Airflow Version Upgrade for Enterprises: A Practical Blueprint for AWS, Snowflake, dbt, and Fintech Data Platforms

Short summary

Upgrading Apache Airflow in fintech enterprises requires treating the operation as a platform migration, not a library bump. Use dependency constraints files, explicit provider versioning, isolated testing environments, and comprehensive CI validation to catch breaking changes before production. This guide covers metadata DB migration strategies, DAG import validation patterns, AWS MWAA/ECS/EKS deployment approaches, and includes production-ready Dockerfile and requirements.txt templates.

• •Treat Airflow upgrades as platform migrations with formal change management, not simple library bumps
• •Use constraints files, explicit provider versions, and reproducible container builds to avoid dependency drift
• •Validate all DAGs in CI with import tests and metadata migration dry runs before production rollout

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