Major version upgrades in Aurora MySQL

Determine the upgrade technique

Based on the needs for your Aurora MySQL-Compatible cluster, choose among the multiple upgrade techniques, such as:

• In-place upgrade
• Snapshot restore
• Blue-green upgrade

Review the Aurora MySQL major version upgrade paths table to choose the appropriate upgrade path for your Aurora MySQL cluster.

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Plan your upgrade

Before you perform a major version upgrade for your Aurora MySQL cluster, complete the preparation steps. With this preparation, you can perform a simulation of the upgrade before doing the real upgrade. This technique can be especially useful for production clusters.

If you have an Aurora MySQL cluster that's currently running version 2.x and you want to upgrade it to Aurora MySQL-Compatible version 3.x, complete the required planning steps.

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Upgrade your cluster

Aurora MySQL performs a major version upgrade as a multistage process. You can check the current status of an upgrade. After the upgrade process begins, it runs until the upgrade either succeeds or fails. You can't cancel the upgrade while it's underway. If the upgrade fails, Aurora rolls back all the changes and your cluster has the same engine version, metadata, and so on as before.

After you complete the upgrade planning and testing, upgrade the major version of your Aurora MySQL cluster.

If your Aurora MySQL cluster is currently running version 2.x and you want to upgrade it to Aurora MySQL-Compatible version 3.x, you can't perform an in-place upgrade. Amazon Aurora versions 2.x are MySQL 5.7 compatible and Amazon Aurora versions 3.x are MySQL 8.0 compatible. Currently, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) doesn't allow in-place upgrade of Aurora MySQL 2.x clusters to Aurora MySQL 3.x. In-place upgrades apply only to Aurora MySQL 1.x clusters to Aurora MySQL 2.x.

Upgrade your Amazon Aurora MySQL DB cluster from version 2.x to version 3.x using one of these methods:

• Take a snapshot of your DB cluster and then restore it to Aurora MySQL 3.x.
• Set up manual replication to switch your service.
• Use the AWS Database Migration Service (AWS DMS) to migrate your service.

Note: Downtime varies depending on the method that you use.

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Troubleshoot upgrade issues

For in-place upgrade issues, see Troubleshooting for Aurora MySQL in-place upgrade.

If your upgrade to Aurora MySQL version 3 doesn't complete successfully, see Troubleshooting upgrade issues with Aurora MySQL version 3.

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Related re:Post Questions

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Related resources

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