Release notes

Use these release notes to learn about the latest updates to IBM Cloud® Databases for PostgreSQL that are grouped by date or build number.

28 Jan 2026

Accelerated availability for PITR restores: Databases for PostgreSQL now allows customers to access database instances immediately following a primary Point-in-Time Recovery (PITR) restoration. This enhancement eliminates the wait time for secondary node synchronization, allowing operations to resume faster than ever.

How it works:

Accelerated availability: The primary node is restored and opened for traffic, while the secondary (HA) node synchronizes in the background.
Configuration: This behavior is controlled via the new async_restore parameter.

Key benefits and risk considerations:

This feature enables immediate database access following primary node restoration, significantly reducing the time required to resume operations. However, High Availability (HA) remains inactive during the initial recovery phase; if a zone failure occurs before the secondary node fully synchronizes, the instance may be exposed to potential data loss. Clients are advised to carefully evaluate these risks before enabling this feature.

For implementation guidance, see the async_restore documentation.

18 Dec 2025

Databases for PostgreSQL version 18 is now available: If you use a previous version of Databases for PostgreSQL, you can migrate to version 18, which is the next available version. For more information, see Upgrading to a new Major Version.

08 Dec 2025

In-place major version upgrades for Databases for PostgreSQL

This new capability simplifies the upgrade process and enhances operational lifecycle management for your database instances.

The feature is now available for PostgreSQL v14, providing a streamlined path to v15.
Support for additional PostgreSQL versions will be added in upcoming releases.

This enhancement reduces upgrade complexity, minimizes downtime, and ensures a smoother transition to newer versions. Key benefits include:

Connection parameters retained — no reconfiguration needed after the upgrade.
Faster upgrade process compared to traditional methods.
Flexible scheduling — choose the upgrade time that best fits your workload.
Seamless migration from PostgreSQL v14 to v15.

For more information, see Upgrading to a new major version.

You can still perform major version upgrades using read-replica promote upgrade or backup and restore methods. The new in-place upgrade feature provides an additional option.

16 October 2025

Databases for PostgreSQL version 14 End of life on October 21, 2026: Action is required before October 21, 2026, for your PostgreSQL v14 deployments. After October 21, 2026, all IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 14 that are still active will be upgraded in-place to the next major version, version 15. We recommend completing the upgrades before the end-of-life date. For more information, see Upgrading to a new major version. By proactively upgrading, you can control the timing and minimize any potential downtime. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Cloud Databases support.

02 October 2025

As part of the latest Databases for PostgreSQL release, two new extensions have been introduced: PgAnon for native data masking and PgCron for job scheduling: PgAnon enables efficient data anonymization, supporting privacy and compliance requirements across various use cases. PgCron adds native job scheduling capabilities to PostgreSQL, allowing users to automate recurring tasks within the database environment. For setup instructions and more information, see the documentation for both anon and pg_cron.; Additionally, this release also includes an enhancement to Pgaudit, enabling session logging for your PostgreSQL deployments. For more information, see the documentation.

29 April 2025

Seamless Vector Search comes to Databases for PostgreSQL with pgVector: Databases for PostgreSQL users can now enhance their PostgreSQL instances with the pgVector extension, enabling native support for vector embeddings. This tight integration simplifies the development of AI-powered applications, accelerates the process, and reduces architectural complexity by eliminating the need for separate vector databases. For more information, see Managing PostgreSQL extensions.

PgVector is only offered for PostgreSQL version 15 and above.

28 April 2025

Databases for PostgreSQL version 13 End of life on October 22, 2025: This note is an update to the PostgreSQL v13 end-of-life approach, replacing our September 27, 2024 publication.; Action is required before October 22, 2025, for your PostgreSQL v13 deployments. After October 22, 2025, all IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 13 that are still active will be upgraded in-place to the next major version, version 14. We recommend completing the upgrades before the end-of-life date. For more information, see Upgrading to a new major version. By proactively upgrading, you can control the timing and minimize any potential downtime. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Cloud Databases support.

