Install and configure the Amazon RDS Command Line Tools

09 June 2010

On Windows XP

Installation:
1. Ensure that JAVA version 1.5 or higher is installed on your system: (java -version). Java SE 1.6 works.
2. Download the latest deployment zip file from here and unzip in “c:\program files\amazon\aws\rdscli” on windows.
3. Set the following environment variables:
3.1 AWS_RDS_HOME - The directory where the deployment files were copied to
check with: dir %AWS_RDS_HOME%\bin should list rds-describe-db-instances …)
3.2 JAVA_HOME = “C:\Program Files\Java\jre6” (Java Installation home directory).
3.3 EC2_REGION = eu-west-1
3.4 EC2_URL = http://%EC2\_REGION%.ec2.amazonaws.com/
4. Add “%AWS_RDS_HOME%\bin” to your path.

Configuration:
Provide the command line tool with your AWS user credentials. There are two ways you can provide credentails: AWS keys, or using X.509 certificates.

Using AWS Keys:
1. Create a credential file: The deployment includes a template file %AWS_RDS_HOME%/credential-file-path.template. Edit a copy of this file to add your information.

2. There are several ways to provide your credential information:
a. Set the following environment variable: AWS_CREDENTIAL_FILE=<the file created in 1> e.g. AWS_CREDENTIAL_FILE = %AWS_RDS_HOME%\credential-file-path.template
b. Alternatively, provide the following option with every command —aws-credential-file <the file created in 1>
c. Explicitly specify credentials on the command line: —I ACCESS_KEY —S SECRET_KEY

Using X.509 Certs:
1. Save your cetificate and private keys to files: e.g. my-cert.pem and my-pk.pem.

2. There are two ways to provide the certificate information to the command line tool:
a. Set the following environment variables:
EC2_CERT=/path/to/my-cert.pem
EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=/path/to/my-pk.pem
b. Specify the files directly on command-line for every command:
—ec2-cert-file-path=/path/to/my-cert.pem —ec2-private-key-file-path=/path/to/my-pk.pem

Running:
Check that your setup works properly, run the following command:
$ rds —help
You should see the usage page for all RDS commands.
$ rds-describe-db-instances —headers
You should see a header line. If you have database instances already configured, you will see a description line for each database instance.