Trouble restoring from Amazon RDS DB Snapshot

4
votes

I have a few DB snapshots that I made on Amazon RDS from a couple years ago. I'm trying to restore those DB snapshots but when I select the snapshot and click "Restore from DB Snapshot" I get the error:

"Cannot find version 5.1.42 for mysql"

I first thought this was because I didn't have an instance running, so I went to DB Instances, Launched DB Instance, and created one of the same size as this snapshot. However, the oldest MySQL that is available is 5.1.45 so that's what I used. I was able to connect to it from my local machine and I confirmed it had no data within it.

Then I went back to my DB Snapshots and tried again and I still receive the same error even though I now have a DB instance running.

What do I need to do to restore this?

(I'm doing this all from the aws web UI)

1
mysqlamazon-web-servicesamazon-rds

1 Answers

3
votes

That's an 'interesting' (and worrisome) problem - section DB Engine Version Management within chapter MySQL Database Engine in the Amazon RDS Technical FAQ seems to imply that restoring an unsupported MySQL snapshot might not be possible anymore in fact (even though it is nowhere stated explicitly):

Does Amazon RDS provide guidelines for supporting new MySQL version releases and/or deprecating MySQL versions that are currently supported?

[...]

We intend to support major MySQL version releases, including MySQL 5.1, for 3 years after they are initially supported by Amazon RDS.

We intend to support minor MySQL version releases (e.g. MySQL 5.1.45) for at least 1 year after they are initially supported by Amazon RDS.

After a MySQL major or minor version has been “deprecated”, we expect to provide a three month grace period for you to initiate an upgrade to a supported version prior to an automatic upgrade being applied during your scheduled maintenance window.

[emphasis mine]

According to Impossible to create a RDS instance in EU-west, MySQL 5.1.42 has been deprecated as of May 24, 2011 the latest already, so this three month grace period has long passed.

Obviously the apparent effect of this deprecation you encountered (i.e. the inability to restore respectively outdated snapshots) will come to a surprise for many, so there might be options to deal with it eventually still, but I'm afraid you'll need to contact AWS for a solution, either directly or via the Amazon Relational Database Service Forum - please post your findings as an answer here if possible, insofar I'd expect this problem to show up regularly as time goes by.