RDS

​

Introduction

Laravel Cloud provides fully managed AWS RDS databases (both MySQL and Postgres) for your application. RDS databases offer powerful features, including point-in-time recovery (PITR), read replicas, multiple deployment options, and more.

​

Creating RDS databases

To create and attach an RDS database to an environment:

1. Navigate to “Organization > Resources > Databases”
2. Click ”+ New database cluster”
   • Cluster name: A unique name for your database cluster
   • Type: Choose between AWS RDS MySQL 8.4 or AWS RDS Postgres 18
   • Region: Choose a Private Cloud region
   • Configuration: Choose a preset or customize your RDS configuration

Once created, you can attach the database to any environment in the same region. When attaching a database to an environment, you will need to redeploy the environment for the changes to take effect. Contact us for information on RDS pricing per region.

​

Customizing RDS databases

Laravel Cloud offers you complete control over your RDS configuration. When creating or editing an RDS cluster, you may control the following:

​

Choosing the right compute size

Laravel Cloud supports both m8g and m7g instances (depending on your desired region). The amount of RAM your RDS cluster has determines how many simultaneous connections it can support: You can update your compute size at any point.

​

Provisioning storage

You may provision from 20GB up to 1,000GB of storage on your RDS database. While you can increase this value at any point, you can never decrease it.

​

Enabling public endpoint

By default, RDS databases on Laravel Cloud are not publicly accessible. To enable public access, enable the public endpoint in your RDS cluster settings. You can change this setting at any time.

​

Picking a maintenance window

AWS may occasionally need to perform maintenance on your RDS instance, which may cause downtime. You can control your scheduled maintenance window by clicking “Edit settings > Maintenance window” and picking a 30-minute slot. If you don’t pick a specific time slot, AWS will perform those updates during the default time slot for your region.

​

Selecting a deployment option

Laravel Cloud supports the following RDS deployment options:

• Single-AZ, 1 instance. One DB instance in a single availability zone. Best for dev or non-critical workloads.
• Single-AZ, with read replicas. One primary instance plus up to 15 read replicas for read-heavy workloads.
• Multi-AZ, 2 instances. Two instances in different availability zones for higher availability. AWS automatically fails over to the standby if the primary fails.

​

Connecting to database clusters

​

From your application

When a database is attached to an environment, Laravel Cloud will automatically inject the environment variables needed by the Laravel application to connect to the database, including DB_HOST, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_DATABASE. You may view these variables in your “Environment > Settings > General > Injected variables”.

​

From your local machine

To connect to your database from your local machine, navigate to your organization’s “Resources” page, then to your RDS cluster. Make sure your public endpoint is enabled and either click the “DeepLink” to open your database in a management client like TablePlus, or manually connect using the provided credentials.

​

Database backups

To configure backups for your RDS cluster:

1. Navigate to “Organization > Resources > Databases”
2. Click on your RDS cluster
3. Click “Backups”

Laravel Cloud supports both point-in-time recovery (PITR) and manual snapshots:

​

Point-in-time recovery (PITR)

Point-in-time recovery (PITR) combines daily snapshots with continuous transaction logging to protect your data. This allows you to restore your database to any specific second within your retention period (up to 30 days). To set up PITR, click “Edit” on your backup retention settings and enter your desired backup retention period.

​

Manual snapshots

In addition to the automated PITR, you can take manual snapshots at any time from the database’s Backups page. Manual snapshots are retained until you delete them and are independent of the PITR retention period. Contact us for information on RDS storage and backup costs.

​

Restoring a database

To restore an RDS database from a snapshot, navigate to “Organization > Resources > Databases”. Click on your RDS cluster, then Backups. Find your desired backup in the list, click the ’…’, then Restore. If you have PITR enabled, you can also restore an RDS database from a specific point in time. Click “Restore from point-in-time” and choose a precise date and time to recover from. In both cases, restoring a database will create a new database cluster. The original cluster is not overwritten. After restoring, you will have two database clusters: the original and the restored version. At this point, you can detach the original database from your application, attach the restored database, and delete the original.

​

Monitoring RDS performance

To view metrics such as CPU, memory, write throughput, and storage for your RDS clusters, navigate to “Organization > Resources > Databases”, click on your database cluster, and click the “Metrics” option. If you have read replicas enabled, you may drill into the performance of each replica separately using the dropdown.