Manually upgrading the PostgreSQL version of your Amazon RDS database from 9.5 to 9.6

Platform Notice: Data Center Only - This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Data Center platform.

Note that this KB was created for the Data Center version of the product. Data Center KBs for non-Data-Center-specific features may also work for Server versions of the product, however they have not been tested. Support for Server* products ended on February 15th 2024. If you are running a Server product, you can visit the Atlassian Server end of support announcement to review your migration options.

*Except Fisheye and Crucible

Summary

Platform Notice: This article only applies to Atlassian products on the Server and Data Center platforms attached to an Amazon RDS database.

Confluence Data Center deployments created through our AWS Quick Starts are not affected.

Starting March 16, 2021 Amazon will start upgrading all Amazon RDS instances using PostgreSQL 9.5 to 12. You can read about it on their announcement here.

PostgreSQL 12 is not supported for Confluence yet. This means that if your deployment's database is an Amazon RDS instance using PostgreSQL 9.5, you will end up with an unsupported database after March 16, 2021

Solution

To prevent being upgraded to an unsupported database, you'll have to manually upgrade your database instance. We recommend you upgrade to PostgreSQL 9.6, as this version will differ the least from 9.5. This version is also supported across most versions of Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket Server, and Crowd.

ℹ️ Checking your database instance's PostgreSQL version

Remember, your database instance will only be upgraded to PostgreSQL 12 if it's using PostgreSQL 9.5 in an Amazon RDS. Otherwise, your database should be safe from the upgrade.

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, use the region selector in the navigation bar to choose the AWS Region for your deployment, and open the AWS RDS console at http://console.aws.amazon.com/rds.

  2. In the navigation pane, click Databases. From there, select your database instance. You can use the search bar to filter instances by name.

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  3. On your database instance's Summary screen, click the Configuration tab. You can view the Engine version from there.

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If your Engine version is 9.5.x and up, your instance is safe.

💡 Take a database snapshot

Before you upgrade your database instance's PostgreSQL engine version, we recommend that you take a snapshot of your database.

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, use the region selector in the navigation bar to choose the AWS Region for your deployment, and open the AWS RDS console at http://console.aws.amazon.com/rds.

  2. In the navigation pane, click Databases. From there, select your database instance. You can use the search bar to filter instances by name.

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  3. From the Actions drop-down, select Take snapshot.

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  4. The Take DB Snapshot page appears. Enter a name for your snapshot and click Take Snapshot.

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For more information, see Creating a DB Snapshot.

To upgrade your database instance's PostgreSQL engine version from 9.5 to 9.6:

  1. Sign in to the AWS Management Console, use the region selector in the navigation bar to choose the AWS Region for your deployment, and open the AWS RDS console at http://console.aws.amazon.com/rds.

  2. In the navigation pane, click Databases. From there, select your database instance. You can use the search bar to filter instances by name.

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  3. Click Modify. The Modify DB Instance page appears. From there, select PostgreSQL 9.6.20-R1 from the DB engine version drop-down selection.

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  4. Choose Continue and check the summary of modifications. By default, the database engine version upgrade will be queued and applied on the next scheduled maintenance window.

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    If you prefer to apply the changes immediately, choose Apply immediately. This option can cause an outage in some cases. For more information, see Using the Apply Immediately Setting.

  5. Click Modify DB Instance to save your changes.

For more information, see Manually Upgrading the Engine Version.

Updated on April 16, 2025

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