How to Schedule Automatic Software Updates for PostgreSQL Database Clusters

Validated on 2 Aug 2019 • Last edited on 7 Jun 2023

PostgreSQL is an open source, object-relational database built for extensibility, data integrity, and speed. Its concurrency support makes it fully ACID-compliant, and it supports dynamic loading and catalog-driven operations to let users customize its data types, functions, and more.

DigitalOcean fully manages database software updates for database clusters on your behalf. During the update process, we create a new cluster with OS-level or db_engine updates applied, replicate the existing cluster’s data, and then update DNS (which changes the cluster’s underlying IP address).

There is no downtime associated with these updates, but there may be brief periods of latency during the maintenance window. Updates are necessary for security and stability, so you can’t disable them, but you can customize the maintenance window or manually initiate an available update.

Set a Maintenance Window Using the CLI

How to Set a Maintenance Window Using the DigitalOcean CLI

  1. Install doctl, the DigitalOcean command-line tool.

  2. Create a personal access token and save it for use with doctl.

  3. Use the token to grant doctl access to your DigitalOcean account.

              doctl auth init

  4. Finally, run doctl databases maintenance-window update. Basic usage looks like this, but you can read the usage docs for more details:

                doctl databases maintenance-window update <database-cluster-id> [flags]

    The following example updates the maintenance window for a database cluster with the ID ca9f591d-f38h-5555-a0ef-1c02d1d1e35:

                  doctl databases maintenance-window update ca9f591d-f38h-5555-a0ef-1c02d1d1e35 --day tuesday --hour 16:00

Set a Maintenance Window Using the API

How to Set a Maintenance Window Using the DigitalOcean API

  1. Create a personal access token and save it for use with the API.

  2. Send a PUT request to https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/databases/{database_cluster_uuid}/maintenance

    cURL

    Using cURL:

                    curl -X PUT \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN" \
  -d '{"day": "tuesday", "hour": "14:00"}' \
  "https://api.digitalocean.com/v2/databases/9cc10173-e9ea-4176-9dbc-a4cee4c4ff30/maintenance"

    Go

    Using Godo, the official DigitalOcean V2 API client for Go: 

                    import (
    "context"
    "os"

    "github.com/digitalocean/godo"
)

func main() {
    token := os.Getenv("DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN")

    client := godo.NewFromToken(token)
    ctx := context.TODO()

    maintenanceRequest := &godo.DatabaseUpdateMaintenanceRequest{
        Day:  "thursday",
        Hour: "16:00",
    }

    _, err := client.Databases.UpdateMaintenance(ctx, "88055188-9e54-4f21-ab11-8a918ed79ee2", maintenanceRequest)
}

    Python

                    import os
from pydo import Client

client = Client(token=os.environ.get("DIGITALOCEAN_TOKEN"))

req = {
  "day": "tuesday",
  "hour": "14:00"
}

update_resp = client.databases.update_maintenance_window(database_cluster_uuid="a7a8bas", body=req)

Set a Maintenance Window Using the Control Panel

Note
The maintenance window for a cluster applies to its primary node and any standby nodes. Each read-only node has its own maintenance window that is independent of the cluster and other read-only nodes.

You can view or edit a cluster or read-only node’s current maintenance window from its Settings page, in the Maintenance Window section.

Screenshot of cluster settings page

Software updates may begin at any time in the 4-hour period after the maintenance window’s start time. For example, a maintenance window defined for Sundays at 7 PM will have updates at any time between 7 PM and 11 PM.

To change a cluster or read-only node’s maintenance window, click Edit.

Screenshot of maintenance scheduler window

Choose the day of the week and the start time for the 4-hour maintenance window, then click Save.

Update Manually

When new updates are available, cluster and read-only node Overview pages have a banner with basic information on the update.

The maintenance banner on a database overview page

Click Update Now to open the Required maintenance window. This window specifies when the updates will be automatically applied.

The Required maintenance window with the Start Maintenance button visible

If you want to initiate the update immediately ahead of the scheduled maintenance window, click the Start Maintenance button. To manually update read-only nodes, you need to repeat this process for each individual node.

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