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> - [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/51332) in GitLab 13.11.
> - [Deployed behind a feature flag](../../../user/feature_flags.md), disabled by default.
> - [Enabled by default](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/329511) in GitLab 13.12.
> - Enabled on GitLab.com.
> - Recommended for production use.
> - For GitLab self-managed instances, GitLab administrators can opt to [disable it](#enable-or-disable-batched-background-migrations). **(FREE SELF)**
There can be [risks when disabling released features](../../../user/feature_flags.md#risks-when-disabling-released-features).
Refer to this feature's version history for more details.
To update database tables in batches, GitLab can use batched background migrations. These migrations
are created by GitLab developers and run automatically on upgrade. However, such migrations are
limited in scope to help with migrating some `integer` database columns to `bigint`. This is needed to
> - [Introduced](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/60133) in GitLab 13.12.
> - [Deployed behind a feature flag](../../../user/feature_flags.md), disabled by default.
> - [Enabled by default](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/329511) in GitLab 13.12.
> - Enabled on GitLab.com.
> - Recommended for production use.
> - For GitLab self-managed instances, GitLab administrators can opt to [disable it](#enable-or-disable-automatic-batch-size-optimization). **(FREE SELF)**
There can be [risks when disabling released features](../../../user/feature_flags.md#risks-when-disabling-released-features).
Refer to this feature's version history for more details.
To maximize throughput of batched background migrations (in terms of the number of tuples updated per time unit), batch sizes are automatically adjusted based on how long the previous batches took to complete.
## Enable or disable automatic batch size optimization **(FREE SELF)**
1. [Check the status](#check-the-status-of-background-migrations) of the batched background migration from the error message, and make sure it is listed as finished. If it is still active, either wait until it is done, or finalize it manually using the command suggested in the error, for example: