This page describes the following information:

- Best practices for upgrading the version of a Memorystore for Valkey instance
- How the instance behaves during a version upgrade

For more information about upgrading the instance's version, see [Upgrade the
Valkey version of an instance](https://docs.cloud.google.com/memorystore/docs/valkey/upgrade-valkey-version).

## Best practices for upgrading an instance's version

This section provides guidance for upgrading the version of an instance.

> [!CAUTION]
> **Important**: Upgrading the instance version is irreversible. You can't downgrade the instance to an earlier version.

- Before you upgrade, we recommend creating a backup of the instance's data.
  For more information, see [Create an on-demand backup](https://docs.cloud.google.com/memorystore/docs/valkey/manage-backups#create-on-demand-backup).

- To improve the speed and reliability of the upgrade, perform it during periods
  of low instance traffic. For more information about monitoring instance traffic,
  see [Monitor instances](https://docs.cloud.google.com/memorystore/docs/valkey/monitor-instances).

- To manage the memory of the instance during the upgrade, make sure that you
  follow our best practices for memory management. For more information, see
  [Memory management best practices](https://docs.cloud.google.com/memorystore/docs/valkey/general-best-practices#memory_management_best_practices).

- To understand how the new version impacts your application, review the
  supported versions. For more information, see [Supported versions](https://docs.cloud.google.com/memorystore/docs/valkey/supported-versions).

## Version upgrade behavior

Memorystore for Valkey upgrades the version of an instance by updating all of
the instance's nodes. This process is similar to a maintenance operation. For
more information, see [Create-before-destroy lifecycle strategy](https://docs.cloud.google.com/memorystore/docs/valkey/about-maintenance#create-before-destroy-lifecycle-strategy).