Every once in a while it is handy to be able to access an Amazon RDS Database Instance remotely from a desktop. ssh -i <strong>YOUR-AMAZON-PRIVATE-KEY</strong>.pem -l <strong>YOUR-AMAZON-RDS-USERNAME</strong> -L 33060:<strong>YOUR-AMAZON-RDS-PRIVATE-IPADDRESS</strong>:3306 -N ec2-usr@<strong>YOUR-AMAZON-EC2-INSTANCE-PUBLIC-ADDRESS</strong> Note: YOURAMAZONRDSPRIVATEIPADDRESS needs to be the AWS internal RDS IP Address – not the external hostname You can then connect to RDS using mysql commands or any GUI tool such as MySQL Workbench via localhost:33060 Thanks to: Dirk Taggesell via AWS Forums