Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Managing engine updates to your Neptune DB cluster

Determining which engine version you are currently using

You can use the Amazon CLI get-engine-status command to check which engine release version your DB cluster is currently using:

aws neptunedata get-engine-status

The JSON output includes a "dbEngineVersion" field like this:

  "dbEngineVersion": "1.3.0.0",

Check to see what updates are pending and available

You can check pending updates to your DB cluster using the Neptune console. Select Databases in the left column and then select your DB cluster in the databases pane. Pending updates are listed in the Maintenance column. If you select Actions and then Maintenance, you have three choices about what to do:

You can list pending engine updates using the Amazon CLI as follows:

aws neptune describe-pending-maintenance-actions \
  --resource-identifier (ARN of your DB cluster)
  --region (your region) \
  --engine neptune

You can also list available engine updates using the Amazon CLI as follows:

aws neptune describe-db-engine-versions \
  --region (your region) \
  --engine neptune

The list of available engine releases includes only those releases that have a version number higher than the current one and for which an upgrade path is defined.

Always test before you upgrade

When a new major or minor Neptune engine version is released, always test your Neptune applications on it first before upgrading to it. A minor upgrade could introduce new features or behavior that would affect your code even without any breaking change.

Start by comparing the release notes pages from your current version to those of the targeted version to see if there will be changes in query language versions or other breaking changes.

The best way to test a new version before upgrading your production DB cluster is to use the Neptune Blue-Green deployment solution. That way you can run applications and queries on the new version without affecting your production DB cluster.

Always create a manual snapshot before you upgrade

Before performing an upgrade, we strongly recommend that you always create a manual snapshot of your DB cluster. Having an automatic snapshot only offers short-term protection, whereas a manual snapshot remains available until you explicitly delete it.

In certain cases Neptune creates a manual snapshot for you as a part of the upgrade process, but you should not rely on this, and should create your own manual snapshot in any case.

When you are certain that you won't need to revert your DB cluster to its pre-upgrade state, you can explicitly delete the manual snapshot that you created yourself, as well as the manual snapshot that Neptune might have created. If Neptune creates a manual snapshot, it will have a name that begins with preupgrade, followed by the name of your DB cluster, the source engine version, the target engine version, and the date.

Neptune Maintenance Window

The weekly maintenance window is a 30-minute period during which scheduled engine updates and other system changes are applied. Most maintenance events complete during the 30-minute window, although larger maintenance events might sometimes longer to complete.

Every DB cluster has a weekly 30-minute maintenance window. If you don't specify a preferred time for it when you create the DB cluster, Neptune randomly picks a day of the week and then randomly assigns a 30-minute period within it from an 8-hour block of time that varies with the region.

Here, for example, are the 8-hour time blocks for maintence windows used in several Amazon regions:

The maintenance window determines when pending operations start, and most maintenance operations complete within the window, but larger maintenance tasks can continue beyond the window's end time.

Moving your DB cluster maintenance window

Ideally, the your maintenance window should fall at a time when you cluster is at its lowest usage. If that isn't true of your current window, you can move it to a better time, like this:

Using AutoMinorVersionUpgrade to control automatic minor version updates

If you have the AutoMinorVersionUpgrade field set to true in the writer (primary) instance of your DB cluster, minor version updates are applied automatically to all instances in your DB cluster during the next maintenance window after they are released.

If you have the AutoMinorVersionUpgrade field set to false in the writer instance of your DB cluster, they are applied only if you explicitly install them.

You can set AutoMinorVersionUpgrade using the Amazon Web Services Management Console as follows:

You can also use the Amazon CLI to set the AutoMinorVersionUpgrade field. For example, to set it to true, you can use a command like this:

aws neptune modify-db-instance \
  --db-instance-identifier (the ID of your cluster's writer instance) \
  --auto-minor-version-upgrade \
  --apply-immediately

Similarly, to set it to false, use a command like this:

aws neptune modify-db-instance \
  --db-instance-identifier (the ID of your cluster's writer instance) \
  --no-auto-minor-version-upgrade \
  --apply-immediately