Aurora cluster maintenance window and minor version upgrades

Question

We have an RDS cluster with 1 writer and 1 reader in the same region but different AZ's
Auto minor version upgrades is enabled.

Currently running 5.7.mysql_aurora.2.09.2
We received an email to say that a new patch version was available to go to 2.09.3

I thought this would be handled by the "auto minor version upgrade" and each instance would upgrade during the instance maintenance window ? However there is currently no pending maintenance for either instance ? Is there a delay between a patch release and automatically being updated ?

That said we have been running 2.09.2 for a while and  2.10.0 and 2.10.1 have been released in the mean time. Should these not have counted as minor upgrades ?

Valter_Rehn · Answer

In addition to the above, [Aurora's Version Policy documentation](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/Aurora.VersionPolicy.html#Aurora.VersionPolicy.AMVU) regarding AMVU, says "*We typically schedule automatic upgrades twice a year for DB clusters that have the Auto minor version upgrade setting set to Yes.*"

Also, you can check if the version you're running has had automatic upgrades scheduled with this [AWS CLI](https://aws.amazon.com/cli/) command:
```
$ aws rds describe-db-engine-versions --output=table --engine aurora-mysql --engine-version 5.7.mysql_aurora.2.09.2
```
At the point in time I'm writing this, 2.09.2 indeed does not have AMVU enabled yet.

Therefore, I'd recommend that you follow the procedure to [upgrade Aurora MySQL by modifying the engine version](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/AuroraUserGuide/AuroraMySQL.Updates.Patching.html#AuroraMySQL.Updates.Patching.ModifyEngineVersion).

Devinder-theDBGuy · Answer

It is indeed a minor version upgrade and if you have "Enable auto minor version upgrade" it should automatically upgrade.

Here are a few helpful hints
Automatic minor version upgrade doesn't apply to the following kinds of Aurora MySQL clusters:
  Multi-master clusters.
  Clusters that are part of an Aurora global database.
  Clusters that have cross-Region replicas.
If any of the DB instances in a cluster don't have the auto minor version upgrade setting turned on, Aurora doesn't automatically upgrade any of the instances in that cluster. Make sure to keep that setting consistent for all the DB instances in the cluster.

Aurora cluster maintenance window and minor version upgrades

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