On June 1, 2017, AWS announced that Amazon RDS users could stop and restart MySQL, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Oracle and SQL Server database instances. The company positioned the feature for development and test environments where a database need not run continuously. The billing distinction matters: while stopped, instance-hour charges pause, but provisioned storage, manual snapshots and automated backup storage within the configured retention window remain chargeable. [story-s1]
The pause was bounded, not indefinite. AWS said a stopped instance would restart automatically after seven days. The launch also had deployment limits: it applied to Single-AZ instances outside Read Replica configurations, and regional availability depended on RDS pricing details. For teams, this made stop/start a targeted way to trim idle development costs—not a substitute for reviewing storage, backup, deployment, or schedule requirements. [story-s1]
Source documents
- Amazon RDS Supports Stopping and Starting of Database Instances - AWShttps://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2017/06/amazon-rds-supports-stopping-and-starting-of-database-instances/