone, you won't see the local time zone update until after you close the connection and open a new connection.

You can set a different local time zone for a DB instance and one or more of its Read Replicas. To do this, use a different parameter group for the DB instance and the replica or replicas and set the time_zone parameter in each parameter group to a different local time zone.

If you are replicating across regions, then the replication master DB instance and the Read Replica use different parameter groups (parameter groups are unique to a region). To use the same local time zone for each instance, you must set the time_zone parameter in the instance's and Read Replica's parameter groups.

When you restore a DB instance from a DB snapshot, the local time zone is set to UTC. You can update the time zone to your local time zone after the restore is complete. If you restore a DB instance to a point in time, then the local time zone for the restored DB instance is the time zone setting from the parameter group of the restored DB instance.

You can set your local time zone to one of the following values.

On this page:

• Common Management Tasks
• MariaDB Versions
• Version and Feature Support
• Features Not Supported
• Supported Storage Engines
• MariaDB Security
• SSL Support
• Cache Warming
• Database Parameters
• Common DBA Tasks
• Local Time Zone