Postgres Vision 2021

The PostgreSQL community releases new major versions of PostgreSQL on about a yearly basis.  Each major version is supported by the community for a period of five years after its initial release.  During the five year support period, minor version updates, which include bug fixes and any needed security fixes, are released at least once every quarter.  After five years, a major version will receive a final minor release and be considered end of life and no longer supported.  This means that organizations who are using PostgreSQL will normally need to consider performing an upgrade to a newer major version at some point.  

Although it might be tempting to kick the can on an upgrade down the road to the end of the five year support period, such a decision can result in unforeseen issues or challenges that might otherwise have been avoided with more advanced planning.

In this presentation, we will discuss different factors to consider for an upgrade, some best practices that can be implemented early on that can make future upgrades smoother, and a high level overview of some of the more common upgrade approaches.