There are numerous solutions for accessing private RDS instances, many of which require thoughtful design. The solution I use sometimes is straightforward: I deploy it as a Helm chart within a k8s cluster. In this setup, access to the RDS is contingent on having access to the k8s cluster with the appropriate RBAC configurations. While it may not be perfect, it’s secure, quick to implement, and requires minimal maintenance. The following command demonstrates the basic principle:

socat TCP4-LISTEN:8888,fork TCP4:xxxxxxxx.us-east-1.rds.amazonaws.com:5432

We execute `socat`` command on an instance or pod. Subsequently, we need to forward the port to our local machine