PGO v4 to PGO v5

You can upgrade from PGO v4 to PGO v5 through a variety of methods by following this guide. There are several methods that can be used to upgrade: we present these methods based upon a variety of factors, including but not limited to:

  • Redundancy / ability to roll back
  • Available resources
  • Downtime preferences

These methods include:

  • Migrating Using Data Volumes. This allows you to migrate from v4 to v5 using the existing data volumes that you created in v4. This is the simplest method for upgrade and is the most resource efficient, but you will have a greater potential for downtime using this method.
  • Migrate From Backups. This allows you to create a Postgres cluster with v5 from the backups taken with v4. This provides a way for you to create a preview of your Postgres cluster through v5, but you would need to take your applications offline to ensure all the data is migrated.
  • Migrate Using a Standby Cluster. This allows you to run a v4 and a v5 Postgres cluster in parallel, with data replicating from the v4 cluster to the v5 cluster. This method minimizes downtime and lets you preview your v5 environment, but is the most resource intensive.

You should choose the method that makes the most sense for your environment.

Prerequisites

There are several prerequisites for using any of these upgrade methods.

  • PGO v4 is currently installed within the Kubernetes cluster, and is actively managing any existing v4 PostgreSQL clusters.
  • Any PGO v4 clusters being upgraded have been properly initialized using PGO v4, which means the v4 pgcluster custom resource should be in a pgcluster Initialized status:

    $ kubectl get pgcluster hippo -o jsonpath='{ .status }'
    {"message":"Cluster has been initialized","state":"pgcluster Initialized"}
    
  • The PGO v4 pgo client is properly configured and available for use.

  • PGO v5 is currently installed within the Kubernetes cluster.

For these examples, we will use a Postgres cluster named hippo.

Additional Considerations

Upgrading to PGO v5 may result in a base image upgrade from EL-7 (UBI / CentOS) to EL-8 (UBI). Based on the contents of your Postgres database, you may need to perform additional steps.

Due to changes in the GNU C library glibc in EL-8, you may need to reindex certain indexes in your Postgres cluster. For more information, please read the PostgreSQL Wiki on Locale Data Changes, how you can determine if your indexes are affected, and how to fix them.