Amazon RDS SQL Server

Last updated on Jul 14, 2025

Prerequisites

The MS SQL Server version is 2008 or higher.
If the Pipeline Mode is Change Tracking or Table, and the Query mode is Change Tracking:
- Change Tracking is enabled.
- CHANGE TRACKING and ALTER DATABASE privileges are granted to the database user.
Hevo’s IP addresses are whitelisted.
SELECT and VIEW CHANGE TRACKING privileges are granted to the database user.
You are assigned the Team Administrator, Team Collaborator, or Pipeline Administrator role in Hevo, to create the Pipeline.

Perform the following steps to configure your Amazon RDS SQL Server Source:

Enable Change Tracking

Note: This step is valid only for Pipelines with Change Tracking as their Pipeline Mode.

The Change Tracking mechanism captures changes made to a database. In order to enable, or disable change tracking, the database user must have the ALTER DATABASE privilege.

To enable change tracking, connect your Amazon RDS SQL Server database in your SQL Client tool, and enter these commands:

Enable change tracking at the database level:
```
 ALTER DATABASE <database_name> SET CHANGE_TRACKING = ON
 (CHANGE_RETENTION = 3 DAYS, AUTO_CLEANUP = ON)
```
The CHANGE_RETENTION value specifies the time period for which change tracking information is retained. You can use AUTO_CLEANUP to enable or disable the cleanup task that removes old change tracking information. Read Enable Change Tracking for a Database.

Note: Hevo recommends that you set the CHANGE_RETENTION value to 3 DAYS. This reduces the risk of log expiry in the case of Pipelines having a low ingestion frequency, for example, 24 hours.
Enable change tracking at the table and schema level:
```
 ALTER TABLE <schema_name>.<table> ENABLE CHANGE_TRACKING
```
Repeat this step for each table you want to replicate using log-based incremental replication. Read Enable Change Tracking for a Table.

Note: Hevo does not support Change Data Capture (CDC) for Amazon RDS SQL Server.

Whitelist Hevo’s IP Addresses

You need to whitelist the Hevo IP addresses for your region to enable Hevo to connect to your Amazon RDS SQL Server database. To do this:

Open the Amazon RDS console.
In the left navigation pane, click Databases (or Instances if you are using an older version).
In the Databases section on the right, click the DB identifier of the Amazon RDS SQL Server instance.

Note: The instance does not necessarily have to be a replica as long as it whitelists Hevo’s IP address for the region.
In the Connectivity & security tab, do the following:
- Ensure Publicly accessible is set to Yes.
- Click the link text under Security, VPC security groups.
On the Security Groups page, select the check box for your Security group ID, and from the Actions drop-down, click Edit inbound rules.
On the Edit inbound rules page:
1. Click Add rule.
2. In the Port range column, enter the port of your Amazon RDS SQL Server instance. The default value is 1433.
3. In the Source column, select Custom from the drop-down and enter Hevo’s IP addresses for your region.
4. Click Save rules.

Create a User and Grant Privileges

1. Create a user (optional)

Note: Skip this step if you are using an existing database user.

To create a database user, log in to your Amazon RDS SQL Server instance as a masteruser in your SQL Client tool, and enter these commands:

Note: Replace the placeholder values in the commands below with your own. For example, <username> with hevo.

Select a database:
```
USE <database_name>;
```

Create a database user:

CREATE LOGIN <username> WITH PASSWORD = '<password>';
CREATE USER <username> for login <username>;

2. Grant privileges to the user

The database user specified in the Hevo Pipeline must have the following global privileges:

SELECT
VIEW CHANGE TRACKING (If ingestion Mode is Change Tracking)

To assign these privileges, log in to your Amazon RDS SQL Server instance as a masteruser in your SQL Client tool and enter the following commands:

Note: Replace the placeholder values in the commands below with your own. For example, <username> with hevo.

