Manually upgrading the Confluence PostgreSQL database version of your Amazon RDS database from 9.6 to 10

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

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)

PostgreSQL 12 is not yet supported for Confluence. This means that if your deployment's database is an Amazon RDS instance using PostgreSQL 9.6, you will end up with an unsupported database after April 26, 2022.

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.

  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 > Databases. Screenshot shows a list of databases on the current tenant that can be selected.

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

    Screenshot of RDS that displays a database called 'database-96' and the page has multiple menu options for managing the database. For example, Monitoring, Configuration, Maintenance & backups, Actions, Connectivity & security, etc.

Take a database snapshot

For more information, see Creating a DB 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 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.

    Screenshot showing RDS > Databases and a search for 'database-1-test'. There is a single result which is a PostgreSQL database. there is the option to create a database or 'Restore from S3'. There is also a settings "cog" icon that can be clicked

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

    Screenshot showing 'database-1-test' selected and the 'Actions' menu has been expanded. There is an option to 'Take Snapshot'

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

    Screenshot showing 'Take DB Snapshot'. There is an option to 'Take Snapshot' or 'Cancel' the action

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.

    Screenshot showing RDS > Databases and a search for 'database-1-test'. There is a single result which is a PostgreSQL database. there is the option to create a database or 'Restore from S3'. There is also a settings "cog" icon that can be clicked

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

    Screenshot of the 'Modify DB instance' page which has a list of 'DB engine versions'

  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. 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.

    Screenshot showing the DB modification confirmation screen. There is an option to 'Modify DB instance', 'Cancel' and 'Back'. There are 2 scheduling options for the change. 'Apply during the next scheduled maintenance window'

  5. Click Modify DB Instance to save your changes. For more information, see Manually Upgrading the Engine Version.

  6. 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 Confluence 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 Confluence version does not support PostgreSQL 10, you will also need to upgrade Confluence after the RDS upgrade is complete (before scaling your cluster up to 1 node). Refer to the Upgrading section of Running Confluence on an AWS cluster 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 10, 2025
Platform
Data Center only
Product
Confluence Data Center
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