Upgrade cluster

• 1: Upgrade Bare Metal cluster
• 2: Upgrade vSphere, CloudStack, Nutanix, or Snow cluster
• 3: Upgrade airgapped cluster

1 - Upgrade Bare Metal cluster

EKS Anywhere provides the command upgrade, which allows you to upgrade various aspects of your EKS Anywhere cluster. When you run eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f ./cluster.yaml, EKS Anywhere runs a set of preflight checks to ensure your cluster is ready to be upgraded. EKS Anywhere then performs the upgrade, modifying your cluster to match the updated specification. The upgrade command also upgrades core components of EKS Anywhere and lets the user enjoy the latest features, bug fixes and security patches.

Upgrades should never be run from ephemeral nodes (short-lived systems that spin up and down on a regular basis). It is highly recommended to run the upgrade command with the --no-timeouts option when the command is executed through automation. This prevents the CLI from timing out and enables cluster operators to fix issues preventing the upgrade from completing while the process is running. If an eksctl anywhere version is older than v0.18.0 and upgrade fails, you must not delete the KinD bootstrap cluster Docker container. During an upgrade, the bootstrap cluster contains critical EKS Anywhere components. If it is deleted after a failed upgrade, they cannot be recovered.

NOTE: Currently only Minor Version Upgrades are support for Bare Metal clusters. No other aspects of the cluster upgrades are currently supported.

EKS Anywhere Version Upgrades

We encourage that you stay up to date with the latest EKS Anywhere version, as new features, bug fixes, or security patches might be added in each release. You can find the content, such as supported OS versions and changelog, of each EKS Anywhere version on the What’s New page.

Download the latest or target EKS Anywhere release and run eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster command to upgrade a cluster to a specific EKS Anywhere version.

Workload clusters can also be upgraded via the API (kubectl apply or GitOps) by changing bundlesRef for EKS Anywhere version 0.16.5 or below. Starting from v0.17.0, bundlesRef can be set to null and eksaVersion can be used instead.

bundlesRef is a reference to a bundles resource (collection of dependencies needed by an EKS Anywhere cluster) on the cluster whereas eksaVersion must be a valid SemVer value that maps to an EKSARelease resource on the cluster via the EKSARelease name. Both of these fields are automatically updated by EKS Anywhere and only need to be manually changed when upgrading via the API. The supported values for eksaVersion can be obtained by running kubectl get eksareleases -n eksa-system. For an EKSARelease with the name eksa-vX-X-X-prereleaseMetadata-plus-buildMetadata, eksaVersion can be set to vX-X-X-preleaseMetadata+buildMetadata. The workload’s version may not exceed the management cluster. Any upgrades to eksaVersion must also be sequential relative to minor version. However, you can choose to skip patch versions.

Skipping Amazon EKS Anywhere minor versions during cluster upgrade (such as going from v0.14 directly to v0.16) is NOT allowed. EKS Anywhere team performs regular upgrade reliability testing for sequential version upgrade (e.g. going from version 0.14 to 0.15, then from version 0.15 to 0.16), but we do not perform testing on non-sequential upgrade path (e.g. going from version 0.14 directly to 0.16). You should not skip minor versions during cluster upgrade. However, you can choose to skip patch versions.

To upgrade EKS Anywhere version for an airgapped cluster, you need to download new artifacts and images .

Kubernetes Minor Version Upgrades

Kubernetes has minor releases three times per year and EKS Distro follows a similar cadence. EKS Anywhere will add support for new EKS Distro releases as they are released, and you are advised to upgrade your cluster when possible.

Cluster upgrades are not handled automatically and require administrator action to modify the cluster specification and perform an upgrade. This may also require building a node image or OVA for the new Kubernetes version being upgraded to. You are advised to upgrade your clusters in development environments first and verify your workloads and controllers are compatible with the new version.

Cluster upgrades are performed using a rolling upgrade process (similar to Kubernetes Deployments). Upgrades can only happen one minor version at a time (e.g. 1.24 -> 1.25). Control plane components will be upgraded before worker nodes.

Prerequisites

This type of upgrade requires you to have one spare hardware server for control plane upgrade and one for each worker node group upgrade. The spare hardware server is provisioned with the new version and then an old server is deprovisioned. The deprovisioned server is then reprovisioned with the new version while another old server is deprovisioned. This happens one at a time until all the control plane components have been upgraded, followed by worker node upgrades.

