MongoDB 4.4 EOL with 5.0 Not Far Behind

February 2024 marked the end of life (EOL) of MongoDB 4.4.

Another year, another EOL, is a fitting summary. Time goes by fast, and looking from this perspective, 5.0 is one we will soon also say goodbye to, as this year, 5.0 is also going EOL in October.

Why is MongoDB 4.4 EOL significant?

In case you and your organization have upgraded off of 4.4 and at least have plans to upgrade off 5.0 by the time it ends its life in October, you are fine.

Unfortunately, looking at the popularity of MongoDB 4.4 we see within our customer base as well as from the telemetry reports, this version is still very popular. As I’m writing this blog post, 4.4 is a version that we’re seeing at least in 19% of the new installation events and 22% of all working environments. The numbers for 5.0 are even higher, and not surprisingly, we still see stragglers on 4.2 and older environments.

It’s important to remember that if you choose to stay on MongoDB 4.4 or even older versions, whether the MongoDB Inc. version or Percona Server for MongoDB one, your database will no longer receive bug fixes, patches, or minor releases.

We want to focus on the newer versions, providing new quality upgrades and features. That being said, we want to be partners in your database journey and do not want to leave the users who did not have a chance to upgrade to the newer versions on their own. We have defined the scope of available services in our Lifecycle Policy:

We will provide Operational Support for customers running EOL software on active platforms. For EOL’ed platforms, we provide Community Support.

As stated in our Lifecycle Overview:

For software that Percona bases on an upstream build, we match the upstream EOL dates.

As Percona Server for MongoDB follows the upstream EOL dates, bug fixes, and software builds will no longer be generated also for our release of MongoDB.

Percona Server for MongoDB 4.4 reaching its end of life results in:

• Percona Distribution for MongoDB 4.4 will no longer receive updates and bug fixes.
• Percona Backup for MongoDB (PBM) will no longer support 4.4 either. We will no longer test with 4.4. It is possible that PBM may still successfully perform backups and restores, but as tests will not cover that, we cannot guarantee it anymore.
• New Percona Operator releases will not be tested against nor guaranteed to be compatible with MongoDB 4.4. Bug fixes related to MongoDB 4.4 will not be provided, and support for issues related to this version will be strictly operational.
• Percona Monitoring and Management (PMM) releases are not going to be tested with MongoDB 4.4. Therefore, PMM new releases are not going to be guaranteed to be compatible with MongoDB 4.4.

Is there no hope for longer support?

With all the above, one can feel backed up to a corner. We do not want that.

Especially with the numbers of our users still on MongoDB 4.4.

If you already have or would like to sign up for a Percona Support Subscription, you will continue to receive operational support and services. Operational support includes but is not limited to:

• Query optimization
• MongoDB tuning (replica sets and sharded clusters)
• MongoDB configuration, including our enterprise features such as LDAP
• Upgrade support (from EOL versions, so, i.e., 3.6->4.0->4.2->…)
• Setup and configuration of MongoDB clusters and tools such as Percona Backup for MongoDB and Percona Monitoring and Management (respecting the tool limitation for the EOL-ed version).
• In case of crashes, although we do not provide bug fixes and patches, we can still track down known bugs and provide recommendations.
• The SLAs in your contract are maintained for the Support tasks, and we will handle any support inquiries timely to the best of our capabilities. Where bug fixes or patches are not offered, we will provide workarounds whenever possible.

We are also open to custom deals for temporary, longer full support for MongoDB 4.4 or 5.0 if your business requires that.

What’s next

As mentioned before, the EOL for 5.0 is coming. It is good to already plan the jump to 6.0 at least and, to be on the safe side, consider planning upgrades to 7.0.

If you are on 4.4 right now, it makes all the difference to move away from it ASAP. This version has just become a possible threat to your security.

If you are not our customer, remember that our Percona Community Forum is always open for users of our software. We believe that community is very important in building our products!

If an upgrade seems challenging or you are delaying it because of a lack of resources, consider our premium services for MongoDB, where Percona experts can provide you with upgrade assistance according to your needs.

Percona Distribution for MongoDB is a source-available alternative for enterprise MongoDB. A bundling of Percona Server for MongoDB and Percona Backup for MongoDB, it combines the best and most critical enterprise components from the open source community into a single feature-rich and freely available solution.

Download Percona Distribution for MongoDB Today!