How do I perform a major version upgrade of my Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible global database?

Resolution

Important: Before you perform the major version upgrade in your production environment, test your production DB cluster on the upgraded version. The upgrade process requires downtime. It's a best practice to perform the upgrade during your planned maintenance window.

When you perform the major version upgrade of your Aurora PostgreSQL-Compatible global database, you can't apply a custom parameter group to the global database cluster. Instead, create your custom parameter groups in each AWS Region of the global cluster. Then, manually apply the parameter groups to the Regional clusters after the upgrade.

Note: If you receive errors when you run AWS Command Line Interface (AWS CLI) commands, then see Troubleshooting errors for the AWS CLI. Also, make sure that you're using the most recent AWS CLI version.

Disable rds.global_db_rpo

The rds.global_db_rpo parameter is turned off by default. If you turned on the parameter, then you must turn off the parameter to perform a major upgrade.

If you set a recovery point objective (RPO) on the global DB cluster, then turn off the rds.global_db_rpo parameter before you upgrade to a major version. Major version upgrades fail when RPO is turned on, and you receive an error message that's similar to the following:

"Error: We're sorry, your request to modify global database GlobalCluster-GCTest has failed. Primary cluster can't have RPO setting enabled during major version upgrade."

To reset the rds.global_db_rpo parameter, you can use the Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) console of the AWS CLI. For more information, see Resetting parameters in a DB cluster parameter group in Amazon Aurora.

Perform the major version upgrade

Prerequisite: Confirm that the version that you want to upgrade to is available in your Region.

Use the Aurora and RDS console

Complete the following steps:

1. Open the Aurora and RDS console.
2. In the navigation pane, choose Databases, and then select the global database that you want to upgrade.
   Note: Choose the top-level item under Databases. To confirm that you chose the correct item, choose Role and look for Global database.
3. Choose Modify.
4. On the Modify DB cluster page, for Engine version, choose the latest version.
5. Choose Continue, and then review the summary of modifications.
6. To immediately apply the changes, choose Apply immediately.
   Note: This option might cause unexpected downtime for the database instance.
7. Choose Modify cluster to save your changes.

Use the AWS CLI

Run the modify-global-cluster command:

aws rds modify-global-cluster --global-cluster-identifier cluster_global_identifier --engine-version engnie_version --allow-major-version-upgrade

Note: Replace cluster_global_identifier with your identifier and engine_version with your engine version.

Related information

Upgrading an Amazon Aurora global database

DB cluster parameter groups for Amazon Aurora DB clusters