AWS RDS instances ‐ Health Checks

(05/30/2026)

RDS notification from AWS: You are receiving this message because you have one or more instances running Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL minor versions 14.14, 14.15, 14.16, 14.17, 15.9, 15.10, 15.11, 15.12, 16.5, 16.6, 16.7, 16.8, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, or 11.22-RDS.20241121 which will reach the end of standard support on May 31, 2026. To learn more about the RDS policies related to major and minor version support, please refer to the Database Engine Versions section in RDS FAQs [1].

Starting May 1, 2026, you will not be able to create new database instances on Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL minor versions 14.14, 14.15, 14.16, 14.17, 15.9, 15.10, 15.11, 15.12, 16.5, 16.6, 16.7, 16.8, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, or 11.22-RDS.20241121 from either the AWS Console or the CLI. During a scheduled maintenance window after May 31, 2026, Amazon RDS will automatically upgrade your Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL databases running minor versions 14.14, 14.15, 14.16, 14.17, 15.9, 15.10, 15.11, 15.12, 16.5, 16.6, 16.7, 16.8, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 17.4, or 11.22-RDS.20241121 to version 14.20, 15.15, 16.11, 17.7 (or higher). This also applies to any instances restored from snapshots of these versions.

The affected instances are listed in the 'Affected resources' tab of your AWS Health Dashboard.

This is a mandatory engine version upgrade, and it requires downtime. To minimize the downtime during the upgrade, you can use the fully managed Amazon RDS Blue/Green Deployments Service [2].

We recommend upgrading these instances to newer minor versions to benefit from patches for known security vulnerabilities, as well as bug fixes, performance improvements, and new functionalities added by the PostgreSQL community.

If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to us on AWS re:Post [3] or AWS Support [4]. [1] https://aws.amazon.com/rds/faqs/#database-engine-versions--yfcwi2 [2] https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/new-fully-managed-blue-green-deployments-in-amazon-aurora-and-amazon-rds/ [3] https://repost.aws [4] https://aws.amazon.com/support --- Reference: https://health.aws.amazon.com/health/home?region=us-east-1#/event-log?eventID=arn:aws:health:us-east-1::event/RDS/AWS_RDS_PLANNED_LIFECYCLE_EVENT/AWS_RDS_PLANNED_LIFECYCLE_EVENT_2bc1e3e85ae0b315f0a48876b497dc93f9c7a45bfd09e3b0a4afb493bd6ef2ac&eventTab=details

Message metadata Affected account 9923XXXXXXXX Event type code AWS_RDS_PLANNED_LIFECYCLE_EVENT Event region us-east-1 Service RDS Event type category scheduledChange Start time Sun, 31 May 2026 08:00:00 GMT

Instance Engine Checks -
saayam-dev-rds: us-east-1: 16.8
ireland-saayam-database: eu-west-1: 16.10
stockholm-saayam-database: eu-north-1a: 16.10

Target Version: You should aim to upgrade all instances to the latest stable minor version, which, according to the notification, is 14.20, 15.15, 16.11, 17.7 (or higher).
Note: It is highly recommended to stick to the same major version (16.x) and upgrade to the latest minor version (which is at least 16.11 or higher, such as 16.14) rather than jumping to 17.7. Moving from 16.10 to 16.14 is a "minor" upgrade. These are designed to be low-risk, backward-compatible, and do not change the internal data format of your database. They contain only security patches and bug fixes. Moving from 16.x to 17.x is a "major" upgrade. This changes the internal storage format and system tables. It is significantly more complex, carries a higher risk of breaking application queries, and requires more rigorous testing (like dump/reload or pg_upgrade).
Since the Ireland and Stockholm instances are already on 16.10, upgrading to a newer 16.x version will be the safest and fastest way to comply with the AWS requirement without requiring a major overhaul of the application code.

Use Blue/Green Deployments: As we discussed, use the Blue/Green Deployment feature in the RDS console. This is the safest way to perform the upgrade because it creates a "Green" environment (staging) on the chosen version. It allows you to verify your application works correctly against the new version. It performs a near-zero-downtime "Switchover" when you are ready.