Upgrade a standalone server (Docker)

This example shows how to upgrade or patch a standalone server running on Docker.

It is recommended to read the following pages before continuing:

For critical systems, it is recommended to:

Backup your server(s), including databases, configurations, licenses, encryption keys, and custom plugins to avoid losing data in case of failure. For details, see the Operations Manual Backup and Restore or Docker → Dump and load a Neo4j database (offline) .
Perform the upgrade in a test environment.

Prerequisites

The following steps assume that Neo4j 5.26 Enterprise Edition is running in a Docker container named neo4j-dbms, with the /data directory in the container mapped to the /path/to/data on the host machine as in the following example:

docker run -d \
    --name=neo4j-dbms \
    --publish=7474:7474 --publish=7687:7687 \
    --volume=/path/to/data:/data \
    --env=NEO4J_ACCEPT_LICENSE_AGREEMENT=yes \ (1)
    neo4j:5.26.1-enterprise

1	Only for Enterprise Edition.

If you want to monitor the logs, you should also map the container’s /logs directory to a /path/to/logs directory on the host machine.

Upgrade steps

Stop the container neo4j-dbms by running:
```
docker stop neo4j-dbms
```
Remove the neo4j-dbms container:
```
docker rm neo4j-dbms
```

Start a new container, named neo4j-2025 with the /data directory in the container mapped to the same /path/to/data on the host machine:

docker run -d \
    --name=neo4j-2025 \
    --publish=7474:7474 --publish=7687:7687 \
    --volume=/path/to/data:/data \
    --env=NEO4J_ACCEPT_LICENSE_AGREEMENT=yes \
    neo4j:enterprise

The upgrade process takes place during startup.

Monitor the logs

The neo4j.log file contains information on how many steps the upgrade will involve and how far it has progressed.