PostgreSQL/Upgrade

When upgrading the PostgreSQL software, you must take care of the data in the cluster - depending on the question whether it is an upgrade of a major or a minor version. The PostgreSQL version number consists of two or three groups of digits, divided by colons. The first two groups denotes the major version and the third group (if present) denotes the minor version.

Upgrades within minor versions are simple. The internal data format does not change, so you only need to install the new software while the instance is down.

Upgrades of major versions may lead to incompatibilities of internal data structures. Therefore special actions may become necessary. There are several strategies to overcome the situation. In many cases upgrades of major versions additionally introduce some user-visible incompatibilities, so application programming changes might be required. You should read the release notes carefully.

pg_upgrade
is a utility which modifies data files and system catalogs according to the needs of the new version. It has two major behaviors: In --link mode files are modified in place, otherwise the files are copied to a new location.

pg_dumpall
is a standard utility to generate logical backups of the cluster. Files generated by  are plain text files and thus independent from all internal structures. When modifications of the data's internal structure become necessary (upgrade, different hardware architecture, different operating system, ...), such logical backups can be used for the data transfer from the old to the new system.

Replication
The Slony replication system offers the possiblity to transfer data over different major versions. Using this, you can switch a replication slave to the new master within a very short time frame.

PostgreSQL offers replication in logical streaming format. With the actual version 9.5 this feature is restricted to the same versions of master and standby server, but it is planned to extend it for use in a heterogenuous server landscape.