This topic outlines the lifecycle policy of ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition to help you understand the changes that occur during different phases of the ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition lifecycle, the impacts of the changes on your business, and the overall evolution plan of the service. This helps you efficiently schedule the version upgrades to avoid service disruption and security vulnerabilities.
Background information
As the ClickHouse open-source community evolves, ClickHouse releases new versions that provide more benefits, such as improved performance, enhanced security, and additional features. At the same time, the ClickHouse open-source community has gradually phasing out support and maintenance for older ClickHouse versions. The ClickHouse community updates the long-term support (LTS) version every six months and maintains only the current LTS version and the immediately preceding one. If you continue using an older version of ClickHouse, you may encounter various challenges and potentially face security and stability risks.
Lifecycle description of ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition
To make sure that you have enough time to upgrade the major engine versions of ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition, ApsaraDB for ClickHouse typically extends the maintenance period by one additional year beyond the end-of-life timeline set by the open-source ClickHouse community. Once this extended maintenance period ends, support for the retired kernel version will be discontinued accordingly.
Existing instances running unsupported versions remain fully functional. You can upgrade, downgrade, renew, and unsubscribe these clusters.
Unsupported versions are subject to the following limitations:
New purchases disabled.
No feature updates.
No engine version updates.
Only critical vulnerabilities and defects will be addressed.
The end-of-support dates for each version of ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition are listed in the table below. You can use this information to plan ahead for your instances and select a more suitable target version when creating instances, migrating instances, or upgrading to a new major version.
The dates shown in the table are estimated and may be updated prior to the actual end of the product lifecycle or the end of support for ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition. The actual dates in the end-of-sale (EOS) announcements and notifications prevail.
Version | ClickHouse community release date | ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition release date | ClickHouse community end-of-support date | ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition end-of-support date （estimated） |
19.15 | October 1, 2019 | December 12, 2019 | October 1, 2020 | April 16, 2021 |
20.3 | May 23, 2020 | June 4, 2020 | May 23, 2021 | October 28, 2022 |
20.8 | October 9, 2020 | November 26, 2020 | October 9, 2021 | October 28, 2022 |
21.8 | August 12, 2021 | November 26, 2021 | August 12, 2022 | April 24, 2024 |
22.8 | August 18, 2022 | October 28, 2022 | August 18, 2023 | January 15, 2025 |
23.8 | August 31, 2023 | March 7, 2024 | October 26, 2024 | N/A |
25.3 | March 20, 2025 | July 17, 2025 | March 20, 2026 | N/A |
Service commitments and suggestions
Compatibility
ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition does not provide guaranteed compatibility across major versions. However, ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition strives to maintain compatibility across major versions in terms of syntax, operations, and features. Any breaking changes will be clearly documented and communicated via official documentation or customer support. For more information, see Release notes.
ApsaraDB for ClickHouse Community-compatible Edition ensures compatibility across minor versions in the same major version in terms of syntax, operations, and features. We recommend upgrading your cluster to the latest minor version of the current major version based on the assurance of compatibility.
Bug fixes
If your cluster is not running the latest version, we recommend upgrading the major or minor version of the cluster to receive bug fixes. The latest available minor version described in the release notes shall prevail.