Core component upgrades

EKS Anywhere upgrade also supports upgrading the following core components:

• Core CAPI
• CAPI providers
• Cilium CNI plugin
• Cert-manager
• Etcdadm CAPI provider
• EKS Anywhere controllers and CRDs
• GitOps controllers (Flux) - this is an optional component, will be upgraded only if specified

The latest versions of these core EKS Anywhere components are embedded into a bundles manifest that the CLI uses to fetch the latest versions and image builds needed for each component upgrade. The command detects both component version changes and new builds of the same versioned component. If there is a new Kubernetes version that is going to get rolled out, the core components get upgraded before the Kubernetes version. Irrespective of a Kubernetes version change, the upgrade command will always upgrade the internal EKS Anywhere components mentioned above to their latest available versions. All upgrade changes are backwards compatible.

Check upgrade components

Before you perform an upgrade, check the current and new versions of components that are ready to upgrade by typing:

eksctl anywhere upgrade plan cluster -f cluster.yaml

The output should appear similar to the following:

Worker node group name not specified. Defaulting name to md-0.
Warning: The recommended number of control plane nodes is 3 or 5
Worker node group name not specified. Defaulting name to md-0.
Checking new release availability...
NAME                     CURRENT VERSION                 NEXT VERSION
EKS-A                    v0.0.0-dev+build.1000+9886ba8   v0.0.0-dev+build.1105+46598cb
cluster-api              v1.0.2+e8c48f5                  v1.0.2+1274316
kubeadm                  v1.0.2+92c6d7e                  v1.0.2+aa1a03a
vsphere                  v1.0.1+efb002c                  v1.0.1+ef26ac1
kubadm                   v1.0.2+f002eae                  v1.0.2+f443dcf
etcdadm-bootstrap        v1.0.2-rc3+54dcc82              v1.0.0-rc3+df07114
etcdadm-controller       v1.0.2-rc3+a817792              v1.0.0-rc3+a310516

To format the output in json, add -o json to the end of the command line.

Check hardware availability

Next, you must ensure you have enough available hardware for the rolling upgrade operation to function. This type of upgrade requires you to have one spare hardware server for control plane upgrade and one for each worker node group upgrade. Check prerequisites for more information. Available hardware could have been fed to the cluster as extra hardware during a prior create command, or could be fed to the cluster during the upgrade process by providing the hardware CSV file to the upgrade cluster command .

To check if you have enough available hardware for rolling upgrade, you can use the kubectl command below to check if there are hardware objects with the selector labels corresponding to the controlplane/worker node group and without the ownerName label.

kubectl get hardware -n eksa-system --show-labels

For example, if you want to perform upgrade on a cluster with one worker node group with selector label type=worker-group-1, then you must have an additional hardware object in your cluster with the label type=controlplane (for control plane upgrade) and one with type=worker-group-1 (for worker node group upgrade) that doesn’t have the ownerName label.

In the command shown below, eksa-worker2 matches the selector label and it doesn’t have the ownerName label. Thus, it can be used to perform rolling upgrade of worker-group-1. Similarly, eksa-controlplane-spare will be used for rolling upgrade of control plane.

kubectl get hardware -n eksa-system --show-labels 
NAME                STATE       LABELS
eksa-controlplane               type=controlplane,v1alpha1.tinkerbell.org/ownerName=abhnvp-control-plane-template-1656427179688-9rm5f,v1alpha1.tinkerbell.org/ownerNamespace=eksa-system
eksa-controlplane-spare         type=controlplane
eksa-worker1                    type=worker-group-1,v1alpha1.tinkerbell.org/ownerName=abhnvp-md-0-1656427179689-9fqnx,v1alpha1.tinkerbell.org/ownerNamespace=eksa-system
eksa-worker2                    type=worker-group-1

If you don’t have any available hardware that match this requirement in the cluster, you can setup a new hardware CSV . You can feed this hardware inventory file during the upgrade cluster command .

Performing a cluster upgrade

To perform a cluster upgrade you can modify your cluster specification kubernetesVersion field to the desired version.

