Integrating Visual Studio with AWS (RDS)- Part 2
Hello everyone! Welcome to the second part of the tutorial Integrating Visual Studio with AWS (RDS).
In our previous tutorial we learned how to create and manage our account in the AWS, we also learn how to create an user and how to set the correct privileges to this user.
Today we are going to learn how to finish our integration with Visual Studio by creating an database instance and know what is RDS. We are also learning about VPC and how amazon calculate our database instance use.
Well, first let’s start talking about what is RDS ? RDS means Relational Database Service, it is a service that allow us to create multiple database instances based on differents engines. That means, that you can create a database instance on SQL Server and other in MySQL, or in any of the services that are avaliable in RDS. Currently we have PostgreeSQL, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, SQL Server and Amazon Aurora. Regarderless of wich engine you choose RDS will allow you to create, scale, manage and optimize.
It’s important to remember that we are using the Free Tier for this tutorial, because the Free Tier only allow us to have 750 hours of use for month and for 12 months. Other thing, we need to take care of how many instances do we have, because one instance of database online for 24 hours 30 days in the month, will spend 720 hours of use. So, it’s a very important thing to stay attempt to it.
Well, knowing that, lets get back to our project.
1 — With the Visual Studio opened, in our AWS Explorer menu, go to Amazon RDS menu, then click with the right button in Instances and then click in Launch Instance option.
2 — A custom wizard will show up, so first we have to select our database engine that we want to use it. For this tutorial we are going to select Microsoft SQL Server Express Edition that not require a license.
4 — Select the option and go to the next page. Now we are going to set up DB Engine Version and DB Instance Class.
5 — The DB Engine Version it is about what version of SQL Server we want to use it. In my case I will select SQL Server 2017.
The second option it is about the class of the instance, here we are going to decide the computer power, processing power, disk size, etc.
Since we are using the Free Tier we should use the db.t2.micro otherwise we will be charged.
5 — Let’s keep 20GB in the Allocated Storage, for the same reason as before with t2.micro.
6 — Now we are going to set the name of our instance that can have in the maximum 25 characters, only letters, with no space or special characters.
7 — After set up the name choose a User Name and a Password for your instance.
8 — Now, click in the next button because we still have more things to configure.
9 — In the next page, you will probably not have any resource created. So, keep the default option for Create New VPN (Virtual Private Cloud).
The VPC will be responsible for create all of the resources that are needed for allocate our database instance like safety, scalelabilty, network, etc.
10 — Now keep also the option Create New Subnet Group, the subnet is a IP range allocation for AWS Network.
11 — Check the option Publicly Accessible, if for any reason in the future you want to create a private instance, know that the private instance can only be accessed by other resources of AWS.
12 — In the Availiability Zone, keep the option No Preference so the AWS choose the best region for us.
After finish those configurations, your screen should be something like this
13 — Click in the next button to go to the next page. In this page we will set up the backup interval, welll, actually we are going to remove the automatic backup. The reason is a little bit obvious, since we are doing a tutorial, there is no why we should keep automatic backup. So set No automatic backup option.
14 — Go to the next page, the last of this set up. Here you will see all the details of our configuration.
15 — Click in Launch to finish. After click in launch a new windows will be shown in your visual studio.
This is the list of all of our database instances, notice that we have a yellow Status in the Status column. That means that our databse instance are beeing created. I may suggest that you go grab a coffe, because this process can take at leats 10 minutes.
When the creation of the instance end, the Status column will be updated to available, as the image below:
16 — After this, we finish our database instance creation using SQL Server Express in our Visual Studio.
In our next tutorial we will learn how we could execute and use this instance in our SQL Server Managent Studio and also in our Visual Studio.
For today, that’s all folks! Hope you guys are enjoyng, see you guys in the next tutorial.
