Correct procedure to upgrade PostgreSQL database on AWS

[Horace Su]

Hi,

We are running JIRA and Confluence on AWS using RDS PostgreSQL v9.3, as Amazon has announced v9.3 will be EOL starting on September 5th, 2018, we plan to upgrade them to v9.6.

(Ref: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/ann.jspa?annID=5725)

It looks like RDS can do one-click self-upgrade, so I am wondering if that's all we need to do? (shut down services and perform self-upgrade, then start the services)

or there's a standard/recommended procedure to do it?

e.g.:
1. shut down the services
2. export the database dump
3. prepare v9.6 RDS instance
4. import the database dump to the new instance

Please advise the best practice that won't cause any data loss, thanks.

[Craig Castle-Mead]

Suggest snapshotting the 9.5 instance and re-deploying to a non-production environment, then letting the AWS auto-upgrade run it's process, then test away!

If that doesn't work, then try a dump from 9.5 and restore to clean non-production 9.6

CCM