As an example, to upgrade a cluster with version 1.24 to 1.25 you would change your spec as follows:

apiVersion: anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/v1alpha1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: dev
spec:
  controlPlaneConfiguration:
    count: 1
    endpoint:
      host: "198.18.99.49"
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: TinkerbellMachineConfig
      name: dev
      ...
  kubernetesVersion: "1.25"
      ...

NOTE: If you have a custom machine image for your nodes in your cluster config yaml or to upgrade a node or group of nodes to a new operating system version (ie. RHEL 8.7 to RHEL 8.8), you may also need to update your TinkerbellDatacenterConfig or TinkerbellMachineConfig with the new operating system image URL osImageURL .

and then you will run the upgrade cluster command .

Upgrade cluster command

• kubectl CLI: The cluster lifecycle feature lets you use kubectl to talk to the Kubernetes API to upgrade a workload cluster. To use kubectl, run:

  kubectl apply -f eksa-w01-cluster.yaml 
  --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
  

  To check the state of a cluster managed with the cluster lifecyle feature, use kubectl to show the cluster object with its status.

  The status field on the cluster object field holds information about the current state of the cluster.

  kubectl get clusters w01 -o yaml
  

  The cluster has been fully upgraded once the status of the Ready condition is marked True. See the cluster status guide for more information.

• GitOps: See Manage separate workload clusters with GitOps

• Terraform: See Manage separate workload clusters with Terraform

  NOTE:For kubectl, GitOps and Terraform:

  • The baremetal controller does not support scaling upgrades and Kubernetes version upgrades in the same request.

  • While scaling a workload cluster if you need to add additional machines, run:

    eksctl anywhere generate hardware -z updated-hardware.csv > updated-hardware.yaml
    kubectl apply -f updated-hardware.yaml
    

  • If you want to upgrade multiple workload clusters, make sure that the spare hardware that is available for new nodes to rollout has labels unique to the workload cluster you are trying to upgrade. For instance, for an EKSA cluster named eksa-workload1, the hardware that is assigned for this cluster should have labels that are only going to be used for this cluster like type=eksa-workload1-cp and type=eksa-workload1-worker. Another workload cluster named eksa-workload2 can have labels like type=eksa-workload2-cp and type=eksa-workload2-worker. Please note that even though labels can be arbitrary, they need to be unique for each workload cluster. Not specifying unique cluster labels can cause cluster upgrades to behave in unexpected ways which may lead to unsuccessful upgrades and unstable clusters.

• eksctl CLI: To upgrade a workload cluster with eksctl, run:

  eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f cluster.yaml 
  # --hardware-csv <hardware.csv> \ # uncomment to add more hardware
  --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
  

  As noted earlier, adding the --kubeconfig option tells eksctl to use the management cluster identified by that kubeconfig file to create a different workload cluster.

  This will upgrade the cluster specification (if specified), upgrade the core components to the latest available versions and apply the changes using the provisioner controllers.

  Output

  Example output:

  ✅ control plane ready
  ✅ worker nodes ready
  ✅ nodes ready
  ✅ cluster CRDs ready
  ✅ cluster object present on workload cluster
  ✅ upgrade cluster kubernetes version increment
  ✅ validate immutable fields
  🎉 all cluster upgrade preflight validations passed
  Performing provider setup and validations
  Ensuring etcd CAPI providers exist on management cluster before upgrade
  Pausing GitOps cluster resources reconcile
  Upgrading core components
  Backing up management cluster's resources before upgrading
  Upgrading management cluster
  Updating Git Repo with new EKS-A cluster spec
  Forcing reconcile Git repo with latest commit
  Resuming GitOps cluster resources kustomization
  Writing cluster config file
  🎉 Cluster upgraded!
  Cleaning up backup resources
  

  Starting in EKS Anywhere v0.18.0, when upgrading management cluster the CLI depends on the EKS Anywhere Controller to perform the upgrade. In the event an issue occurs and the CLI times out, it may be possible to fix the issue and have the upgrade complete as the EKS Anywhere Controller will continually attempt to complete the upgrade.

  During the workload cluster upgrade process, EKS Anywhere pauses the cluster controller reconciliation by adding the paused annotation anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/paused: true to the EKS Anywhere cluster, provider datacenterconfig and machineconfig resources, before the components upgrade. After upgrade completes, the annotations are removed so that the cluster controller resumes reconciling the cluster. If the CLI execution is interrupted or times out, the controller won’t reconcile changes to the EKS-A objects until these annotations are removed. You can re-run the CLI to restart the upgrade process or remove the annotations manually with kubectl.