Grant SELECT privilege at the database level:

GRANT SELECT ON DATABASE::<database> TO <username>;

Grant SELECT privilege at the schema level:

GRANT SELECT ON SCHEMA::<schema_name> TO <username>;

If the ingestion mode is Change Tracking, grant the VIEW CHANGE TRACKING privilege at the schema or table level:

For schema level:

GRANT VIEW CHANGE TRACKING ON SCHEMA::<schema_name> TO <username>;

For table level:

GRANT VIEW CHANGE TRACKING ON OBJECT::<schema_name>.<table_name> TO <username>;

Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings

Perform the following steps to configure Amazon RDS SQL Server as a Source in Hevo:

Click PIPELINES in the Navigation Bar.
Click + CREATE PIPELINE in the Pipelines List View.
On the Select Source Type page, select Amazon RDS SQL Server.

On the Configure your Amazon RDS SQL Server Source page, specify the following:

RDS SQL Server settings

Pipeline Name: A unique name for the Pipeline, not exceeding 255 characters.

Database Host: SQL Server host’s IP address or DNS.

The following table lists a few examples of SQL Server hosts:

Variant	Host
Amazon RDS SQL Server	ms-sql-server-1.xxxxx.rds.amazonaws.com
Azure MS SQL	mssql.database.windows.net
Generic MS SQL	10.123.10.001 or mssql.westeros.inc
Google Cloud SQL Server	35.220.150.0

Note: For URL-based hostnames, exclude the http:// or https:// part. For example, if the hostname URL is https://mssql.database.windows.net, enter mssql.database.windows.net.

Database Port: The port on which your SQL Server is listening for connections. Default value: 1433.
Database User: The read-only user who has the permissions to read tables in your database.
Database Password: The password for the read-only user.
Select an Ingestion Mode: The desired mode by which you want to ingest data from the Source. You can expand this section by clicking SEE MORE to view the list of ingestion modes to choose from. Default value: Change Tracking. The available ingestion modes are Change Tracking, Table, and Custom SQL.

Depending on the ingestion mode you select, you must configure the objects to be replicated. Refer to section, Object and Query Mode Settings for the steps to do this.

Note: For Custom SQL ingestion mode, all Events loaded to the Destination are billable.
Database Name: The database that you wish to replicate.
Schema Name: The schema that holds the tables to be replicated. Default value: dbo.
Connect through SSH: Enable this option to connect to Hevo using an SSH tunnel, instead of directly connecting your SQL Server database host to Hevo. This provides an additional level of security to your database by not exposing your SQL Server setup to the public. Read Connecting Through SSH. To set up an SSH tunnel for your SQL Server database hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), read Configuring an SSH Tunnel.

If this option is disabled, you must whitelist Hevo’s IP addresses. Refer to the content for your SQL Server variant for steps to do this.
Advanced Settings:
- Include New Tables in the Pipeline: Applicable for all ingestion modes except Custom SQL. If enabled, Hevo automatically ingests data from tables created after the Pipeline has been built. If disabled, the new tables are listed in the Pipeline Detailed View in Skipped state, and you can manually include the ones you want and load their historical data. You can include these objects post-Pipeline creation to ingest data.
  
  You can change this setting later.

Click TEST CONNECTION. This button is enabled once you specify all the mandatory fields. Hevo’s underlying connectivity checker validates the connection settings you provide.
Click TEST & CONTINUE to proceed for setting up the Destination. This button is enabled once you specify all the mandatory fields.

Object and Query Mode Settings

Once you have specified the Source connection settings in Step 4 above, do one of the following:

For Pipelines configured with the Change Tracking ingestion mode:
1. On the Select Objects page, select the objects you want to replicate.
2. Click CONTINUE. This button is enabled once you select at least one object for which Change Tracking is enabled.
  
  Note:
  - Each object represents a table in your database.
  - You must enable Change Tracking for the objects you want to ingest data from. If disabled, Hevo adds these objects to your Pipeline in the SKIPPED state.
  - For customers signing up after Release 2.19, Hevo automatically uses the Unique Incrementing Append Only (UIAO) query mode for the objects that contain a unique column. For the others, it ingests data using the Full Load query mode.
For Pipelines configured with the Table ingestion mode:
1. On the Select Objects page, select the objects you want to replicate and click CONTINUE.
  
