Migrating PostgreSQL from Bitnami to Bitnami Legacy on Amazon EKS
Overview
PostgreSQL deployments on Amazon EKS often rely on Bitnami container images and Helm charts. With Bitnami moving most of these images to the Bitnami Legacy repository and completely deleting the public catalog (docker.io/bitnamiOn September 29, 2025, workloads still pointing to the old repository risk sudden failure.
This guide shows you how to migrate PostgreSQL workloads on EKS to the Bitnami Legacy repository before the deadline, ensuring that your databases stay online, secure, and production ready.
Problem
Organizations running PostgreSQL on EKS now face a critical migration challenge:
Repository deprecation:
docker.io/bitnamiwill be deleted after September 29, 2025.Brownouts before deletion: Between August and September, Bitnami is running repeated 24-hour outages of selected container images to raise awareness. This means pods may intermittently fail before the final deletion.
Pipeline disruption: CI/CD pipelines, Helm upgrades, and auto-scaling events that attempt to pull Bitnami images will break.
Database downtime risk: PostgreSQL is often the backbone of production apps; this downtime will lead to application outages.
Business Impact
Immediate failures: Expect pod crashes, stuck deployments, and broken upgrades as soon as images become unavailable.
Costly firefighting: Engineering teams will be forced into emergency patching and redeployment cycles.
Operational risk: Production databases could become unavailable during brownouts or after September 29 if migration is delayed.
Vendor lock-in costs: Broadcom’s new model charges $50,000–$72,000 per year for continued access to what used to be free, pushing teams to either pay or migrate fast.
How Stakpak Helps?
Stakpak provides a structured, automated way to handle PostgreSQL migration on Amazon EKS:
Detects risks early: Scans your Kubernetes clusters for workloads still pointing to
docker.io/bitnami.Guides migration: Walks you step-by-step through updating Helm charts and manifests to the
bitnamilegacyrepo.Validates deployments: Ensures PostgreSQL pods remain healthy during migration and after redeployments.
Automates consistency: Applies the same rules across all clusters and namespaces, preventing drift and misconfigurations.
Instead of waiting for downtime during brownouts or scrambling on September 29, you can rely on Stakpak’s Migrating Bitnami to Bitnami Legacyrule book to migrate PostgreSQL smoothly so we keep your applications running without disruption.
Step-by-Step Guide
Prerequisites
Cloud provider credentials configured
Install kubectl (you can ask Stakpak to install it)
Now we can start
Open your terminal.
Open Stakpak by typing
stakpakThen just ask it to "Migrate PostgreSQL from Bitnami to Bitnami Legacy"
Stakpak will scan the infrastructure and automatically recognise that we are using the new Bitnami images which require a subscription after August 28th, 2025.
WARNING: Since August 28th, 2025, only a limited subset of images/charts are available for free.
Subscribe to Bitnami Secure Images to receive continued support and security updates.
More info at https://bitnami.com and https://github.com/bitnami/containers/issues/83267
Then it will start taking the steps found in the Migrating Bitnami to Bitnami Legacy Rule book to migrate
It will start by removing the current PostgreSQL deployment
Then it will start deploying the new PostgreSQL Bitnami legacy image
Stakpak:
Uninstalled the original PostgreSQL deployment: helm uninstall postgresql
Deployed PostgreSQL using the legacy image: helm install postgresql-legacy bitnami/postgresql --set image.repository=bitnamilegacy/postgresql
The deployment shows it's now using docker.io/bitnamilegacy/postgresql:17.6.0-debian-12-r4 instead of the
regular Bitnami image.
Extra Resources:
References
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