diff --git a/release/get_db.sh b/release/get_db.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..8bfe0896ac60e5f75cff1c901b8ebb3c162e2e3e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/release/get_db.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,22 @@
+mountpoint=/media/disk1
+
+# get compressed graph db from S3
+echo "Getting compressed graph db from S3 - START" 
+date
+aws s3 --region=us-east-2 cp s3://ebi-pdbe/neo4j/graph_data/next/graph.db.bz2 $mountpoint/
+date
+echo "Getting compressed graph db from S3 - END" 
+
+mv $mountpoint/graph.db.bz2 $mountpoint/neo4j_data/databases/graph.db/
+
+# uncompress graph data
+echo "Uncompress graph db - START"
+cd $mountpoint/neo4j_data/databases/graph.db
+date
+pbzip2 -dc graph.db.bz2 | tar x
+date
+rm graph.db.bz2
+echo "Uncompress graph db - END"
+
+# echo "Starting Neo4J"
+$NEO4J_HOME/bin/neo4j start
diff --git a/release/neo4j.conf b/release/neo4j.conf
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..a14772572aa9244418f617b9fe1f53993da353b8
--- /dev/null
+++ b/release/neo4j.conf
@@ -0,0 +1,7 @@
+dbms.security.auth_enabled=false
+dbms.connectors.default_listen_address=0.0.0.0
+dbms.read_only=false
+dbms.security.procedures.unrestricted=apoc.*,org.pdbe.*
+dbms.memory.heap.initial_size=110g
+dbms.memory.heap.max_size=110g
+dbms.memory.pagecache.size=10g
diff --git a/release/startup.sh b/release/startup.sh
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..56dbeddb7e05ca02ba736b887f2f636643a1eb8e
--- /dev/null
+++ b/release/startup.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,28 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+# update yum
+yum update -y
+
+# get the SSD device name
+device=$(lsblk | grep xvdb | cut -d' ' -f1)
+
+# create an ext4 partition on the disk
+mkfs.ext4 -E nodiscard -m0 /dev/$device
+
+# create a mount point
+mountpoint=/media/disk1
+sudo mkdir -p $mountpoint
+
+# mount the device
+mount -o discard /dev/$device $mountpoint
+
+# create directories for neo4j data
+mkdir -p $mountpoint/neo4j_data/databases/graph.db
+mkdir -p $mountpoint/neo4j_data/dbms
+
+# provide ownership to ec2-user user
+chown -R ec2-user:ec2-user $mountpoint
+
+# get pdbe graph extensions
+aws s3 cp s3://ebi-pdbe/neo4j/pdbe-extensions-1.0.2-SNAPSHOT.jar .
+mv pdbe-extensions-1.0.2-SNAPSHOT.jar $NEO4J_HOME/plugins/
diff --git a/release/userdata_script b/release/userdata_script
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000000000000000000000000000000000..b3f328bdc568c44f27fe0253f0dd7537c0d93296
--- /dev/null
+++ b/release/userdata_script
@@ -0,0 +1,10 @@
+#!/bin/bash
+
+yum update -y
+yum install git -y
+
+git clone https://gitlab.ebi.ac.uk/sreenath/pdbe-neo4j-aws.git
+cd pdbe-neo4j-aws
+chmod -R 755 .
+./setup.sh release
+
diff --git a/setup.sh b/setup.sh
index f24260cb588bd975d3bf76a6dd0e369e9e965d33..5fd491a614df9a6f7393742c3dfd85b071c5db39 100755
--- a/setup.sh
+++ b/setup.sh
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 
 env=$1
 
-[[ $env != "highspec" && $env != "playground" ]] && echo "Usage: bash setup.sh <env (highspec or playground)>" && exit 1
+[[ $env != "highspec" && $env != "playground" && $env != "release" ]] && echo "Usage: bash setup.sh <env (highspec, playground or release)>" && exit 1
 
 echo "Setting up $env machine"