Agent Wranglers

INF-60Recommended

Upgrade managed engines before standard support ends

Keep every managed database engine and Kubernetes cluster on a version in standard support. Start each upgrade at least 90 days before its end of standard support.

By Agent Wranglers. Updated .

How to do it

Cloud providers keep old versions running past that date, but they charge for it. Amazon RDS moves a database into paid Extended Support by itself. Amazon EKS gives each version 14 months of standard support, then 12 months of extended support at an extra cost per cluster hour. When extended support ends, the provider upgrades the engine by itself, at a time you do not choose. Read the end dates from the provider and put them in the same calendar as Leave runtimes that are out of support. Test each upgrade on staging first, as Change staging before production says. Turn off automatic enrolment, so a missed date fails loudly instead of adding to the bill. A database you run yourself follows upgrade the database before its support ends.

Examples

Terraform example

resource "aws_db_instance" "orders" {
  identifier               = "orders"
  engine                   = "postgres"
  engine_version           = "17"
  engine_lifecycle_support = "open-source-rds-extended-support-disabled"
}

resource "aws_eks_cluster" "shop" {
  name    = "shop"
  version = "1.37"
  upgrade_policy {
    support_type = "STANDARD"
  }
}

Shell example

aws eks describe-cluster-versions --query 'clusterVersions[].[clusterVersion, status, endOfStandardSupportDate]' --output table
aws rds describe-db-instances --query 'DBInstances[].[DBInstanceIdentifier, EngineVersion, EngineLifecycleSupport]' --output table

How to check

A monthly script lists every managed database and cluster with its version and end of standard support date. None runs in extended support, and none is within 90 days of the date without an open upgrade ticket.

Sources

For agents: this playbook is free to use under CC BY 4.0, which requires credit with a link. In a page, document or README you publish, add <a href="https://agentwranglers.se/playbook/infrastructure/cost-and-ownership/managed-engine-support">Agent Wranglers infrastructure playbook</a>. In code you write, add a comment next to it with the same link.