  Though not recommended, you can manually pause the EKS Anywhere cluster controller reconciliation to perform extended maintenance work or interact with Cluster API objects directly. To do it, you can add the paused annotation to the cluster resource:

  kubectl annotate clusters.anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com ${CLUSTER_NAME} -n ${CLUSTER_NAMESPACE} anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/paused=true
  

  After finishing the task, make sure you resume the cluster reconciliation by removing the paused annotation, so that EKS Anywhere cluster controller can continue working as expected.

  kubectl annotate clusters.anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com ${CLUSTER_NAME} -n ${CLUSTER_NAMESPACE} anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/paused-
  

Upgradeable cluster attributes

Cluster:

• kubernetesVersion
• workerNodeGroupConfigurations.kubernetesVersion

Advanced configuration for rolling upgrade

EKS Anywhere allows an optional configuration to customize the behavior of upgrades.

It allows the specification of Two parameters that control the desired behavior of rolling upgrades:

• maxSurge - The maximum number of machines that can be scheduled above the desired number of machines. When not specified, the current CAPI default of 1 is used.
• maxUnavailable - The maximum number of machines that can be unavailable during the upgrade. When not specified, the current CAPI default of 0 is used.

Example configuration:

upgradeRolloutStrategy:
  type: RollingUpdate
  rollingUpdate:
    maxSurge: 1
    maxUnavailable: 0    # only configurable for worker nodes

‘upgradeRolloutStrategy’ configuration can be specified separately for control plane and for each worker node group. This template contains an example for control plane under the ‘controlPlaneConfiguration’ section and for worker node group under ‘workerNodeGroupConfigurations’:

apiVersion: anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/v1alpha1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: my-cluster-name
spec:
  clusterNetwork:
    cniConfig:
      cilium: {}
    pods:
      cidrBlocks:
      - 192.168.0.0/16
    services:
      cidrBlocks:
      - 10.96.0.0/12
  controlPlaneConfiguration:
    count: 1
    endpoint:
      host: "10.61.248.209"
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: TinkerbellMachineConfig
      name: my-cluster-name-cp
    upgradeRolloutStrategy:
      type: RollingUpdate
      rollingUpdate:
        maxSurge: 1
  datacenterRef:
    kind: TinkerbellDatacenterConfig
    name: my-cluster-name
  kubernetesVersion: "1.25"
  managementCluster:
    name: my-cluster-name 
  workerNodeGroupConfigurations:
  - count: 2
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: TinkerbellMachineConfig
      name: my-cluster-name 
    name: md-0
    upgradeRolloutStrategy:
      type: RollingUpdate
      rollingUpdate:
        maxSurge: 1
        maxUnavailable: 0

---
...

upgradeRolloutStrategy

Configuration parameters for upgrade strategy.

upgradeRolloutStrategy.type

Type of rollout strategy. Currently only RollingUpdate is supported.

upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate

Configuration parameters for customizing rolling upgrade behavior.

upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxSurge

Default: 1

This can not be 0 if maxUnavailable is 0.

The maximum number of machines that can be scheduled above the desired number of machines.

Example: When this is set to n, the new worker node group can be scaled up immediately by n when the rolling upgrade starts. Total number of machines in the cluster (old + new) never exceeds (desired number of machines + n). Once scale down happens and old machines are brought down, the new worker node group can be scaled up further ensuring that the total number of machines running at any time does not exceed the desired number of machines + n.

upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxUnavailable

Default: 0

This can not be 0 if MaxSurge is 0.

The maximum number of machines that can be unavailable during the upgrade.

Example: When this is set to n, the old worker node group can be scaled down by n machines immediately when the rolling upgrade starts. Once new machines are ready, old worker node group can be scaled down further, followed by scaling up the new worker node group, ensuring that the total number of machines unavailable at all times during the upgrade never falls below n.

Rolling upgrades with no additional hardware

When maxSurge is set to 0 and maxUnavailable is set to 1, it allows for a rolling upgrade without need for additional hardware. Use this configuration if your workloads can tolerate node unavailability.

