Setting Up RDS IAM Authentication in Elixir with Ecto

Dan Schultzer discusses the advantages of using IAM database authentication for AWS RDS with the Elixer's Ecto library. This authentication method enhances security by using temporary tokens in place of static passwords, avoiding the need for password rotation. Setting it up requires enabling IAM authentication for the RDS instance and the database user, after which tokens generated by AWS services like ExAWS can be used to authenticate database connections. These tokens have a limited lifespan of 15 minutes, ensuring that credentials are regularly refreshed. The implementation involves updating the application's dependency configuration to include necessary libraries, modifying the repo configuration in 'config/runtime.exs', and creating a function, like 'configure_with_auth_token', to dynamically generate the authentication token each time a database connection is made. Dan also addresses a deployment issue where migrations on ECS could be flaky due to the time it takes for ExAWS to provide credentials. To solve this, he recommends adding a waiting mechanism to ensure a database connection is established before migrations run, increasing reliability in deployments.