Help Center/ Relational Database Service_RDS for PostgreSQL/ User Guide/ Read Replicas/ Enabling or Disabling Deletion Protection for a Read Replica
Updated on 2026-09-08 GMT+08:00
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Enabling or Disabling Deletion Protection for a Read Replica

Scenarios

Enabling deletion protection prevents instances from being accidentally deleted, maintaining service availability and mitigating the risk of data loss. To prevent your instance from being deleted by mistake, you can enable deletion protection. If deletion protection is no longer needed, disable it.

Read replicas with deletion protection enabled cannot be deleted. To delete such read replicas, disable deletion protection first (using an account that has the permission to disable this function).

How It Works

A flag has been added to the instance attributes to indicate the deletion protection status of the current instance. This configuration is stored in the extended field of the instance table. When deletion protection is enabled, the flag is set to TRUE. When deletion protection is disabled, the flag is set to FALSE.

Prerequisites

The IAM account you use must be assigned the rds:instance:switchDeletionProtection action.

Constraints

This function is unavailable for instances that are being created, being deleted, or already deleted.

Precautions

  • Deletion protection for read replicas can be configured independently of the primary instance. Modifying the protection status of the primary instance does not affect the protection status of its read replicas.
  • By default, deletion protection is disabled during read replica creation. Created read replicas are not protected and can be deleted by users with the DELETE privilege. To protect your read replica against deletion, follow the instructions in this section.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the RDS console.
  2. Click in the upper left corner and select a region.
  3. On the Instances page, locate the target instance and click in front of it to show its read replicas.
  4. Click the target read replica name to go to the Summary page.
  5. In the Instance Information area, find the Deletion Protection field and check whether it is enabled for the read replica.

    Figure 1 Checking whether deletion protection is enabled

  1. Log in to the RDS console.
  2. Click in the upper left corner and select a region.
  3. On the Instances page, locate the target instance and click in front of it to show its read replicas.
  4. Click the target read replica name to go to the Summary page.
  5. In the Instance Information area, find the Deletion Protection field and click Configure.
  6. In the displayed dialog box, select the Deletion Protection check box and click OK.

    Figure 2 Enabling deletion protection

  1. Log in to the RDS console.
  2. Click in the upper left corner and select a region.
  3. On the Instances page, locate the target instance and click in front of it to show its read replicas.
  4. Click the target read replica name to go to the Summary page.
  5. In the Instance Information area, find the Deletion Protection field and click Configure.
  6. In the displayed dialog box, deselect the Deletion Protection check box and click OK.

    Figure 3 Disabling deletion protection

Parent Topic: Read Replicas