Amazon RDS for MySQL Now Supports Delayed Replication

Posted On: Aug 6, 2018

Amazon RDS for MySQL now supports delayed replication in Amazon Web Services China (Beijing) Region, operated by Sinnet and Amazon Web Services China (Ningxia) Region, operated by NWCD. This feature allows you to set a configurable time period for which a read replica lags behind the source database. In a standard MySQL replication configuration, there is minimal replication delay between the source and the replica. With delayed replication, you can introduce an intentional delay as a strategy for disaster recovery.

A delay can be helpful when you want to recover from a human error. For example, if someone accidentally drops a table from your primary database, you can stop the replication just before the point at which the table was dropped and promote the replica to become a standalone instance. To assist with this process, Amazon RDS for MySQL now includes a stored procedure that will stop replication once a specified point in the binary log is reached.

Configuring a read replica for delayed replication is done via stored procedure and can either be performed when the read replica is initially created or be specified for an existing read replica. Delayed replication is available for MySQL version 5.7.22 and later or MySQL 5.6.40 and later.

For more details on delayed replication, please refer to Working with MySQL Read Replicas in the Amazon RDS User Guide.