AWS Elastic beanstalk - change solution stack name

Question

I have an elastic beanstalk running on AWS, that is "64bit Amazon Linux 2013.09 running Tomcat 7 Java 7". I would like to upgrade to 2014.03 solution stack name without re-configuring the complete environment.

I tried to create a new environment and load the old environment configuration, but when I load it, it changed back the linux version to 2013.09.

Please advise.

Thanks Tal

Answer 1

Update

Elastic Beanstalk release 2015-03-30 introduced support for in-place Upgrading the Elastic Beanstalk Environment's Platform Version, which considerably simplifies the process for keeping any specific platform up to date (changing the platform aka solution stack name, e.g. from Go 1.3 to Go 1.4, still requires the approach outlined in the initial answer):

When a new version of your environment's the section called “Supported Platforms” is available, Elastic Beanstalk shows a message in the environment management console and makes the Change button available.

[...]

1. Navigate to the management console for your environment.
2. In the Overview section, under Configuration, click Change.
3. On the Update Platform Version page, click Platform, and then click the platform version that you want the environment to use.
4. After you choose the platform version you want to use, click Save.

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Initial Answer

The standard solution stack update procedure is usually outlined in the solution stack announcements, see e.g. Announcement: AWS Elastic Beanstalk announces updated application containers and R3 instance type support (it sounds like you basically followed this procedure though?):

To migrate an existing environment to the newly released platform version follow the steps below:

1. Log in to the AWS Management Console and select Elastic Beanstalk from the list of services.
2. Find the application you want to migrate and then click the Actions button next to the application name.
3. In the drop-down menu, select Launch New Environment.
4. Click the appropriate Predefined configuration and Environment type, and then click Continue. (NOTE: Elastic Beanstalk will select a default version of the configuration. You can click Change Defaults to choose a different version.)
5. In the drop-down menu, choose the application version that you want to run on the updated environment.
6. Complete the rest of the wizard by choosing the appropriate settings for your application.
7. Once the environment has launched, test your application to make sure that it works as expected.
8. On the new environment’s Overview screen, click Actions and then click Swap Environment URLs.
9. On the swap URL screen, select the old environment that you want to swap URLs with and then click Swap.
10. Once the swap is complete the new environment will be serving traffic.