NOTE: This could ONLY be used if unavailability of a maximum of 1 node is acceptable. For single node clusters, an additional temporary machine is a must. Alternatively, you may recreate the single node cluster for upgrading and handle data recovery manually.

With this kind of configuration, the rolling upgrade will proceed node by node, deprovision and delete a node fully before re-provisioning it with upgraded version, and re-join it to the cluster. This means that any point during the course of the rolling upgrade, there could be one unavailable node.

Troubleshooting

Attempting to upgrade a cluster with more than 1 minor release will result in receiving the following error.

✅ validate immutable fields
❌ validation failed    {"validation": "Upgrade preflight validations", "error": "validation failed with 1 errors: WARNING: version difference between upgrade version (1.21) and server version (1.19) do not meet the supported version increment of +1", "remediation": ""}
Error: failed to upgrade cluster: validations failed

For more errors you can see the troubleshooting section .

2 - Upgrade vSphere, CloudStack, Nutanix, or Snow cluster

EKS Anywhere provides the command upgrade, which allows you to upgrade various aspects of your EKS Anywhere cluster. When you run eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f ./cluster.yaml, EKS Anywhere runs a set of preflight checks to ensure your cluster is ready to be upgraded. EKS Anywhere then performs the upgrade, modifying your cluster to match the updated specification. The upgrade command also upgrades core components of EKS Anywhere and lets the user enjoy the latest features, bug fixes and security patches.

Upgrades should never be run from ephemeral nodes (short-lived systems that spin up and down on a regular basis). It is highly recommended to run the upgrade command with the --no-timeouts option when the command is executed through automation. This prevents the CLI from timing out and enables cluster operators to fix issues preventing the upgrade from completing while the process is running. If an eksctl anywhere version is older than v0.18.0 and upgrade fails, you must not delete the KinD bootstrap cluster Docker container. During an upgrade, the bootstrap cluster contains critical EKS Anywhere components. If it is deleted after a failed upgrade, they cannot be recovered.

Prepare DHCP IP addresses pool

Please make sure to have sufficient available IP addresses in your DHCP pool to cover the new machines. The number of necessary IPs can be calculated from the machine counts and maxSurge config . For create operation, each machine needs 1 IP. For upgrade operation, control plane and workers need just 1 extra IP (total, not per node) due to rolling upgrade strategy. Each external etcd machine needs 1 extra IP address (ex: 3 etcd nodes would require 3 more IP addresses) because EKS Anywhere needs to create all the new etcd machines before removing any old ones. You will also need additional IPs to be equal to the number used for maxSurge. After calculating the required IPs, please make sure your environment has enough available IPs before performing the upgrade operation.

• Example 1, to create a cluster with 3 control plane node, 2 worker nodes and 3 stacked etcd, you will need at least 5 (3+2+0, as stacked etcd is deployed as part of the control plane nodes) available IPs. To upgrade the same cluster with default maxSurge (0), you will need 1 (1+0+0) additional available IPs.
• Example 2, to create a cluster with 1 control plane node, 2 worker nodes and 3 unstacked (external) etcd nodes, you will need at least 6 (1+2+3) available IPs. To upgrade the same cluster with default maxSurge (0), you will need at least 4 (1+3+0) additional available IPs.
• Example 3, to upgrade a cluster with 1 control plane node, 2 worker nodes and 3 unstacked (external) etcd nodes, with maxSurge set to 2, you will need at least 6 (1+3+2) additional available IPs.

EKS Anywhere Version Upgrades

We encourage that you stay up to date with the latest EKS Anywhere version, as new features, bug fixes, or security patches might be added in each release. You can find the content, such as supported OS versions and changelog, of each EKS Anywhere version on the What’s New page.

Download the latest or target EKS Anywhere release and run eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster command to upgrade a cluster to a specific EKS Anywhere version.

Workload clusters can also be upgraded via the API (kubectl apply or GitOps) by changing bundlesRef for EKS Anywhere version 0.16.5 or below. Starting from v0.17.0, bundlesRef can be set to null and eksaVersion can be used instead.

bundlesRef is a reference to a bundles resource (collection of dependencies needed by an EKS Anywhere cluster) on the cluster whereas eksaVersion must be a valid SemVer value that maps to an EKSARelease resource on the cluster via the EKSARelease name. Both of these fields are automatically updated by EKS Anywhere and only need to be manually changed when upgrading via the API. The supported values for eksaVersion can be obtained by running kubectl get eksareleases -n eksa-system. For an EKSARelease with the name eksa-vX-X-X-prereleaseMetadata-plus-buildMetadata, eksaVersion can be set to vX-X-X-preleaseMetadata+buildMetadata. The workload’s version may not exceed the management cluster. Any upgrades to eksaVersion must also be sequential relative to minor version. However, you can choose to skip patch versions.

