Step 2: Creating an RDS Database

Before you proceed any further with the setup process, you will need to determine if you want to use external databases or storage with the instance. External databases or storage aren’t mandatory. However, you may want to use Amazon RDS as the database, and Amazon S3 for screen and audio recordings. Using RDS and S3 will improve the scalability of your platform and is recommended for deployments over 100 concurrent users.

This guide will show you how to use external database and storage as an example using an AWS RDS database and the AWS S3 storage service. First, it will show you how to create an RDS database. If you already know how to create an RDS database, you can skip the next section.

Adding a RDS Database Service

From your EC2 Management Console, click Services from the top left hand side. A Few options will show up.

Type RDS in the search field.

Select the RDS under the Database category.

Creating the Database

Select Databases from the left-hand sidebar.

Then, click the Create database button on the top-right corner of the screen.

Selecting a Database Engine

On the ‘Select engine’ screen, select PostgreSQL.

Click Next to go to the next screen.

Choosing a Use Case

On the ‘Choose use case’ screen, select either Production or Dev/Test depending on what you want to do. In this case, we will use the Dev/Test option.

Click Next to go to the next screen.

Specifying the Database Details

On the ‘Specify DB details’ screen, you will notice that there’s a Free Tier option. You can enable this if you are running test databases and don’t want to pay for its usage.

Scroll down until you see the ‘Settings’ section.

Type a name in the DB instance identifier field. Assign a Master user name and a password.

When done, click the Next button.

Configuring Advanced Settings

The ‘Configure advanced settings’ screen has options to configure Network & Security, Log exports, encryption, backup etc. You can adjust them as needed.

In this guide, we will leave them to their default settings.

Click the Create database button.

Viewing the Database Instance Details

Once the instance is created you will see a View DB instance details button. Click it.

Finishing the Database Setup

On your database ‘Summary’ screen, you will see the details like the Engine, DB instance class, CPU Utilization, DB Connections, Free Storage Space etc.

When the DB instance status changes to ‘Available’, the database will be ready for use.