Upgrading Event Broker Services in Solace Cloud

Upgrading to newer event broker service releases allows you to adopt new features and to modernize your event broker services.

Solace makes maintenance releases available for event broker services with Long Term Support (LTS) release versions during their . Additionally, you can upgrade from any release, including a Rolling release, to any higher version release that was released after the date of your current version, and while your current version is still within its active support period.

LTS releases receive maintenance releases to address product and vulnerability issues. Solace recommends upgrading to maintenance releases as they become available. You must upgrade from an LTS release to a new LTS or Rolling release before its support period ends.

Rolling releases update through version upgrades rather than maintenance patches. If you are using a Rolling release, you must upgrade to a higher version release, released after your currently installed version to:

  • protect the platform against new security threats
  • address critical issues
  • use more recent event broker service versions when the full support period expires

You can upgrade your event broker services at any time, other than on the same day as a Kubernetes cluster upgrade. Upgrading your event broker service version is not the same as upscaling your event broker service to increase its service class.

For customers with Customer-Controlled Clusters, Solace strongly recommends against performing Kubernetes cluster upgrades on the same day as event broker service upgrades.

You can upgrade to any supported version that's both higher and released after your current version, see version adoption policy for details. Self-serve and automated upgrades in Solace Cloud make it easy to stay up-to-date.

The following answers to common questions provide more information about upgrading:

Why Do I Need to Upgrade?

You should upgrade your event broker services for these reasons:

  • The full support phase has ended—Full support for your event broker service version is no longer available. You must upgrade to a version that is higher and released later than your currently installed version. For an example of viable upgrade paths, see Can I upgrade from an LTS release to a Rolling release, or vice versa?
  • Security or product fixes are required—You require security or other critical updates for the current version that you're using. For LTS versions in full support, you can upgrade to a maintenance release. For Rolling releases, you must upgrade to a release that is higher and released after your currently installed version.
  • New features or capabilities—You want to access new features or capabilities. In this situation, you can upgrade to a Rolling release that supports your upgrade path (higher version and later release date than your installed version) to receive the newest features or capabilities.

When Can I Upgrade?

Solace sends you product notification emails that announce LTS, Rolling, and maintenance releases in Solace Cloud when they are available. You can view the planned release dates at Supported Dates for Release Versions.

You can upgrade to any version that is both:

  • a higher version than your currently installed version

  • released after your currently installed version

You can also upgrade existing LTS event broker service versions to a maintenance release. These releases are where vulnerabilities are addressed within a timeframe outlined in our version adoption policy. Solace provides these maintenance releases for LTS versions that are in full support.

How Do I Upgrade?

You can upgrade your own event broker services using the Cloud Console or REST API. For more information, see Self-Serve Event Broker Service Upgrades in Solace Cloud.

In Customer-Controlled Clusters, the Mission Control Agent is usually upgraded automatically as part of event broker service upgrades. If your deployment includes a private repository, we recommend that you implement automation to pull the most recent images for the Mission Control Agent to ensure it is kept current. Contact Solace for more information.

What Is the Impact to My Event Broker Services When I Upgrade?

A typical event broker service upgrade takes 15-30 minutes, depending on factors such as the deployment type and region. Multiple event broker services can be upgraded at the same time.

  • High Availability—Upgrades to high availability (HA) event broker services are in-service upgrades and do not impact client applications. A brief interruption of less than one minute occurs during the HA activity failover.
  • Enterprise-100 Standalone and Standalone services—Upgrades are service affecting. During an upgrade, client applications experience an outage of 15-30 minutes because there is only one software event broker.

Upgrade durations may vary depending on factors such as the cloud provider, the region type, and the deployment options chosen.

More FAQs About the Upgrade Process

The following frequently asked questions provide answers about the upgrade process:

Can more than one event broker service be upgraded at the same time?

You can upgrade multiple event broker services, with some limits based on upgrade type (immediate, or scheduled) and the availability of upgrade slots:

  • For immediate upgrades, you can currently upgrade one event broker service at a time if upgrade slots are available. The Schedule Upgrade window in the Cloud Console shows availability. If a requested upgrade doesn't start within 30 minutes, Solace Cloud cancels the upgrade and notifies you.

  • For event broker service upgrades scheduled in a maintenance window, you can currently schedule as many event broker services to the maintenance window as Solace Cloud allows. If you schedule more upgrades to a maintenance window than the window can accommodate, Solace Cloud cancels upgrades that fall outside of the allotted time for the window.

    • For more information, see Performing Self-Serve Event Broker Service Upgrades.

How does Solace ensure upgrade reliability?

Solace Cloud performs automated pre-upgrade and post-upgrade checks to ensure the event broker service is both ready for an upgrade, and to ensure the upgrade was successful. Solace recommends that you validate your client connections following the upgrade.