10 March 2025

Databases for PostgreSQL Satellite plan is deprecated: Databases for PostgreSQL Satellite plan is now deprecated. As of March 10 2025, all documentation relating to Databases for PostgreSQL Satellite plan has been removed, as well as the ability to select Databases for PostgreSQL Satellite plan in the Cloud console.

15 November 2024

Cloud Databases logs and events are now available on IBM® Cloud Logs Routing: Cloud Databases has onboarded IBM® Cloud Logs Routing, a scalable logging service that persists logs and provides users with capabilities for querying, tailing, and visualizing logs. Customers are expected to use IBM® Cloud Logs Routing to review their database logs and events starting November 15, 2024. For more information, see Set up logging and monitoring and About IBM Cloud Logs.

22 October 2024

Databases for PostgreSQL end-of-life procedure change: Action is required for your Databases for PostgreSQL version 12 deployments before January 22, 2025. After this date, all Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 12 that are still active will be upgraded in-place to the next major version, version 13. We recommend that you complete the upgrades before the end-of-life date. For more information, see Upgrading to a new major version. By proactively upgrading, you can control the timing and minimize any potential downtime. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Cloud Databases support.

27 September 2024

Databases for PostgreSQL version 13 End of life on October 22, 2025: Action required before October 22, 2025, for your PostgreSQL v13 deployments. After October 22, 2025, all IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 13 that are still active will be disabled. Users are expected to be on the latest versions of PostgreSQL or get the preferred version of Databases for PostgreSQL. Upgrade your database instances by following the procedure at Upgrading to a new Major Version. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Cloud Databases support.

16 September 2024

Private endpoints as new default: To ensure best possible security for your databases, private endpoints are now the default in the IBM Cloud® console. CLI and Terraform now require the endpoint type to be provided as part of creating an instance.

1 May 2024

New hosting models: You can choose between two hosting models: Isolated Compute and Shared Compute. Isolated Compute is a secure single-tenant offering for complex, highly performant enterprise workloads. Shared Compute is a flexible multi-tenant offering for dynamic, fine-tuned, and decoupled capacity selections. For more information, see Hosting models.

18 January 2024

IBM Cloud® Databases for PostgreSQL version 12 End of life on January 22, 2025: Action required before January 22, 2025, for your PostgreSQL v12 deployments. After January 22, 2025, all IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 12 that are still active will be disabled. Users are expected to be on the latest versions of PostgreSQL or get the preferred version of Databases for PostgreSQL. Upgrade your database instances by following the procedure at Upgrading to a new Major Version. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Cloud Databases support.

27 November 2023

Monitoring Integration documentation updated: Monitoring Integration documentation now lists metrics for all Cloud Databases services. For more information, see Monitoring Integration.

17 Nov 2023

Deploy pgadmin using Code Engine and connect to your Databases for PostgreSQL instance published: With this tutorial, deploy pgadmin using Code Engine and connect to your Databases for PostgreSQL instance. pgadmin is a web interface that allows you to view and modify the data in your PostgreSQL database. Code Engine is a a fully managed, serverless platform that allows you to run workloads without worrying about deploying infrastructure. For more information, see Deploy pgadmin using Code Engine and connect to your Databases for PostgreSQL instance.

25 Aug 2023

Databases for PostgreSQL version 11 End of life on February 29, 2024: Action required before February 29, 2024, for your PostgreSQL 11 deployments. After February 29, 2024, all Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 11 that are still active will be disabled. Users are expected to be on the latest versions of PostgreSQL or get the preferred version of Databases for PostgreSQL, with all the great features added to version 15. Upgrade your database instances by following the procedure at Upgrading to a new Major Version . For more information, see the original announcement. If you have any questions or concerns, contact Cloud Databases support.

07 July 2023

Databases for PostgreSQL v15 Preferred: For more information, see Upgrading to a new Major Version.

