How do I upgrade my Elastic Beanstalk environment platform from a deprecated or retired version to the latest version?

Short description

Deprecated platform versions are the old platform versions or branches that are available to customers, but aren't recommended by AWS. Deprecated versions might have missing security updates, hot fixes, or the latest versions of other components, such as the web server.

Elastic Beanstalk marks platform branches as retired when a component of a supported platform branch is marked End of Life (EOL) by its supplier. Components of a platform branch might be the operating system, runtime, application server, or web server.

When a platform branch is marked as retired, it's no longer available to new Elastic Beanstalk customers for deployments to new environments. There's a 90-day grace period from the published retirement date for existing customers with active environments that are running on retired platform branches. When a platform version is mark deprecated, it's available for customers to use until it's marked for retirement.

Resolution

Migrate from a retired platform

To upgrade to the latest platform, perform a blue/green deployment. Blue/green deployments deploy a separate environment with the latest platform branch and version. Then, swap the CNAMEs of the two environments to redirect traffic from the old environment to the new environment.

Note: Both environments must be in same application and in a working state to swap CNAMEs.

For more information, see Blue/Green deployments with Elastic Beanstalk.

To check for the retired platform branches, see Elastic Beanstalk platform versions scheduled for retirement.

Migrate from a deprecated platform

A platform version might be marked for deprecation due to kernel changes, web server changes, security fixes, hot fixes, and so on. These changes are categorized as follows:

• Patch: Patch version updates provide bug fixes and performance improvements. Patch updates might include minor configuration changes to the on-instance software, scripts, and configuration options.
• Minor: Minor version updates provide support for new Elastic Beanstalk features.
• Major: Major version updates provide different kernels, web servers, application servers, and so on.

Based on the changes being made, use one of the following migration methods:

Minor or patch updates

With minor or patch changes, your platform branch remains the same. For instructions, see Method 1 - Update your environment's platform version.

You can also have Elastic Beanstalk manage platform updates for you. For more information, see Managed platform updates.

Major updates

Your platform branch changes in major updates. When you switch platform branches, you must perform a blue/green deployment. You must also use blue/green deployments when migrating from Amazon Linux 1 to Amazon Linux 2 or from a legacy platform to a current platform. For more information, see Method 2 - Perform a blue/green deployment.

Related information

Updating your Elastic Beanstalk environment's platform version