  Note: Each object represents a table in your database.
2. On the Configure Objects page, specify the query mode you want to use for each selected object.
For Pipelines configured with the Custom SQL ingestion mode:
1. On the Provide Query Settings page, enter the custom SQL query to fetch data from the Source.
2. In the Query Mode drop-down, select the query mode, and click CONTINUE.

Data Replication

For Teams Created	Default Ingestion Frequency	Minimum Ingestion Frequency	Maximum Ingestion Frequency	Custom Frequency Range (in Hrs)
Before Release 2.21	15 Mins	5 Mins	24 Hrs	1-24
After Release 2.21	6 Hrs	30 Mins	24 Hrs	1-24

Note: The custom frequency must be set in hours as an integer value. For example, 1, 2, or 3 but not 1.5 or 1.75.

Historical Data: In the first run of the Pipeline, Hevo ingests all available data for the selected objects from your Source database.
Incremental Data: Once the historical load is complete, data is ingested as per the ingestion frequency.

Additional Information

Read the detailed Hevo documentation for the following related topics:

Limitations

Limitations

Hevo does not support Change Data Capture (CDC) for Amazon RDS SQL Server.
Hevo does not support data replication from temporary tables and views.
Hevo does not load data from a column into the Destination table if its size exceeds 16 MB, and skips the Event if it exceeds 40 MB. If the Event contains a column larger than 16 MB, Hevo attempts to load the Event after dropping that column’s data. However, if the Event size still exceeds 40 MB, then the Event is also dropped. As a result, you may see discrepancies between your Source and Destination data. To avoid such a scenario, ensure that each Event contains less than 40 MB of data.
When using the Unique Incrementing Append Only query mode, selecting a Globally Unique Identifier (GUID or UUID) field as the auto-incrementing column can lead to data ingestion issues. UUIDs do not follow a sequential numeric or alphabetical order. This can cause incorrect offset calculations, which might result in valid Events being skipped during ingestion and lead to data mismatches. If your Source object uses a UUID as the incrementing field and you observe missing records in your Destination, contact Hevo Support.

Revision History

Refer to the following table for the list of key updates made to this page:

Date	Release	Description of Change
Jul-14-2025	NA	Updated section, Limitations to add a point about UUID columns not recommended for UIAO.
Jul-07-2025	NA	Updated the Limitations section to inform about the max record and column size in an Event.
Jan-07-2025	NA	Updated the Limitations section to add information on Event size.
Apr-29-2024	NA	Updated section, Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings to include more detailed steps.
Mar-05-2024	2.21	Added the Data Replication section.
Feb-27-2024	NA	Updated sections, Create a user and Grant privileges to the user as per the latest Hevo functionality.
Jan-15-2024	NA	Updated section, Limitations to add information about Hevo not supporting data replication from certain tables.
Jan-10-2024	2.19	- Updated section, Enable Change Tracking to add a note about log retention duration. - Updated section, Object and Query Mode Settings as per the latest Hevo functionality.
Nov-03-2023	NA	Added section, Object and Query Mode Settings.
Apr-21-2023	NA	Updated section, Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings to add a note to inform users that all loaded Events are billable for Custom SQL mode-based Pipelines.
Mar-09-2023	2.09	Updated section, Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings to mention about SEE MORE in the Select an Ingestion Mode section.
Dec-07-2022	2.03	Updated section, Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings to mention about including skipped objects post-Pipeline creation.
Dec-07-2022	2.03	Updated section, Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings to mention about the connectivity checker.
Apr-21-2022	1.86	Updated section, Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings.
Feb-07-2022	1.81	Updated section, Whitelist Hevo’s IP Address to remove details about Outbound rules as they are not required.
Jan-03-2022	1.79	Updated the description of the Include New Tables in the Pipeline advance setting in the Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings section.
Sep-08-2021	NA	Updated the second list item under Prerequisites and corrected the numbering of sections.
Jul-26-2021	1.68	Added a note for the SQL Server Host field.
Jul-12-2021	NA	Added section, Specify Amazon RDS SQL Server Connection Settings.
Mar-09-2021	1.58	Replaced references to Logical Replication with Change Tracking as Change Tracking is a distinct Ingestion mode for SQL Server Source types.
Feb-22-2021	1.57	Added section Create a User and Grant Privileges.