Skipping Amazon EKS Anywhere minor versions during cluster upgrade (such as going from v0.14 directly to v0.16) is NOT allowed. EKS Anywhere team performs regular upgrade reliability testing for sequential version upgrade (e.g. going from version 0.14 to 0.15, then from version 0.15 to 0.16), but we do not perform testing on non-sequential upgrade path (e.g. going from version 0.14 directly to 0.16). You should not skip minor versions during cluster upgrade. However, you can choose to skip patch versions.

To upgrade EKS Anywhere version for an airgapped cluster, you need to download new artifacts and images .

Kubernetes Minor Version Upgrades

Kubernetes has minor releases three times per year and EKS Distro follows a similar cadence. EKS Anywhere will add support for new EKS Distro releases as they are released, and you are advised to upgrade your cluster when possible.

Cluster upgrades are not handled automatically and require administrator action to modify the cluster specification and perform an upgrade. This may also require building a node image or OVA for the new Kubernetes version being upgraded to. You are advised to upgrade your clusters in development environments first and verify your workloads and controllers are compatible with the new version.

Cluster upgrades are performed in place using a rolling process (similar to Kubernetes Deployments). Upgrades can only happen one minor version at a time (e.g. 1.24 -> 1.25). Control plane components will be upgraded before worker nodes.

A new VM is created with the new version and then an old VM is removed. This happens one at a time until all the control plane components have been upgraded.

Worker node groups can optionally be upgraded separately from the control plane by setting workerNodeGroupConfiguration.kubernetesVersion. There can only be a skew of two minor versions between the control plane and each worker node. Removing workerNodeGroupConfiguration.kubernetesVersion will trigger an upgrade to that node group to upgrade to the root level kubernetesVersion.

Core component upgrades

EKS Anywhere upgrade also supports upgrading the following core components:

• Core CAPI
• CAPI providers
• Cilium CNI plugin
• Cert-manager
• Etcdadm CAPI provider
• EKS Anywhere controllers and CRDs
• GitOps controllers (Flux) - this is an optional component, will be upgraded only if specified

The latest versions of these core EKS Anywhere components are embedded into a bundles manifest that the CLI uses to fetch the latest versions and image builds needed for each component upgrade. The command detects both component version changes and new builds of the same versioned component. If there is a new Kubernetes version that is going to get rolled out, the core components get upgraded before the Kubernetes version. Irrespective of a Kubernetes version change, the upgrade command will always upgrade the internal EKS Anywhere components mentioned above to their latest available versions. All upgrade changes are backwards compatible.

Specifically for Snow provider, a new Admin instance is needed when upgrading to the new versions of EKS Anywhere. See Upgrade EKS Anywhere AMIs in Snowball Edge devices to upgrade and use a new Admin instance in Snow devices. After that, ugrades of other components can be done as described in this document.

Check upgrade components

Before you perform an upgrade, check the current and new versions of components that are ready to upgrade by typing:

Management Cluster

eksctl anywhere upgrade plan cluster -f mgmt-cluster.yaml

Workload Cluster

eksctl anywhere upgrade plan cluster -f workload-cluster.yaml --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig

The output should appear similar to the following:

Worker node group name not specified. Defaulting name to md-0.
Warning: The recommended number of control plane nodes is 3 or 5
Worker node group name not specified. Defaulting name to md-0.
Checking new release availability...
NAME                     CURRENT VERSION                 NEXT VERSION
EKS-A                    v0.0.0-dev+build.1000+9886ba8   v0.0.0-dev+build.1105+46598cb
cluster-api              v1.0.2+e8c48f5                  v1.0.2+1274316
kubeadm                  v1.0.2+92c6d7e                  v1.0.2+aa1a03a
vsphere                  v1.0.1+efb002c                  v1.0.1+ef26ac1
kubadm                   v1.0.2+f002eae                  v1.0.2+f443dcf
etcdadm-bootstrap        v1.0.2-rc3+54dcc82              v1.0.0-rc3+df07114
etcdadm-controller       v1.0.2-rc3+a817792              v1.0.0-rc3+a310516

To the format output in json, add -o json to the end of the command line.

