Upgrading a DB instance engine version

Amazon RDS provides newer versions of each supported database engine so you can keep your DB instance up-to-date. Newer versions can include bug fixes, security enhancements, and other improvements for the database engine. When Amazon RDS supports a new version of a database engine, you can choose how and when to upgrade your database DB instances.

There are two kinds of upgrades: major version upgrades and minor version upgrades. In general, a major engine version upgrade can introduce changes that are not compatible with existing applications. In contrast, a minor version upgrade includes only changes that are backward-compatible with existing applications.

For Multi-AZ DB clusters, major version upgrades are only supported for RDS for PostgreSQL. Minor version upgrades are supported for all engines that support Multi-AZ DB clusters. For more information, see Upgrading the engine version of a Multi-AZ DB cluster for Amazon RDS.

The version numbering sequence is specific to each database engine. For example, RDS for MySQL 5.7 and 8.0 are major engine versions and upgrading from any 5.7 version to any 8.0 version is a major version upgrade. RDS for MySQL version 5.7.22 and 5.7.23 are minor versions and upgrading from 5.7.22 to 5.7.23 is a minor version upgrade.

For more information about major and minor version upgrades for a specific DB engine, see the following documentation for your DB engine:

For major version upgrades, you must manually modify the DB engine version through the AWS Management Console, AWS CLI, or RDS API. For minor version upgrades, you can manually modify the engine version, or you can choose to enable the Auto minor version upgrade option.

Manually upgrading the engine version

To manually upgrade the engine version of a DB instance, you can use the AWS Management Console, the AWS CLI, or the RDS API.

aws rds modify-db-instance \
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance \
    --engine-version new_version \
    --allow-major-version-upgrade \
    --no-apply-immediately

aws rds modify-db-instance ^
    --db-instance-identifier mydbinstance ^
    --engine-version new_version ^
    --allow-major-version-upgrade ^
    --no-apply-immediately

Automatically upgrading the minor engine version

A minor engine version is an update to a DB engine version within a major engine version. For example, a major engine version might be 9.6 with the minor engine versions 9.6.11 and 9.6.12 within it.

If you want Amazon RDS to upgrade the DB engine version of a database automatically, you can enable auto minor version upgrades for the database.

RDS for SQL Server currently does not support automatic minor version updates.

How automatic minor version upgrades work

Amazon RDS designates a minor engine version as the preferred minor engine version when the following conditions are met:

RDS schedules the upgrades to run automatically in the maintenance window. During the upgrade, RDS performs the following basic steps:

Automatic upgrades incur downtime. The length of the downtime depends on various factors, including the DB engine type and the size of the database.

Turning on automatic minor version upgrades

You can control whether auto minor version upgrade is enabled for a DB instance when you perform the following tasks:

When you perform these tasks, you can control whether auto minor version upgrade is enabled for the DB instance in the following ways:

Determining the availability of maintenance updates

To determine whether a maintenance update, such as a DB engine version upgrade, is available for your DB instance, you can use the console, AWS CLI, or RDS API. You can also upgrade the DB engine version manually and adjust the maintenance window. For more information, see Maintaining a DB instance.

Finding automatic minor version upgrade targets

You can use the following AWS CLI command to determine the current automatic minor upgrade target version for a specified minor DB engine version in a specific AWS Region. You can find the possible --engine values for this command in the description for the Engine parameter in CreateDBInstance.

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds describe-db-engine-versions \
--engine engine \
--engine-version minor-version \
--region region \
--query "DBEngineVersions[*].ValidUpgradeTarget[*].{AutoUpgrade:AutoUpgrade,EngineVersion:EngineVersion}" \
--output text

For Windows:

aws rds describe-db-engine-versions ^
--engine engine ^
--engine-version minor-version ^
--region region ^
--query "DBEngineVersions[*].ValidUpgradeTarget[*].{AutoUpgrade:AutoUpgrade,EngineVersion:EngineVersion}" ^
--output text

For example, the following AWS CLI command determines the automatic minor upgrade target for MySQL minor version 8.0.11 in the US East (Ohio) AWS Region (us-east-2).

For Linux, macOS, or Unix:

aws rds describe-db-engine-versions \
--engine mysql \
--engine-version 8.0.11 \
--region us-east-2 \
--query "DBEngineVersions[*].ValidUpgradeTarget[*].{AutoUpgrade:AutoUpgrade,EngineVersion:EngineVersion}" \
--output table

For Windows:

aws rds describe-db-engine-versions ^
--engine mysql ^
--engine-version 8.0.11 ^
--region us-east-2 ^
--query "DBEngineVersions[*].ValidUpgradeTarget[*].{AutoUpgrade:AutoUpgrade,EngineVersion:EngineVersion}" ^
--output table

Your output is similar to the following.

----------------------------------
|    DescribeDBEngineVersions    |
+--------------+-----------------+
|  AutoUpgrade |  EngineVersion  |
+--------------+-----------------+
|  False       |  8.0.15         |
|  False       |  8.0.16         |
|  False       |  8.0.17         |
|  False       |  8.0.19         |
|  False       |  8.0.20         |
|  False       |  8.0.21         |
|  True        |  8.0.23         |
|  False       |  8.0.25         |
+--------------+-----------------+

In this example, the AutoUpgrade value is True for MySQL version 8.0.23. So, the automatic minor upgrade target is MySQL version 8.0.23, which is highlighted in the output.