Introducing Flexible MQTT Platform Upgrades with HiveMQ
Exciting news for our tech community! We're pleased to introduce an enhanced rolling upgrade policy at HiveMQ, aimed at simplifying your experience with a hassle-free path to the latest features.
Here's the lowdown:
What's the Buzz About?
Our rolling upgrade policy is tailored around LTS (Long-Term Support) releases and the time gap between two LTS versions, which is 18 months. With a new feature release and LTS maintenance release scheduled each month, we received concerns from our customers that a version-by-version upgrade can be tedious. Hence we are happy to announce that starting with the 4.9 LTS release:
All feature releases between two LTS releases support rolling upgrades, giving you an 18-month window to upgrade without hassle, ensuring backward feature compatibility and zero downtimes. E.g. Customers can upgrade from 4.15 to 4.20 without needing to download 4.16, 4.17, 4.18, and 4.19 prior.
This also holds for the LTS maintenance release. E.g. you can upgrade from 4.9.0 LTS to 4.9.27 LTS without downtime when configured correctly.
This compatibility extends to the next LTS version too. So, you can smoothly upgrade from your current LTS version to the next one – no headaches involved. E.g. you can upgrade from 4.9.x LTS to 4.28.x LTS.
With the LTS release, you get a 24-month window to upgrade to the latest maintenance version within the same LTS line. Considering also that an LTS version is compatible with all maintenance versions of the next LTS line, we have in total 42 months (2 LTS versions * 24 months - 6 overlapping months) supported period for one single LTS version!
What Happens If You Stray from Compatibility?
Trying to upgrade to an incompatible version will result in the newly started version being unable to join the cluster, and it will log the following error: “Cluster contains incompatible versions”, along with more details. In merge cases, nodes won't let each other join the cluster. Please note that this will not affect or degrade the existing cluster.
What Should Your Next Steps Be?
With the current LTS being 4.9-LTS, if you are on an earlier version, please upgrade to the latest LTS maintenance version or a newer feature release version to ensure compatibility with future releases.
HiveMQ recommends upgrades to the latest available feature or patch version. In theory, though you can skip to any release, please use shorter skips e.g. 4-6 versions for better bearings on feature changes and bug fixes.
Always test your changes first in a non-production environment for minimal impact.
Please see the HiveMQ Upgrade Guides and Release Notes for each release to check for configuration and feature changes as part of upgrade planning.
Please check out our steps to rolling upgrade to maintain steady resource utilization.
Empower your team to swiftly resolve any issues.
In a nutshell, we're rolling out the red carpet for seamless upgrades. Say goodbye to upgrade headaches and hello to a smoother, more reliable HiveMQ experience.
Ready to dive in? Stay tuned for more updates and let the easy-upgrades era begin! 🚀
Harsh Bansal
Harsh Bansal leads Customer Support at HiveMQ, bringing multiple years of expertise in guiding L2 and L3 support teams across EMEA, APAC, and NAM. He excels in driving customer satisfaction. In his current role, Harsh is dedicated to providing an unparalleled customer support experience at HiveMQ and helping enterprises adopt MQTT, IoT, and IIoT to transform their business.
