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Upgrading an RDS database

Minor version upgrades

You can do these easily in the RDS console (be aware they will cause some downtime).

Major version upgrades

For some reason, the RDS console doesn't actually allow you to perform major version upgrades - a flag required to do so is missing. You'll get this error if you try it:

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You need to perform this operation using AWS Cloudshell instead. The syntax is thus:

aws rds modify-db-instance --db-instance-identifier "<your RDS database identifier>" \
  --engine-version "<the engine version to upgrade to, e.g. 10.11.6>" \
  --db-parameter-group-name "<your parameter group for the engine version>" \
  --allow-major-version-upgrade \
  --apply-immediately \
  --region "<the AWS region of your RDS database>"

Make sure you have a parameter group created for the new engine version you intend to use.

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