There is a list of tips that can help any DBA to solve commom administration problems on AWS.

Note: some tips only apply to MySQL 5.6.

Kill Process / Connections:

On RDS you don’t have SUPER privileges, so you can’t kill other user process. This can be solved using some procedures with the account user:

• CALL mysql.rds_kill(processID); – Terminates a connection to the MySQL server.
• CALL mysql.rds_kill_query(queryID); – Terminates a query running against the MySQL server.

More tips here.

Replicate from an External Database:

On RDS you don’t have SUPER privileges, so you can’t use the commands “CHANGE MASTER TO”, but you can use some procedures:

• Instead of “CHANGE MASTER TO”, you can use:
  CALL mysql.rds_set_external_master (
  host_name
  , host_port
  , replication_user_name
  , replication_user_password
  , mysql_binary_log_file_name
  , mysql_binary_log_file_location
  , ssl_encryption
  );
• CALL mysql.rds_reset_external_master; – Reconfigures a MySQL DB instance to no longer be a Read Replica of an instance of MySQL running external to Amazon RDS.
• CALL mysql.rds_start_replication; – Initiates replication from a MySQL DB instance.
• CALL mysql.rds_stop_replication; – Terminates replication from a MySQL DB instance.
• CALL mysql.rds_skip_repl_error; – Skips and deletes a replication error on a MySQL DB instance.

Handling Replications Errors:

When the Slave_SQL_Running thread stops, you might need to skip some errors. To to this, use the following command:

• CALL mysql.rds_skip_repl_error; – Skips and deletes a replication error on a MySQL DB instance.

Example:

mysql> CALL mysql.rds_skip_repl_error;
+-------------------------------------+
| Message |
+-------------------------------------+
| Statement in error has been skipped |
+-------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.02 sec)

+---------------------------+
| Message |
+---------------------------+
| Slave is running normally |
+---------------------------+
1 row in set (2.02 sec)

Query OK, 0 rows affected (2.02 sec)

How to Maintance Huge Databases on Amazon RDS:

In some cases you’ll need to change huge tables or do slow maintance jobs, in operations that takes hours to complete. There are some techniques to help doing this, disabling read_only feature on replicas, changing them, and turning them into master databases.

I created an article describing some techniques: Huge database maintenance techniques on Amazon RDS MySQL.

References:

Funcions: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/Appendix.MySQL.SQLRef.html