IDUG EMEA 2026

Db2 upgrades can look straightforward in your favourite manual, but real-world environments often tell a different story. In this session, we share practical user experiences and lessons learned from two recent Db2 upgrade projects that we undertook – moving from Db2 v11.1 to v11.5 on Windows, and from Db2 v11.5 to v12.1.3 on Linux. These upgrades involved very different setups, including single versus multiple instances, standalone databases versus HADR clusters, and the contrasting challenges between Windows and Linux platforms. We will walk through the expected and unexpected issues we encountered, highlight pitfalls not clearly documented in the manuals, and explain the workarounds and strategies that allowed us to complete the upgrades successfully.