Set up AWS RDS & Aurora PostgreSQL

How to set up AWS RDS or Aurora PostgreSQL as a source for RisingWave.

To connect RisingWave to an AWS RDS or Aurora PostgreSQL database for Change Data Capture (CDC), you need to configure your database to support logical replication.

1. Enable logical replication

Create or modify a custom parameter group for your database instance and set the following parameters:

• rds.logical_replication: Set to 1. This enables logical replication on the instance.
• wal_level: This should automatically be set to logical when rds.logical_replication is enabled. You can verify this setting.

For Aurora PostgreSQL, it is also recommended to set rds.logical_wal_cache to 0 to avoid a known data loss issue affecting certain versions (e.g., 14.5, 13.8, 12.12, 11.17).

If you plan to create multiple CDC sources, ensure max_wal_senders is greater than or equal to the number of sources.

2. Apply the parameter group

Modify your RDS or Aurora instance to use the newly configured parameter group. This change typically requires a reboot of the database instance to take effect.

3. Grant required privileges

Connect to your database and grant the rds_replication role to your user. This role provides the necessary permissions to manage logical replication slots and stream data.

GRANT rds_replication TO <user_name>;

You also need to grant standard access privileges to the schemas and tables you want to capture:

-- Grant connection access to the database
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE <database_name> TO <user_name>;

-- Grant usage on the schema
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA <schema_name> TO <user_name>;

-- Grant select on all tables in the schema
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA <schema_name> TO <user_name>;
-- To grant access to future tables in the schema automatically:
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA <schema_name> GRANT SELECT ON TABLES TO <user_name>;

Next step

Now that your database is configured, you can proceed to connect RisingWave.

➡️ Connect to PostgreSQL CDC