title: Amazon RDS - Online only when needed?
body: <p>I had a question about Amazon RDS. I only need the database online for about 2 hours a day but I am dealing with quite a large database at around 1gb. </p>
  
  <p>I have two main questions:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>Can I automate bringing my RDS database online and offline via scripts to save money?</p></li>
  <li><p>When I put a RDS offline to stop the "work hours" counter running and billing me, when I bring it back online will it still have the same content (i.e will all my data stay there, or will it have to be a blank DB?). If so, is there any way around this rather than backing up to S3 and reimporting it every time?</p></li>
  </ol>