Perform an upgrade

This guide describes how to perform a Camunda 8.8 Self-Managed upgrade. Ensure you have completed all steps in Prepare for upgrade before continuing.

Step 1: Confirm prerequisites

First, confirm you have completed the following prerequisites:

Prerequisite	Description
Test upgrade	Confirm that the upgrade runs successfully in a non-production environment.
Backups	Backups created and verified .
Secrets	Export required secrets (Operate, Tasklist, Identity, etc.).

Step 2: Perform upgrade

Perform an upgrade as follows.

Helm chart

Helm chart

To upgrade with Helm, see the Helm chart upgrade guide for 8.7 to 8.8 for detailed instructions. The guide covers update options, secret handling, migration job monitoring, and other upgrade tasks.

note

If you maintain custom deployment scripts, use the official Helm charts as a technical reference.

Docker Compose

Docker Compose

Camunda-provided Docker Compose files are only intended for development and testing purposes, and are not recommended for production environments. Docker Compose lacks the capabilities required for a production-ready system, such as automated migration job handling, high availability, failover support, scalable persistent storage management, and robust secret management with rotation.

Because of these limitations, Camunda does not supply automated migration scripts for Docker Compose setups. If you still need to update a development environment, you can follow the Component upgrade guides to manually update each service.

For production deployments, we recommend either using Kubernetes with the official Camunda Helm chart or creating a custom deployment process with Infrastructure as Code tools such as Terraform, Ansible, or AWS CloudFormation.

Next steps

After completing the upgrade to 8.8, you should:

1. Monitor cluster health and application stability during the application rollout phase.
2. Update monitoring dashboards and alerts for Camunda 8.8 to reflect Camunda 8.8 changes.
3. Document lessons learned and refine internal procedures.
4. Plan your next update cycle using a similar approach.
5. Clean up backups in line with your retention policy.

Useful resources

• Helm chart upgrade guide: 8.7 to 8.8: Full step-by-step Helm upgrade guide.
• Collecting diagnostics: How to gather troubleshooting data.
• Backup and restore guide: Recommended backup workflows.
• Troubleshooting guides: Common issues and resolution steps.
• Supported environments matrix: Compatibility details for components and infrastructure.