[Announcement] Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.5 End-of-Life date is approaching

Amazon RDS is starting the end of life process for MySQL major version 5.5. We are doing this because the MySQL community has already discontinued support for MySQL 5.5 as of December 3, 2018 [1].

Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.5 will reach end of life on February 9, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC. Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.6 will reach end of life in early 2021. Hence, we strongly encourage you to upgrade your databases running MySQL major version 5.5 to 5.7 or greater at your convenience before February 9, 2021. MySQL 5.7 contains major innovations including native support for JSON data type, GIS with native InnoDB spatial indexes and Performance Schema for new and improved performance metrics with the new SYS Schema [2]. MySQL 8.0 contains Window Functions, Common Table Expressions and also offers 2x higher performance compared to MySQL 5.7 [3]. Both versions contain numerous fixes to various software defects in earlier versions of the database.

If you do not upgrade your databases February 9, 2021, RDS will upgrade your MySQL 5.5 databases to 5.7 during a scheduled maintenance window between Feb 9, 2021 00:00:01 UTC and March 9, 2021 00:00:01 UTC. On March 9, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC, any Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.5 databases that remain will be upgraded to version 5.7 regardless of whether the instances are in a maintenance window or not.

You can initiate an upgrade of your database instance — either immediately or during your next maintenance window — to a newer major version of MySQL using the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface. The upgrade process will shut down the database instance, perform the upgrade, and restart the database instance. The database instance may be restarted multiple times during the upgrade process. While major version upgrades typically complete within the standard maintenance window, the duration of the upgrade depends on the number of objects within the database. To avoid any unplanned unavailability outside your maintenance window, we recommend that you first take a snapshot of your database and test the upgrade to get an estimate of the duration. If you are operating a Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.5 database on one of the deprecated instance types (t1, m1, m2), you have to first migrate it to a newer instance type to be able to upgrade the engine major version. To learn more about upgrading MySQL major versions in RDS, review the Upgrading Database Versions page [4].

We want to make you aware of the following additional milestones associated with upgrading these databases that are reaching end of life.
• Now through March 9, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC - You can initiate upgrades of Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.5 instances to MySQL 5.7 or 8.0 at any time.
• December 3, 2020 00:00:01 AM UTC - After this date and time, you cannot create new Amazon RDS instances with MySQL major version 5.5 from either the AWS Console or the CLI. You can continue to restore your MySQL 5.5 snapshots as well as create read replicas with version 5.5 until the February 9, 2021 end of support date.
• February 9, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC - RDS will automatically upgrade MySQL 5.5 instances to version 5.7 within the earliest scheduled maintenance window that follows. After this date and time, any restoration of Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.5 database snapshots will result in an automatic upgrade of the restored database to a still supported version at the time.
• March 9, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC - RDS will automatically upgrade any remaining MySQL 5.5 instances to version 5.7 whether or not they are in a maintenance window.

Should you have any questions or concerns, the AWS Support Team is available on the community forums and via Premium Support [5].

References
[1] https://www.mysql.com/support/eol-notice.html
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/02/amazon-rds-now-supports-mysql-5-7/
[3] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/10/amazon-rds-now-supports-mysql-8/
[4] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_UpgradeDBInstance.Upgrading.html#USER_UpgradeDBInstance.Upgrading.Manual
[5] http://aws.amazon.com/support