System Requirements for Amazon RDS for SQL Server

Verify that your environment meets the system requirements for Amazon RDS for SQL Server.

Amazon RDS for SQL Server Environment

The Amazon RDS for SQL Server environment must include the following:

• An Amazon RDS account.

• An Amazon RDS SQL instance

• A dedicated Amazon S3 bucket for staging backups

• A Windows EC2 client with SQL Server agent installed that will be used as the access node. If the client accesses Amazon RDS through a proxy server, then the user that runs the Commvault services must have the proxy settings configured through Internet Explorer. If the Commvault services run under a local system account, then perform the following steps to set the proxy settings:

  1. To open a command window with the local system account, run the following command:

      
     psexec.exe -i -s -d cmd.exe 

  2. To confirm the user account, run the following command:

      
     whoami.exe

  3. To set the proxy server, run the following command:

      
     iexplore.exe 

  4. Configure Internet Proxy settings on your computer.

  If you use the Access and Secret Key method for authentication, you can use an EC2 or an on-premises SQL client as the access node.

• Configure the Amazon database instance to have the native backup and restore option enabled. For more information, go to the article Adding the native backup and restore option on the Amazon website.

  When configuring the backup and restore support, verify that the IAM role associated to the option group has access to the S3 bucket as configured in the Amazon RDS SQL S3 permissions file.

• An account that is one of the following:

  • The master user name

  • A non-master user name that has the required permissions. For more information, see Creating a Non-Master User Account for Amazon RDS SQL Database Backups.

  Note

  To use an Active Directory (AD) account for the backup, configure an Active Directory admin for that instance on the Amazon AWS portal. The AD account must be a local administrator on the access node and along with all permissions for a non-master user must have a “Create any database” securable permission on the RDS SQL instance. You must enter the user details in user_name@domain_name format. You can provide the AD account credentials in the SQL Agent Authentication tab at the agent level or in the Accounts tab at the instance level. The AD account credentials are honored only when the server admin is not set at both the agent and instance levels.

Access Nodes

• The following packages are required on access nodes:

  • SQL server

• For information on supported Amazon EC2 instances as access nodes, see Supported Amazon EC2 Instance Families.

• Access nodes that you run backup and restore operations on must have one of the following operating systems:

Supported SQL Server Versions

• SQL Server 2022

• SQL Server 2019

• SQL Server 2017

• SQL Server 2016

Hard Drive

A minimum of 100 GB of disk space is recommended. If a staging directory is required on the access node, the actual space needed will depend on the database being backed up and the configured settings.

Network Connectivity

• Access nodes must have Layer 3 network connectivity to the upstream MediaAgent on port 8403. If the MediaAgent and the access node are in different accounts or in different Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), you can configure Amazon VPC peering. For information, see VPC peering basics in the AWS documentation.

• Access nodes must have connectivity to regional and global AWS service endpoints. For information, see Requirements for Connectivity to AWS Service Endpoints.

• Access node machines must be able to connect to the RDS instance over its database port (For example, 1433 for SQL Server), unless a custom port is configured.

User Account Requirements

You do not require a root user account to install or operate the export-based backup and recovery solution. Use a non-root user account with sudo privileges for the installation and operations. For more information, see installation of UNIX agents by a non-root user with sudo privileges.

Application

The Commvault software supports all versions and editions of Microsoft SQL Server that are supported by AWS. For more information, see Microsoft SQL Server on Amazon RDS in the AWS documentation.