Postgres major version upgrades on Hybrid Manager

Major version upgrades allow you to access new features, enhancements, and performance improvements introduced in the latest version of PostgreSQL. However, they may include changes that are not backward-compatible, requiring careful planning and validation.

Major version upgrades typically occur annually and can bring significant advancements, such as new SQL functionality, enhanced performance, or improved compatibility with modern standards.

To ensure a smooth upgrade process, it's essential to test your applications and extensions against the new version and review the release notes for deprecated or modified features.

With Hybrid Manager (HM), users can manage major version upgrades at their discretion. Once a new major version has been validated and published, it soon becomes available in HM's image library, enabling controlled upgrades for existing clusters.

While major upgrades offer significant benefits, they require careful preparation.

It is strongly recommended to perform a full backup of your cluster and validate a comprehensive recovery plan before proceeding. This ensures you can restore your data if any compatibility or operational issues arise during the upgrade process.

Prerequisites

The prerequisites to get started are to have a cluster created with HM up and in a healthy state.

To ensure the cluster is in a healthy state, from the cluster's main page, select the Monitoring tab. Now check the cluster and database metrics and make sure everything is operating and all metrics are within the defined acceptable parameters.

Upgrade the PG major version of an existing instance/cluster created with HM

1. First, from the cluster's main page, select Quick Action>Upgrade Cluster and then choose Major Upgrade.

2. The Upgrade Cluster — Major dialogue window opens.

3. Select your preferred new major version image.

4. Review the upgrade path and confirm by selecting the Continue button.

5. The dialogue window now shows the specific package changes to be expected with the upgrade. Review these and select Upgrade Cluster if everything looks as correct.

6. The upgrade is applied automatically. You can then use the Health Status, Monitoring, and Logs tabs to monitor the process and/or troubleshoot any unexpected behavior.

Rollback considerations

There is no automatic rollback available with this approach and performing a downgrade is not recommended. To undo the minor upgrade, restore from the latest backup in a new cluster running the preferred minor version and switching application workloads over to the new cluster. You can then delete the PG minor upgraded cluster or troubleshoot it further.