restoring a DB snapshot to a different zone

I'd like to restore a snapshot from a DB instance in one region to a DB instance in another region.

I can copy the DB identifier but in the Connectivity section I only have two options for "Virtual private cloud (VPC)" - "Default VPC (vpc-21cbe95b)" and "Create new VPC". The VPC I want, however, that's in a different zone, has a totally different ID - vpc-e681478d.

Is what I'm trying to do possible?

The alternative would be to do mysqldump and then import with mysql, which would work, but I figure restoring the snapshot would be waaaaay faster.

Solution 1:

Copy your snapshot to the other region, then you'll be able to create a RDS database in that region.

Quick summary of steps - see the link above or Google it for more details

• Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the Amazon RDS console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/rds/.

• In the navigation pane, choose Snapshots.

• Select the DB snapshot that you want to copy.

• For Actions, choose Copy snapshot.

• To copy the DB snapshot to a different AWS Region, for Destination Region, choose the new AWS Region.

• (See AWS link for other options)

• Choose Copy snapshot.