Before you upgrade

This page contains some concepts and recommendations that you should familiarize yourself with before upgrading. See the upgrade guide for information on the actual upgrade process.

SonarQube version number format

Version numbers have up to three digits with each digit representing part of the release cycle:

Major version number

The major version number represents a series of releases with high-level objectives for the release cycle. It's incremented with the release following an LTS version (for example, the release following 7.9 LTS was 8.0).

Minor version number

The minor version number corresponds to incremental functional changes within a major release cycle. At the time of an LTS release, the release cycle is closed and the minor version number is frozen.

Patch release number

Only on LTS versions, the patch release number represents patches to an LTS that fixed blocker or critical problems. 

Migration path

Upgrading across multiple non-LTS versions is handled automatically. However, if there are one or multiple LTS versions in your migration path, you must first migrate to each intermediate LTS and then to your target version, as shown in Example 3 below.

When upgrading to an LTS version, you should directly upgrade to its latest patch. This allows you to make sure everything runs well (see Practice your upgrade section below) with that patch.

You can upgrade from the latest LTS version to the latest non-LTS version directly. See Example 4 below.

Migration Path Examples:

Example 1 – From 8.1 > 9.6, the migration path is 8.1 > 8.9 LTS > 9.6
Example 2 – From 8.2 > 8.9 LTS, the migration path is 8.2 > 8.9 LTS.
Example 3 – From 6.7 LTS > 8.9 LTS, the migration path is 6.7 LTS > 7.9 LTS > 8.9 LTS.
Example 4 – From 8.9 LTS > 9.6, the migration path is 8.9 LTS > 9.6

Release upgrade notes

Usually SonarQube releases come with some specific recommendations for upgrading from the previous version. You should read the release upgrade notes for each version between your current version and the target version.

Practice your upgrade

We recommend practicing your upgrade to:

• make sure your infrastructure can run the upgrade.
• get an idea of how long the upgrade will take.
• gain a better understanding of the upgrade process and anticipate what you'll need to do when performing the actual upgrade.
• address any issues you encounter during the practice upgrade on the SonarSource community.

To practice your upgrade, create a staging environment using a recent backup of your production database. You want your staging environment to be as similar to your production instance as possible because the resources and time needed to upgrade depends on what's stored in your database. Use this staging environment to test the upgrade, observing how long it takes to back up and restore systems and complete the process.