AWS MySQL 5.6 end of life - AWS OpenEMR 5.0.2 (5) and prior versions are potentially affected

Situation
AWS RDS MySQL 5.6 support is ending.
An automatic upgrade to 5.7 will occur in August 2021 (by AWS)

  • AWS OpenEMR 5.0.2 (5) and prior versions are potentially affected

|### Amazon Web Services, Inc. no-reply-aws@amazon.com|2:49 PM (1 hour ago)||

to me

|

Hello,

NOTE: This notice does not apply to Amazon Aurora clusters.

Amazon RDS is starting the end of life (EOL) process for MySQL major version 5.6. We are doing this because the MySQL community is planning to discontinue support for MySQL 5.6 on February 5, 2021 [1].

Our records indicate that you still have one or more MySQL instances in the global Region, listed below, running on this outdated version.

Impacted MySQL Databases | Engine Full Version: 5.6.44

Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.6 will reach end of life on August 3, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC. While you will be able to run your RDS for MySQL 5.6 databases between community MySQL 5.6 EOL (February 5, 2021) and RDS for MySQL 5.6 EOL (August 3, 2021), these databases will not receive any security patches during this extended availability period. We therefore strongly recommend that you proactively upgrade your databases to major version 5.7 or greater before community EOL on February 5, 2021. MySQL 5.7 contains major innovations including native support for JSON data type, GIS with native InnoDB spatial indexes and Performance Schema for new and improved performance metrics with the new SYS Schema [2]. MySQL 8.0 contains Window Functions, Common Table Expressions and also offers 2x higher performance compared to MySQL 5.7 [3]. Both versions contain numerous fixes to various software bugs in earlier versions of the database.

If you do not upgrade your databases before August 3, 2021, RDS will upgrade your MySQL 5.6 databases to 5.7 during a scheduled maintenance window between August 3, 2021 00:00:01 UTC and September 1, 2021 00:00:01 UTC. On September 1, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC, any Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.6 databases that remain will be upgraded to version 5.7 regardless of whether the instances are in a maintenance window or not.

You can initiate an upgrade of your database instance — either immediately or during your next maintenance window — to a newer major version of MySQL using the AWS Management Console or the AWS Command Line Interface. The upgrade process will shut down the database instance, perform the upgrade, and restart the database instance. The database instance may be restarted multiple times during the upgrade process. While major version upgrades typically complete within the standard maintenance window, the duration of the upgrade depends on the number of objects within the database. To avoid any unplanned unavailability outside your maintenance window, we recommend that you first take a snapshot of your database and test the upgrade to get an estimate of the upgrade duration. If you are operating an Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.6 database on one of the retired instance types (t1, m1, m2), you will need to migrate to a newer instance type before upgrading the engine major version. To learn more about upgrading MySQL major versions in RDS, review the Upgrading Database Versions page [4].

We want to make you aware of the following additional milestones associated with upgrading databases that are reaching EOL.
• Now through August 3, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC - You can initiate upgrades of Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.6 instances to MySQL 5.7 or 8.0 at any time.
• April 1, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC – After this date and time, you cannot create new Amazon RDS instances with MySQL major version 5.6 from either the AWS Console or the CLI. You can continue to restore your MySQL 5.6 snapshots as well as create read replicas with version 5.6 until the August 3, 2021 end of support date.
• August 3, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC - Amazon RDS will automatically upgrade MySQL 5.6 instances to version 5.7 within the earliest scheduled maintenance window that follows. After this date and time, any restoration of Amazon RDS for MySQL 5.6 database snapshots will result in an automatic upgrade of the restored database to a still supported version at the time.
• September 1, 2021 00:00:01 AM UTC - Amazon RDS will automatically upgrade any remaining MySQL 5.6 instances to version 5.7 whether or not they are in a maintenance window.

If you have any questions or concerns, the AWS Support Team is available on the community forums and via Premium Support [5].

[1] https://www.mysql.com/support/
[2] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2016/02/amazon-rds-now-supports-mysql-5-7/
[3] https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2018/10/amazon-rds-now-supports-mysql-8/
[4] https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_UpgradeDBInstance.Upgrading.html#USER_UpgradeDBInstance.Upgrading.Manual
[5] https://aws.amazon.com/support

Sincerely,
Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services, Inc. is a subsidiary of Amazon.com, Inc. Amazon.com is a registered trademark of Amazon.com, Inc. This message was produced and distributed by Amazon Web Services Inc., 410 Terry Ave. North, Seattle, WA 98109-5210


Reference: https://phd.aws.amazon.com/phd/home#/event-log?Event%20ARN=arn:aws:health:global::event/

OpenEMR Version
I’m using OpenEMR version v5.0.2 (5)

Browser:
I’m using: Irrelevant

Operating System
I’m using: AWS (Ubuntu)

Logs
N/A

I’m still hoping to get some help with this issue? Is it a non-issue (is there not enough difference between the versions to create any problems)?

I received the same email and have the same questions. Researching it as much as I can but I’ve no definite answers yet.

Honestly this sounds easy enough to test – take your 5.6 DB, snapshot it, restore that snapshot to a new DB instance, upgrade that instance, and then point a test OpenEMR installation (or your production one if you back up your patient data first) at that database by directly editing sqlconf.php and seeing what happens.

I cannot recall hearing any issues about MySQL 5.7 being a problem for OpenEMR – it’s usually 8 that causes ugly surprises.