Automating Amazon RDS for PostgreSQL major or minor version upgrades using AWS Systems Manager and Amazon EC2 simplifies database lifecycle management.
Manual upgrades through AWS Management Console can be error-prone and disrupt application stability.
The automation process involves AWS CLI commands in a Unix shell script and integration with AWS Systems Manager for scaling.
Pre-upgrade checks and instance maintenance updates are executed through reusable modules: PREUPGRADE and UPGRADE.
Logging and notification features are added for monitoring and notification through Amazon S3 and Amazon SNS.
The solution supports major and minor version upgrades and can be extended for multi-VPC or cross-account deployments with additional considerations.
Prerequisites include IAM user permissions, cloning the GitHub repository, preparing RDS instances, creating S3 bucket, SNS topic, IAM policy, and IAM role.
An EC2 instance hosts and runs the upgrade script requiring AWS CLI, PostgreSQL client, bc, and jq library.
Implementation steps include uploading the script to S3, creating an Automation Document, and executing the upgrade process through Systems Manager.
Comprehensive monitoring and notification mechanisms are in place, providing logs for pre-upgrade and upgrade phases.