Installation: Upgrading to a New Version

Information

On a live system, a minor version upgrade process typically takes around 30 seconds.

Upgrading

Upgrading a RavenDB instance to a new version is very simple. In order to do so, you need to:

  1. Download distribution package from here.

  2. Shutdown the RavenDB server

    • for service (or daemon) - shutdown before upgrading
    • for console application - execute 'shutdown' command in the RavenDB CLI
  3. Remove old RavenDB binaries

    • make sure to not delete your actual data which is in the folders like RavenData and not to overwrite your configuration files like settings.json.
    • make sure not to delete your certificate file which ends with .pfx or .pem, for more details see our certificate page. This step is strictly necessary for updating to version 5.1. To update to lower versions, overriding the old binaries may be sufficient, although it's recommended to remove them anyway.
  4. Copy new binaries.

  5. Start the server again.

High Availability & Cluster

If you want a zero downtime, please upgrade a single cluster node at a time and wait until it becomes a fully fledged node (either Member, Leader or Watcher). The state of the node can be checked in Cluster View.

Upgrading Data Files

You don't have to do anything when you upgrade RavenDB to migrate the stored data. However, sometimes our adjustments require changing the file format (called schema version). RavenDB includes support for performing of those kind of migrations automatically on startup if it finds that the stored database is using an old format.

Warning

Data file migrations are only one way. If you want to move backward and any changes in the file format have occurred, RavenDB will fail to start (with a detailed error message). You can move data between different versions using the import/export tool, which works across all versions of RavenDB.

Remarks

Major version upgrade

RavenDB 4.x does not support automatic upgrading from previous major versions of the product (e.g. 3.5).

Please read our migration article that describes in detail possible data and client migration strategies.