Postgres major version upgrades Innovation Release

Major version upgrades let you access new features, enhancements, and performance improvements introduced in the latest version of PostgreSQL. However, they may include changes that aren't 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), you can manage major version upgrades at your 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.

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

Major version upgrades by database cluster type

You can upgrade Postgres major versions on any supported cluster type:

• You can upgrade single-node and high-availability clusters using the in-place, offline upgrade procedure.

• Advanced high-availability (AHA) and distributed high-availability (DHA) clusters support an in-place, online upgrade procedure.

• Alternatively, DHA clusters also support zero-downtime major upgrades using a blue-green deployment approach.

Rollback considerations

No automatic rollback is available for major version upgrades, and we don't recommend performing a downgrade. To undo the major upgrade, restore from the latest backup in a new cluster running the preferred major version and switch application workloads over to the new cluster. You can then delete the Postgres major upgraded cluster or troubleshoot it further.