Amazon Neptune Engine Version 1.1.1.0.R3 (2022-06-07) - Amazon Neptune
ImprovementsDefects FixedSupported Query-Language VersionsUpgrade pathsUpgrading

Amazon Neptune Engine Version 1.1.1.0.R3 (2022-06-07)

As of 2022-06-07, engine version 1.1.1.0.R3 is being generally deployed. Please note that it takes several days for a new release to become available in every region.

Important

Upgrading to this engine release from a version earlier than 1.1.0.0 also triggers an operating-system upgrade on all the instances in your DB cluster. Because active write requests that occur during the operating-system upgrade will not be processed, you must pause all write workloads to the cluster being upgraded, including bulk data loads, before starting the upgrade.

At the start of the upgrade, Neptune generates a snapshot with a name composed of preupgrade followed by an autogenerated identifier based on your DB cluster information. You will not be charged for this snapshot, and you can use it to restore your DB cluster if anything goes wrong during the upgrade process.

When the engine upgrade itself has completed, the new engine version will be available briefly on the old operating system, but in less than 5 minutes all the the instances in your cluster will simultaneously begin an operating-system upgrade. Your DB cluster will be unavailable at this point for a number of minutes. You may resume write workloads after the upgrade completes.

This process generates the following events:

  • Per-cluster event messages:

    • Upgrade in progress: Creating pre-upgrade snapshot [preupgrade-(autogenerated snapshot ID)]

    • Database cluster major version has been upgraded

  • Per-instance event messages:

    • Applying off-line patches to DB instance

    • DB instance shutdown

    • Finished applying off-line patches to DB instance

    • DB instance restarted

Note

There is a breaking change in this release for code that uses openCypher with IAM authentication. Up to now, the host string in the IAM signature included the protocol, such as bolt://, like this:

"Host":"bolt://(host URL):(port)"

Starting with engine release 1.1.1.0, the protocol must be omitted:

"Host":"(host URL):(port)"

See Using the Bolt protocol for examples.

Improvements in This Engine Release

  • Added support for the Graviton2-powered x2g instance types, optimized for memory-intensive workloads. These are initially available only in four AWS Regions:

    • US East (N. Virginia) (us-east-1)

    • US East (Ohio) (us-east-2)

    • US West (Oregon) (us-west-2)

    • Europe (Ireland) (eu-west-1)

    See the Neptune pricing page for more information.

  • Improved performance of Gremlin steps where multiple edge or vertex traversals, property lookups, or label lookups are involved.

Defects Fixed in This Engine Release

  • Fixed a Gremlin bug in the processing of the otherV() step inside a child traversal.

  • Fixed a Gremlin bug in queries with union having only filter steps as children. For example:

    g.V().union(has("name"), out("knows")).out()

  • Fixed a SPARQL bug where variables used inside FILTER expressions nested into UNION clauses were getting assigned invalid scoping information.

Query-Language Versions Supported in This Release

Before upgrading a DB cluster to version 1.1.1.0.R3, make sure that your project is compatible with these query-language versions:

  • Gremlin earliest version supported: 3.5.2

  • Gremlin latest version supported: 3.5.4

  • openCypher version: Neptune-9.0.20190305-1.0

  • SPARQL version: 1.1

Upgrade paths to engine release 1.1.1.0.R3

Your cluster will be upgraded to this patch release automatically during your next maintenance window if you are running engine version 1.1.1.0.

Upgrading to This Release

Important

Upgrading to this engine release from any version prior to 1.1.0.0 also triggers an operating-system upgrade on all the instances in your DB cluster. Because active write requests that occur during the operating-system upgrade will not be processed, you must pause all write workloads to the cluster being upgraded, including bulk data loads, before starting the upgrade.

At the start of the upgrade, Neptune generates a snapshot with a name composed of preupgrade followed by an autogenerated identifier based on your DB cluster information. You will not be charged for this snapshot, and you can use it to restore your DB cluster if anything goes wrong during the upgrade process.

When the engine upgrade itself has completed, the new engine version will be available briefly on the old operating system, but in less than 5 minutes all the the instances in your cluster will simultaneously begin an operating-system upgrade. Your DB cluster will be unavailable at this point for around 6 minutes. You may resume write workloads after the upgrade completes.

This process generates the following events:

  • Per-cluster event messages:

    • Upgrade in progress: Creating pre-upgrade snapshot [preupgrade-(autogenerated snapshot ID)]

    • Database cluster major version has been upgraded

  • Per-instance event messages:

    • Applying off-line patches to DB instance

    • DB instance shutdown

    • Finished applying off-line patches to DB instance

    • DB instance restarted

If a DB cluster is running an engine version from which there is an upgrade path to this release, it is eligible to be upgraded now. You can upgrade any eligible cluster using the DB cluster operations on the console or by using the SDK. The following CLI command will upgrade an eligible cluster immediately:

For Linux, OS X, or Unix:

aws neptune modify-db-cluster \
    --db-cluster-identifier (your-neptune-cluster) \
    --engine-version 1.1.1.0 \
    --apply-immediately

For Windows:

aws neptune modify-db-cluster ^
    --db-cluster-identifier (your-neptune-cluster) ^
    --engine-version 1.1.1.0 ^
    --apply-immediately

Updates are applied to all instances in a DB cluster simultaneously. An update requires a database restart on those instances, so you will experience downtime ranging from 20–30 seconds to several minutes, after which you can resume using the DB cluster.

Always test before you upgrade

When a new major or minor Neptune engine version is released, always test your Neptune applications on it first before upgrading to it. Even a minor upgrade could introduce new features or behavior that would affect your code.

Start by comparing the release notes pages from your current version to those of the targeted version to see if there will be changes in query language versions or other breaking changes.

The best way to test a new version before upgrading your production DB cluster is to clone your production cluster so that the clone is running the new engine version. You can then run queries on the clone without affecting the production DB cluster.

Always create a manual snapshot before you upgrade

Before performing an upgrade, we strongly recommend that you always create a manual snapshot of your DB cluster. Having an automatic snapshot only offers short-term protection, whereas a manual snapshot remains available until you explicitly delete it.

In certain cases Neptune creates a manual snapshot for you as a part of the upgrade process, but you should not rely on this, and should create your own manual snapshot in any case.

When you are certain that you won't need to revert your DB cluster to its pre-upgrade state, you can explicitly delete the manual snapshot that you created yourself, as well as the manual snapshot that Neptune might have created. If Neptune creates a manual snapshot, it will have a name that begins with preupgrade, followed by the name of your DB cluster, the source engine version, the target engine version, and the date.

Note

If you are trying to upgrade while a pending action is in process, you may encounter an error such as the following:

   We're sorry, your request to modify DB cluster (cluster identifier) has failed.
   Cannot modify engine version because instance (instance identifier) is
   running on an old configuration. Apply any pending maintenance actions on the instance before
   proceeding with the upgrade.

If you encounter this error, wait for the pending action to finish, or trigger a maintenance window immediately to let the previous upgrade complete.

For more information about upgrading your engine version, see Maintaining your Amazon Neptune DB Cluster. If you have any questions or concerns, the AWS Support team is available on the community forums and through AWS Premium Support.