25 May 2023

Setting up disk alerts for disk utilization tutorial: In this tutorial, you use the IBM Cloud API and the IBM Cloud CLI to set up an alert that emails you whenever the disk utilization of your database exceeds 90%. This specific example creates an alert on a Databases for Elasticsearch deployment, but it is applicable to all the databases in the IBM Cloud Databases catalog. For more information, see Setting up disk alerts for disk utilization.

28 October 2022

Databases for PostgreSQL v10: End-of-Life Extension: To ensure additional time for you to upgrade, Cloud Databases is extending the EOL support for PostgreSQL v10 until February 22, 2023. Despite the extension, we strongly recommend our customers take prompt action and upgrade instances immediately. If no action is taken, databases will be disabled on February 22, 2023.

19 October 2022

Deploying and Connecting a Cloud Databases Instance Tutorial: This tutorial guides you through the process of deploying a Cloud Databases instance and connecting it to a web front end by creating a webpage that allows visitors to input a word and its definition. These values are then stored in a database running on Cloud Databases. You install the database infrastructure by using Terraform and your web application uses the popular Express framework. The application can then be run locally, or by using Docker. For more information, see Deploying and Connecting a Cloud Databases Instance.

11 October 2022

Protecting Databases for PostgreSQL resources with context-based restrictions: Context-based restrictions (CBR) give account owners and administrators the ability to define and enforce access restrictions for IBM Cloud® resources based on the context of access requests. Access to Cloud Databases resources can be controlled with CBR and identity and access management (IAM) policies. For more information, see Protecting Cloud Databases resources with context-based restrictions.

27 June 2022

Databases for PostgreSQL 10: End-of-Life in November 2022: On 3 November 2022, all Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 10 that are still active will be disabled.

31 May 2022

Provision an Databases for PostgreSQL instance with Terraform tutorial published: In this tutorial, you learn how to use Terraform to provision an Databases for PostgreSQL instance. For more information, see Provision an Databases for PostgreSQL instance with Terraform.

29 March 2022

Databases for PostgreSQL supports synchronous replication: Databases for PostgreSQL now supports synchronous replication. See documentation here.

28 March 2022

Databases for PostgreSQL Requirements for upgrading to PostgreSQL (v 13, 14) from PostgreSQL (v10, 11, 12): See information regarding updating to versions 13 and 14 here.

25 March 2022

Databases for PostgreSQL Security Goals Updated: Available security and compliance goals updated. See updated goals here.

30 June 2021

General Availability of Databases for PostgreSQL support for IBM Cloud Databases enabled by IBM Cloud Satellite.: A distributed cloud provides consistent security and services across environments, centralized workload visibility, reduced latency, easier compliance, and higher application development velocity.

5 May 2021

Databases for PostgreSQL 9.6 End of Life: On 11 November 2021, all IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 9.6 that are still active will be disabled.

15 February 2021

Databases for PostgreSQL Horizontal Scaling: Customers can scale Databases for PostgreSQL by adding members to their database instance.

9 Sept 2020

Databases for PostgreSQL 9.5 End of Life: On November 11, 2021, all IBM Cloud Databases for PostgreSQL instances on version 9.5 that are still active will be disabled.

13 April 2020

Databases for PostgreSQL autoscaling: Starting after 26 April 2020, all deployments of Databases for PostgreSQL will have a minor change in the format of PostgreSQL logs emitted into Log Analysis with LogDNA.

27 March 2020

Changes to Databases for PostgreSQL Logging: We are excited to announce that autoscaling of your deployments based on disk capacity and disk I/O utilization is now available for Databases for PostgreSQLvia the UI, API, and CLI.

2 October 2019

Databases for PostgreSQL Announces Point-In-Time Recovery: Databases for PostgreSQL now allows you to restore a database into a new instance from a specific timestamp.

6 August 2019

New Regions Available for IBM Cloud Database Services: Databases for PostgreSQL is now available to be deployed in Seoul; South Korea; and Chennai, India.

2 October 2018

General Availability of Databases for PostgreSQL: Databases for PostgreSQL added to the IBM Cloud Databases family.