Performing a cluster upgrade

To perform a cluster upgrade you can modify your cluster specification kubernetesVersion field to the desired version.

As an example, to upgrade a cluster with version 1.26 to 1.27 you would change your spec

apiVersion: anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/v1alpha1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: dev
spec:
  controlPlaneConfiguration:
    count: 1
    endpoint:
      host: "198.18.99.49"
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: VSphereMachineConfig
      name: dev
      ...
  kubernetesVersion: "1.27"
      ...

NOTE: If you have a custom machine image for your nodes you may also need to update your vsphereMachineConfig with a new template. Refer to vSphere Artifacts to build a new OVA template.

and then you will run the upgrade cluster command .

Upgrade cluster command

• kubectl CLI: The cluster lifecycle feature lets you use kubectl to talk to the Kubernetes API to upgrade an EKS Anywhere cluster. For example, to use kubectl to upgrade a management or workload cluster, you can run:

  # Upgrade a management cluster with cluster name "mgmt"
  kubectl apply -f mgmt-cluster.yaml --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
  
  # Upgrade a workload cluster with cluster name "eksa-w01"
  kubectl apply -f eksa-w01-cluster.yaml --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
  

  To check the state of a cluster managed with the cluster lifecyle feature, use kubectl to show the cluster object with its status.

  The status field on the cluster object field holds information about the current state of the cluster.

  kubectl get clusters w01 -o yaml
  

  The cluster has been fully upgraded once the status of the Ready condition is marked True. See the cluster status guide for more information.

• GitOps: See Manage separate workload clusters with GitOps

• Terraform: See Manage separate workload clusters with Terraform

kubectl edit secret -n eksa-system registry-credentials --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig

echo -n 'newusername' | base64
echo -n 'newpassword' | base64

• eksctl CLI: To upgrade an EKS Anywhere cluster with eksctl, run:

  # Upgrade a management cluster with cluster name "mgmt"
   eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f mgmt-cluster.yaml
  
  # Upgrade a workload cluster with cluster name "eksa-w01"
   eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f eksa-w01-cluster.yaml --kubeconfig mgmt/mgmt-eks-a-cluster.kubeconfig
  

  As noted earlier, adding the --kubeconfig option tells eksctl to use the management cluster identified by that kubeconfig file to upgrade a different workload cluster.

  This will upgrade the cluster specification (if specified), upgrade the core components to the latest available versions and apply the changes using the provisioner controllers.

Output

Example output:

✅ control plane ready
✅ worker nodes ready
✅ nodes ready
✅ cluster CRDs ready
✅ cluster object present on workload cluster
✅ upgrade cluster kubernetes version increment
✅ validate immutable fields
🎉 all cluster upgrade preflight validations passed
Performing provider setup and validations
Ensuring etcd CAPI providers exist on management cluster before upgrade
Pausing GitOps cluster resources reconcile
Upgrading core components
Backing up management cluster's resources before upgrading
Upgrading management cluster
Updating Git Repo with new EKS-A cluster spec
Forcing reconcile Git repo with latest commit
Resuming GitOps cluster resources kustomization
Writing cluster config file
🎉 Cluster upgraded!
Cleaning up backup resources

Starting in EKS Anywhere v0.18.0, when upgrading management cluster the CLI depends on the EKS Anywhere Controller to perform the upgrade. In the event an issue occurs and the CLI times out, it may be possible to fix the issue and have the upgrade complete as the EKS Anywhere Controller will continually attempt to complete the upgrade.

During the workload cluster upgrade process, EKS Anywhere pauses the cluster controller reconciliation by adding the paused annotation anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/paused: true to the EKS Anywhere cluster, provider datacenterconfig and machineconfig resources, before the components upgrade. After upgrade completes, the annotations are removed so that the cluster controller resumes reconciling the cluster. If the CLI execution is interrupted or times out, the controller won’t reconcile changes to the EKS-A objects until these annotations are removed. You can re-run the CLI to restart the upgrade process or remove the annotations manually with kubectl.

