Migration / Upgrade Guide for Aura from Neo4j version 4 to version 5

There are 3 main methods available for migrating / upgrading your Aura instances, both AuraDB and AuraDS, from Neo4j version 4 to version 5. 

• Clone to a new AuraDB / AuraDS version 5 Instance.
• Clone to an existing AuraDB / AuraDS version 5 Instance.

• Manually export and import the data.

Pre Upgrade Tasks

We recommend that you review the product documentation available, Upgrade and Migration Guide and focus on the Migrate from 4.4 section, making sure to review the Reference section that includes, 

• Breaking changes between Neo4j 4.4 and Neo4j 5.x 
• Changes to procedures and functions in Neo4j version 5
• Changes to Java API in Neo4j version 5

You may also wish to consider capturing and dropping the existing indexes prior to migration/upgrade and recreating them at the end of the process. This may prove more performant for large stores and remove the existing detail check of the index. Please refer to the article Indexes - Capture / Drop / Recreate existing for details on how to do this.

Cloning to a new or existing AuraDB / AuraDS version 5 instance

Note: You must ensure both AuraDB / AuraDS instances are using the same Cloud Service Provider (CSP), as it is not possible to clone across CSP's at the current time.

Caution: Cloning into an existing AuraDB / AuraDS Instance will replace all data. Please take a snapshot and export it if you want to keep the current data.

Cloning to new AuraDB / AuraDS version 5 Instance

On the source AuraDB / AuraDS instance, if you have decided to do so, please ensure you have dropped your indexes before attempting to clone. 

At the Aura console, for the version 4 instance that you wish to migrate / upgrade, ellipsis(...)select the "Clone To New" option and then AuraDB / AuraDS (whichever is applicable).

Select the region, size and provide a name for the new instance. Also note the warning indicating the default version is now version 5, which is okay for what we are doing in this situation.

Then mark the I understand tick box and finally, click the Clone button to start the process.

Download the credentials for your new instance.

Various stages are seen on the console during the creation of the new instance. Please note the time taken for these steps to complete depends on multiple factors, such as the amount of data (including indexes and constraints if you chose not to drop them beforehand), the capacity of the destination AuraDB / AuraDS Instance, etc.

At this stage once the instance is running, if you dropped your indexes from the source system before the clone, please recreate them in the version 5 instance.

Cloning to an existing AuraDB / AuraDS version 5 Instance

On the source AuraDB / AuraDS instance, if you have decided to do so, please ensure you have dropped your indexes before attempting to clone. 

At the Aura console, for the version 4 instance that you wish to migrate / upgrade, ellipsis(...)select the Clone To Existing option and then AuraDB / AuraDS.

Set the name for the clone database, then select the db you want to clone to via the AuraDB / AuraDS Professional database drop-down.

Having selected the db instance you wish to clone to, mark the I understand tick box and finally click the Clone button to start the process.

The status on db you are cloning to will change from Loading to Overwriting during the process.

Once complete the cloned database will show a running state.

At this stage, once the instance is running, if you dropped your indexes from the source system before the clone, please recreate them in the version 5 instance.

Manually export and import the data

Follow the steps in the knowledge base article for exporting your data. Once you have downloaded the dump file you can proceed with the import process.

The first stage of the import process is to create a new version 5 Aura instance (AuraDB / AuraDS), in which to load your dump file into. At the Aura console, click on the New Instance button.

Select the Cloud provider, region, size and provide a name for the new instance. Also note the warning indicating the default version is now version 5, which is okay for what we are doing in this situation.

Then mark the I understand tick box and finally click the Create button to start the process.

Download the credentials for your new instance.

Various stages are seen on the console during the creation of the new instance. Please note the time taken for these steps to complete depends on the capacity of the destination AuraDB / AuraDS Instance, etc.

Once the new instance is in the running state, you are now ready to import your data. If the dump file is smaller than 4GB you can do this in the Aura console otherwise please use the command line tool push-to-cloud. Please see the article for using push-to-cloud for more details.

Open your new AuraDB / AuraDS Instance and click the Import Data tab.

Then either drag and drop your dump file or click the browse button to navigate to the location of the dump file downloaded.

Confirm the file to be loaded when prompted.

The dump file will be uploaded and you will then be switched to the Snapshots tab, where you will see the load job

You can now return to the main console page and wait for the load job to complete. At this stage, you will see your instance is in the Loading state.

At this stage, once the instance is running, if you dropped your indexes from the source system before the dump file was created, please recreate them in the version 5 instance.

*Prices shown in the screenshots are for illustrative purposes and may be subject to change