Postgres minor version upgrades on HM

Minor version upgrades use the same procedure regardless of the cluster type (Single Node, Primary/Standby, Distributed) and Postgres database type (PostgreSQL community, EDB Postgres Extended Server, EDB Postgres Advanced Server).

Minor version releases include bug fixes, security patches, and backward-compatible improvements. These are typically issued at least once every three months.

Minor releases of PG don't introduce new features or breaking changes, so it's recommended to adopt them as soon as they are released. Even if your PG cluster is running multiple minor versions behind, the recommendation is to adopt the latest minor version available.

Users have full control over when new versions are available with Hybrid Control Plane (HM). Once validated and published, new version images are available in HM's image library and available for upgrades on any existing cluster.

Although minor upgrades are ideally frequent and low risk, the recommended best practice is to always have up-to-date backups and a recovery plan in place before proceeding with the upgrade.

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 minor 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 Minor Upgrade.

2. The Upgrade Cluster — Minor dialogue window opens.

3. Select your preferred new minor 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.