Cannot access Amazon RDS instance

Question

I have created a free-tier PostgreSQL RDS instance and everything appears to looks good on the portal. However, I am unable to get to the instance.

Going through the troubleshooting steps, they mention it could a firewall issue on my end. However, a quick ping from an external site reveals the same timeout issue.

Is there a step that I've missed?

Answer 1

Ping is typically disabled in AWS Security Groups. It is not recommended as a method of checking network connections.

The best method would be to use an SQL client to connect to the database via JDBC or ODBC.

Things to check:

• Your RDS instance was launched as Publicly Accessible
• Your RDS instance was launched in a Public Subnet (Definition: The subnet's Route Table points to an Internet Gateway)
• The Security Group permits connections on the database port (this is also where you could permit PING access, but no guarantee that it would work with an RDS instance)

Answer 2

Check the associated Security Groups that you have tagged. Security groups hold the firewall rules. Either you may have to tweak the group that you have selected or try changing / modifying the group that you (or your profile) have access to.