In the rare case an upgrade encounters issues, Solace Cloud notifies both Solace and you, and we begin addressing the issue immediately. You are also notified with a request to contact Solace.

Will connected applications go offline during the upgrade?

During the failover period for event broker services with HA, there may be a temporary loss of connectivity for client applications as client applications reconnect. You do not need to disconnect them prior to the upgrade. For failover period impacts, see What Is the Impact to My Event Broker Services When I Upgrade?

Can we upgrade our environments separately?

Yes. Many of our customers take a phased approach to upgrade their event broker services starting with the least critical environments. For example, many customers start an upgrade with a development environment, and progress to staging, and then production environments. If you require a phased approach, you must book one upgrade slot per environment.

Can I upgrade from an LTS release to a Rolling release, or vice versa?
Yes. You can upgrade from an LTS release to a Rolling release, or from a Rolling release to an LTS release. When upgrading, you must upgrade to a release that is both a higher version than and that was released at a later date than your currently installed version. For example, consider the following two scenarios:
  • You can upgrade from LTS 10.25.0 to Rolling Release 10.25.6. But you cannot upgrade from 10.26.0 to 10.25.20 because it is a lower version, even though it was released later.
  • You also cannot upgrade from an older version to a newer version released before a maintenance release you are currently using. For example, you cannot upgrade from version 10.25.0.300 that released on October 2026 to 10.26.0.0 released on June 2026—you must upgrade to a version of 10.26.0 with a maintenance release after October 2026.
Does Solace retain any configuration backups or data before performing the upgrade?

No, we don't take any configuration backups before upgrades because configuration data is replicated and available for rollback when HA or optional disaster recovery is available. In general, there are no configuration changes performed during upgrades. You (the customer) are responsible for configuration management and backups. For more information, see Backing up Event Broker Services.

What communication method is used for upgrades?

As your event broker service approaches its End of Support date, Solace sends you a series of notifications encouraging you to upgrade the event broker service. For more information, see End of Support Notification Timeline.

You can view upgrade activity and review upgrade logs using the Cloud Console or the REST API. For more information, see Self-Serve Event Broker Service Upgrades in Solace Cloud.

How are High Availability Event Broker Services Upgraded?

Upgrades of HA event broker services use the following three general procedures:

  • Pre-upgrade checks—Gathers information and prepares your event broker service for the upgrade.

  • HA event broker service upgrade—Upgrades the event broker service.

  • Post-upgrade check—Validation to ensure that your event broker services are upgraded and running.

Pre-upgrade checks
Prior to upgrading your event broker service, Solace performs a series of pre-checks. These pre-checks ensure we have all the information required to make sure your upgrade goes smoothly in the least amount of time. We perform checks for the following information:
  • Review of your Mission Control Agent to determine if it requires any new configuration changes due to the introduction of new event broker service features. You might need to upgrade the Mission Control Agent in Customer-Controlled Clusters.
  • Identification of any special configuration that needs to be considered during the upgrade. Special configurations include (but are not limited to) items such as custom TLS certificates, the need to retain your MQTT cache, or manually provisioned Load Balancers.
  • The deployment type (Customer-Controlled Cluster, Public Cluster, or Dedicated Cluster) and whether we have access to your datacenter/region.
  • Whether your deployment uses any Controlled Availability features. If it does, you might need to increase the available memory footprint before the upgrade in Customer-Controlled Clusters.
  • Whether any of the tags or metadata that are used by your event broker services require updates.
  • Confirmation that the event broker service images are available.
  • Whether your Kubernetes version is compatible with the event broker service version you want to upgrade to. The Kubernetes version hosting your event broker services must support the event broker service version you plan to upgrade to, or the upgrade won't proceed. For more information, see Supported Kubernetes Versions.

If the pre-upgrade checks fail and the upgrade cannot be performed, you will be either be contacted by Solace with information about why the pre-check failed, actions you can take to address the failures, and to reschedule the upgrade. For self-serve upgrades, you will find reasons why the upgrade couldn't proceed in the upgrade logs.

High Availability Event Broker Service Upgrade
Prior to the upgrade, the Mission Control Agent runs a series of automated checks. These checks include:
  • Redundancy
  • Config-Sync
  • DMR
  • Image Accessibility
  • MQTT Retain Memory
After the upgrade completes, the Mission Control Agent begins upgrading the event broker service over a series of steps. The Mission Control Agent pauses between each step to check that each event broker service node maintains redundancy during the process. The upgrade process begins with the primary and monitoring event brokers active, and the backup event broker in standby. From there, the individual event brokers are upgraded in the following steps:
  1. The Mission Control Agent upgrades the monitoring event broker.
  2. The Mission Control Agent upgrades the standby event broker.
  3. The Mission Control Agent ceases activity in the active event broker and transfers activity to the now upgraded standby event broker. The Mission Control Agent waits during this process to ensure the activity transfer is complete before proceeding.
  4. Once the activity transfer is complete, the Mission Control Agent upgrades the primary event broker. Once upgraded, the formerly active event broker now becomes the standby event broker.
Post upgrade checks
Once the upgrade is complete, Solace performs several post-upgrade checks to ensure your event broker service is up and running. These checks include:
  • Ensuring that the monitoring pod is up and running, that its version is correct, and that it has a connection.
  • Validating that our operational monitoring capabilities, including ensuring the upgraded service is reported as such, and that we are receiving metrics.

