diff --git a/CHANGELOG b/CHANGELOG
index 02da40c..b23efe0 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG
+++ b/CHANGELOG
@@ -11,6 +11,7 @@
 - Use more fancy SSL ciphers for Nginx
 - Use sane LDAP defaults
 - Clear the Rails cache after modifying gitlab.yml
+- Only run `rake db:migrate` when the gitlab-rails version has changed
 
 6.8.1
 - Use gitlab-rails 6.8.1
diff --git a/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/database_migrations.rb b/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/database_migrations.rb
index e6686e7..1b2452e 100644
--- a/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/database_migrations.rb
+++ b/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/database_migrations.rb
@@ -20,9 +20,7 @@ execute "initialize database" do
   action :nothing
 end
 
-user_group = "#{node['gitlab']['user']['username']}:#{node['gitlab']['user']['group']}"
-execute "chown #{user_group} /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/db/schema.rb"
-
 execute "migrate database" do
   command "/opt/gitlab/bin/gitlab-rake db:migrate"
+  action :nothing
 end
diff --git a/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/gitlab-rails.rb b/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/gitlab-rails.rb
index ffb112a..e8d3b6e 100644
--- a/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/gitlab-rails.rb
+++ b/files/gitlab-cookbooks/gitlab/recipes/gitlab-rails.rb
@@ -114,6 +114,17 @@ end
   end
 end
 
+# Make schema.rb writable for when we run `rake db:migrate`
+file "/opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/db/schema.rb" do
+  owner node['gitlab']['user']['username']
+end
+
+# Only run `rake db:migrate` when the gitlab-rails version has changed
+remote_file File.join(gitlab_rails_dir, 'VERSION') do
+  source "file:///opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/VERSION"
+  notifies :run, 'execute[migrate database]'
+end
+
 execute "chown -R #{node['gitlab']['user']['username']} /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-rails/public"
 
 execute "clear the gitlab-rails cache" do
--
libgit2 0.21.2