Instaclustr is pleased to announce the availability of PostgreSQL 14.2 and 13.6 on the Instaclustr Managed Platform. PostgreSQL is the world’s leading object-relational database system. 

Instaclustr provides our customers with managed and supported open source software, allowing them to avoid the risks of vendor lock-in and unsupported software. Instaclustr’s PostgreSQL Managed Platform is open source that’s really open source.

The PostgreSQL project has released its quarterly minor release, containing bug fixes, which is now available in supported versions of the Instaclustr platform. Most customers can treat a minor release as a “drop-in” replacement, as the PostgreSQL project is pretty tight around only fixing bugs, rather than introducing new features in minor releases. 

It is worth noting that while there are no security fixes in this round of releases, we still consider it extremely important to update your PostgreSQL deployments. We thought it would be useful to highlight some of the most important of the more than 50 fixes in this release, that PostgreSQL users should be aware of.

1. There are multiple fixes to scenarios that could result in corrupted indexes in rare circumstances. If you have seen evidence of corrupted indexes, especially around TOAST tables, you are encouraged to upgrade your PostgreSQL version to 14.2 or 13.6 as soon as possible.
2. The minor version releases contain several fixes for partitioned tables, including fixes involving statistics gathering and data type safety. This resolves some performance and reliability issues in some workloads that utilize partitioned tables.
3. The new versions fix psql’s \password command to set the password for CURRENT_USER, not the connection’s original user. This is a behavior change—be aware if you have relied on this behavior in the past—but it now aligns to the documented behavior. For better clarity, the to-be-changed role name is now included in the password prompt.
4. PostgreSQL is highly regarded for its correctness, so it is always concerning to see bugs being raised around incorrect query results. These are generally very rare, however, this release contains multiple fixes that focus on correcting query results.
5. Multiple fixes to pg_dump could lead to cases where dump files would need manual intervention to load. While Instaclustr provides backups and high availability on the managed platform, and of course DBA’s always test their backups regularly, having easily portable logical exports can still be valuable.

As with all PostgreSQL releases, there is much more information available in the official PostgreSQL release notes as well as in the release notes for each version of the documentation. 

For customers wanting to experience a PostgreSQL cluster on the Instaclustr managed platform, you can sign up and create a PostgreSQL cluster with these new versions on a free trial. 

For customers who are running PostgreSQL on the managed platform, our Technical Operations team will reach out shortly to schedule a time to upgrade your clusters. If you would like to upgrade sooner or have any questions, please reach out to our Support team.

Happy upgrading!