Manually upgrading the PostgreSQL version of your Amazon RDS database from 9.6 to 10 in Bitbucket Data Center

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: AWS only

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

Note, there are some additional steps for deployments created through our AWS Quick Starts.

Starting April 26, 2022, Amazon will start upgrading all Amazon RDS instances using PostgreSQL 9.6 to PostgreSQL 12. Read more about this in their announcement.

This date was originally April 18, 2022 but on 17th January, Amazon announced that they were extending the EOL process until April 26, 2022. This is an additional 14 weeks on the original date.

Support for PostgreSQL 12 was added in Bitbucket Server and Data Center 7.4. If you are using an earlier version of Bitbucket and your deployment's database is an Amazon RDS instance using PostgreSQL 9.6, you may end up with an unsupported database after April 26, 2022.

Some versions may support PostgreSQL 12

To check if your Bitbucket version supports PostgreSQL 12, go to Supported platforms. From there, select the correct version of your product from the drop-down.

Solution

To prevent being upgraded to an unsupported database, you'll have to manually upgrade your database instance. We recommend you upgrade to PostgreSQL 10, as this version will differ the least from 9.6. This version is also supported across most versions of Jira, Confluence, Bitbucket Server, and Crowd.

Check your database instance's PostgreSQL version

Remember, your database instance will only be automatically upgraded to PostgreSQL 12 if it's using PostgreSQL 9.6 in an Amazon RDS. Otherwise, your database should be safe from the upgrade.

How to check the database instance's PostgreSQL version:

  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 https://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.

    Amazon RDS console - Databases option

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

    Database instance's Summary screen, Configuration tab

If your Engine version is higher than 9.6, your instance will not be automatically upgraded. If it is 9.6, you'll need to manually upgrade it.

Take a database snapshot

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

Instructions on how to take a database snapshot on AWS:

  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 https://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.

    Amazon RDS console - Databases option

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

    Amazon RDS database - option Take snapshot

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

    Amazon RDS database - Page Take Snapshot

For more information, see Creating a DB Snapshot.

Upgrade

To upgrade your database instance's PostgreSQL engine version from 9.6 to 10:

  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 https://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.

    Amazon RDS console - Databases option

  3. Click Modify. The Modify DB Instance page appears. From there, select 10.18 from the DB engine version drop-down selection.

    Modify DB instance page in Amazon RDS, where as DB engine version we select 10.18

  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.

    Screen to confirm modifications to the DB instance

    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.

After upgrading, we recommend you run ANALYZE. Analyze collects statistics about the contents of tables in the database, which the query planner can use to help determine the most efficient execution plans for queries.

Additional steps if you use our QuickStart templates

If your current Bitbucket version supports PostgreSQL 10:

  1. Scale your instance down to zero nodes.

  2. Follow the steps above to manually upgrade the Postgres RDS instance from 9.6 to 10.

    Important note

    Don't change the DBEngineVersion parameter in the template, as this will result in a DBGroup error.

  3. Wait for the RDS upgrade to complete.

  4. Scale your cluster up to 1 node first, check everything is working with no issues, then you can scale your cluster back up to the ideal number.

If your current Bitbucket version does not support PostgreSQL, you will also need to upgrade Bitbucket after the RDS upgrade is complete (before scaling your cluster up to 1 node). Refer to the Upgrading section of Administering Bitbucket Data Center in AWS for full details of how to upgrade.

Note that the DBEngineVersion parameter in the QuickStart template will continue to be set to version 9.6. If you try to change this parameter you will get a DBGroup error. As long as your application is connected to the new database version, there shouldn't be any problems.

Updated on June 25, 2025

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