We're looking to create a replica of a postgres RDS instance that our developers can write to (not just a simple read replica that AWS can easily provide). Currently we run a script nightly that restores a snapshot of the master instance as the replica. We've got 2 main issues with this approach.
The first issue is that the master instance is multi-az and has provisioned IOPS while the replica is single-az and magnetic IOPS, and this causes really long delays in getting the replica to the "available" state (upwards of 16 hours). We do this because we want the replica to be as cheap as possible. The replica is, in fact, usable while in the "modifying" state, but it sounds like we're getting charged for the provisioned IOPS while it's in this state.
The second issue is that while the replica is in the "modifying" state, the parameter group stays at the default. We have to wait until it's "available" before we can make this change.
I can't believe I couldn't find any solutions to this problem. It sounds like it would be a common request. Are we going about this the wrong way? How should one keep a separate, up to date replica of an rds instance?
