RDS DB Instance minor version upgrade

SUMANGALAS

2024.06.12

Introduction

The newer minor versions of the RDS database engine bring small updates, such as the latest security fixes and other improvements. These updates only make modifications that are compatible with existing applications. You can upgrade your RDS DB instance to the latest minor versions in two ways:

Enable the "auto minor version upgrade" option, which automatically upgrades to new minor versions as they are released.
Manually upgrade your database to a newer minor version.

Optimize your database performance and security with minor version upgrades. This article describes how to find and upgrade your RDS DB instance to the latest minor versions.

Prerequisites:

For this article, I have created an Amazon RDS for MySQL with the following settings:

Engine version: 8.0.32 (not a latest version)
Auto minor version upgrade option: disabled

How to Check for RDS Recommendations

You can use Trusted Advisor or the "Recommendations" option from the Amazon RDS Console to check for recommendations related to RDS minor version upgrades.

Trusted Advisor

Navigate to the Trusted Advisor Console and choose Security.
Search for RDS checks, and you can find the check Amazon RDS engine minor version upgrade is required, which contains a list of databases with recommendations for version upgrades.

"Recommendations" from the Amazon RDS Console

Navigate to the Amazon RDS Console.
Select [Databases -> then choose your DB instance -> Recommendations tab], or select Recommendations directly from the left navigation pane and search for the recommendation related to version upgrades.

Open the recommendation to find more details about the version upgrade.

How to upgrade DB instance engine version

Here, we will see two ways to upgrade the engine version:

Manual version upgrade
Automate version upgrade.

Manual Version Upgrade

Navigate to the Amazon RDS Console.
Select Databases and then choose your DB instance that you want to upgrade.
Then click on Modify.

Select the engine version from the list and click Continue.

For Schedule modifications, select Apply immediately and Modify the DB instance.

Once the DB Instance is upgraded, you can see that the engine version has been changed from the console.

Automate version upgrade

Manually upgrade the DB instance to the latest minor version, and then enable the "auto minor version upgrade" option so that the next time new versions are released, the database engine version gets automatically upgraded.

Navigate to the Amazon RDS Console.
Select Databases and then choose your DB instance that you want to upgrade.
Then click on Modify.
check Enable auto minor version upgrade under Maintenance and apply changes immediately.
With this, the database engine version gets automatically upgraded whenever there is a new release.