How Often Do I Need to Upgrade?

For the best upgrade experience, follow these recommendations:

Upgrade event broker services to the latest LTS release before support for your current version expires

You must upgrade your event broker services to a major version at least once every two years, before the support period for the version you are using ends. Full support ends two years after the software event broker version is first released. Upgrading also ensures that your event broker services are kept up-to-date with the latest security fixes.

Upgrade regularly to get security and critical fixes

You can upgrade existing event broker service LTS versions to maintenance releases. Maintenance releases address critical and high-level vulnerabilities. See our timeline for making security fixes available in our version adoption policy. Maintenance releases are only available to LTS versions in their support phase:

  • For supported LTS versions, you can upgrade within the LTS version to a maintenance load.

    For example, if version 10.25.0 is in support, you can upgrade to 10.25.0.450 to get a fix—even if the next LTS release is available. Conversely, if 10.25.0 is out of support, you must upgrade to a later version, released after your current version of 10.25.0 to pick up the fixes.

  • Solace Cloud creates new LTS event broker services with the most recent maintenance load of the version selected.

    For example, suppose you initially created an event broker service using version 10.25, which at the time was based on software event broker version 10.25.0.12. If a software event broker maintenance load with a version of 10.25.0.320 was released, all subsequent event broker services that you create with version 10.25 would use the 10.25.0.320 maintenance load of the software event broker.

Proactively schedule upgrades for your event broker services

Solace encourages customers to perform and manage their own event broker service upgrades before they reach End of Support. For more information, see Self-Serve Event Broker Service Upgrades in Solace Cloud.

For more information about roles and responsibilities for upgrading, see Upgrades to Mission Control Agent and Event Broker Services.

What Happens if I Don't Upgrade in Time?

When your event broker service reaches End of Support, you must upgrade. Solace sends you a series of notifications encouraging you to upgrade as the End of Support date nears.

If you don't upgrade, Solace automatically schedules an upgrade for your event broker service in your next configured maintenance window, or at a time of our choosing if no window is configured. We notify you of the date and time that the upgrade is scheduled to occur. For more information, see What to Expect When Versions Reach End of Support.

Upgrading reduces your security risk exposure and ensures that Solace Cloud remains modernized against any security and vulnerability threats.

End of Support Notification Timeline

Solace sends notifications to event broker service owners at the following intervals before the event broker service version reaches its End of Support date:

Three months before End of Support date

An initial notification that one or more of your event broker service versions are nearing their End of Support date. The notification includes:

  • A list of affected event broker services, including their current version number and End of Support date, the datacenter they're deployed in, and your organization's maintenance window configuration status.

  • The number of days remaining for you to take action before the End of Support date.

  • Actions required by you to avoid an automatic event broker service upgrade and potential service disruptions.

One month before End of Support date

A reminder notification with the same information as the three-month notification.

Two weeks before End of Support date

A final notification that the event broker service versions are reaching End of Support. The notification reiterates that Solace will schedule an automatic upgrade to the latest supported version for affected event broker services if an upgrade is not performed prior to the End of Support date.

On the End of Support date (Day 0)

A notification confirming that the event broker service versions have reached End of Support and are no longer supported. The notification includes:

  • Confirmation that the event broker service version is no longer supported by Solace.

  • A list of affected event broker services with their current version, the datacenter they're deployed in, and your organization's maintenance window configuration status.

  • Notice that affected event broker services have been queued for an automatic upgrade to the latest supported version.

What to Expect When Versions Reach End of Support

When an event broker service version reaches End of Support, the following occurs: 

  • Support status—Solace ends support for the event broker service version.

  • Upgrade scheduled—Solace automatically schedules your event broker service for an upgrade based on your maintenance window configuration:

    • You have configured a maintenance window—Solace schedules the upgrade during the next configured maintenance window.

    • You have not configured a maintenance window—Solace schedules the upgrade at a time of our choosing to ensure security and compliance.

  • Your options—You can either:

Can I Downgrade an Event Broker Service?

No. Downgrading event broker services is not supported.

Can Solace Help with My Upgrade?

If you need assistance from Solace to upgrade your event broker service, you can schedule an upgrade via Calendly for any existing event broker services that support upgrades and are in the full support phase.

For Dedicated Cluster customers, Solace cannot perform consecutive event broker service and Kubernetes (or vice-versa) upgrades. You must schedule event broker service and Kubernetes cluster upgrades on separate days.