title: Multi-AZ RDS test failover and connection monitoring
body: <p>My question has two parts: </p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>What is the best way to initiate an RDS failover for testing purposes?</li>
  <li>How can I monitor the connection during failover in order to observe the time that it takes for AWS to reconnect the user to the standby instance?</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>With respect to part (1): If I understand correctly, all instance modifications are made on the standby and then AWS fails over by flipping the CNAME over to the standby as the primary is updated, so if I were to make any kind of instance modification and select "apply immediately," it should cause a failover, correct?</p>
  
  <p>With respect to part (2): I am looking specifically for a way of monitoring the failover of an Oracle RDS instance, whether through a lambda function, a bash script, or some other means. As far as I can tell, it is not possible to use ping with RDS, even when I allow all ICMP traffic via the security group. I can connect without trouble using telnet or an SQL client. What I would like though is some way of doing something <em>like</em> periodically pinging the database during a failover to see when the IP associated with the connection string switches over and how long it takes. Any suggestions?</p>