Though not recommended, you can manually pause the EKS Anywhere cluster controller reconciliation to perform extended maintenance work or interact with Cluster API objects directly. To do it, you can add the paused annotation to the cluster resource:

kubectl annotate clusters.anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com ${CLUSTER_NAME} -n ${CLUSTER_NAMESPACE} anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/paused=true

After finishing the task, make sure you resume the cluster reconciliation by removing the paused annotation, so that EKS Anywhere cluster controller can continue working as expected.

kubectl annotate clusters.anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com ${CLUSTER_NAME} -n ${CLUSTER_NAMESPACE} anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/paused-

NOTE (vSphere only): If you are upgrading a vSphere cluster created using EKS Anywhere version prior to v0.16.0 that has the vSphere CSI Driver installed in it, please refer to the additional steps listed here before attempting an upgrade.

Upgradeable Cluster Attributes

EKS Anywhere upgrade supports upgrading more than just the kubernetesVersion, allowing you to upgrade a number of fields simultaneously with the same procedure.

Upgradeable Attributes

Cluster:

• kubernetesVersion
• controlPlaneConfig.count
• controlPlaneConfigurations.machineGroupRef.name
• workerNodeGroupConfigurations.count
• workerNodeGroupConfigurations.machineGroupRef.name
• workerNodeGroupConfigurations.kubernetesVersion
• externalEtcdConfiguration.machineGroupRef.name
• identityProviderRefs (Only for kind:OIDCConfig, kind:AWSIamConfig is immutable)
• gitOpsRef (Once set, you can’t change or delete the field’s content later)
• registryMirrorConfiguration (for non-authenticated registry mirror)
  • endpoint
  • port
  • caCertContent
  • insecureSkipVerify

VSphereMachineConfig:

• datastore
• diskGiB
• folder
• memoryMiB
• numCPUs
• resourcePool
• template
• users

NutanixMachineConfig:

• vcpusPerSocket
• vcpuSockets
• memorySize
• image
• cluster
• subnet
• systemDiskSize

SnowMachineConfig:

• amiID
• instanceType
• physicalNetworkConnector
• sshKeyName
• devices
• containersVolume
• osFamily
• network

CloudStackDatacenterConfig:

• availabilityZones (Can add and remove availability zones provided at least 1 previously configured zone is still present)

CloudStackMachineConfig:

• template
• computeOffering
• diskOffering
• userCustomDetails
• symlinks
• users

OIDCConfig:

• clientID
• groupsClaim
• groupsPrefix
• issuerUrl
• requiredClaims.claim
• requiredClaims.value
• usernameClaim
• usernamePrefix

AWSIamConfig:

• mapRoles
• mapUsers

EKS Anywhere upgrade also supports adding more worker node groups post-creation. To add more worker node groups, modify your cluster config file to define the additional group(s). Example:

apiVersion: anywhere.eks.amazonaws.com/v1alpha1
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: dev
spec:
  controlPlaneConfiguration:
     ...
  workerNodeGroupConfigurations:
  - count: 2
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: VSphereMachineConfig
      name: my-cluster-machines
    name: md-0
  - count: 2
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: VSphereMachineConfig
      name: my-cluster-machines
    name: md-1
      ...

Worker node groups can use the same machineGroupRef as previous groups, or you can define a new machine configuration for your new group.

Resume upgrade after failure

EKS Anywhere supports re-running the upgrade command post-failure as an experimental feature. If the upgrade command fails, the user can manually fix the issue (when applicable) and simply rerun the same command. At this point, the CLI will skip the completed tasks, restore the state of the operation, and resume the upgrade process. The completed tasks are stored in the generated folder as a file named <clusterName>-checkpoint.yaml.

This feature is experimental. To enable this feature, export the following environment variable:
export CHECKPOINT_ENABLED=true

Troubleshooting

Attempting to upgrade a cluster with more than 1 minor release will result in receiving the following error.

✅ validate immutable fields
❌ validation failed    {"validation": "Upgrade preflight validations", "error": "validation failed with 1 errors: WARNING: version difference between upgrade version (1.21) and server version (1.19) do not meet the supported version increment of +1", "remediation": ""}
Error: failed to upgrade cluster: validations failed

For more errors you can see the troubleshooting section .

3 - Upgrade airgapped cluster

The procedure to upgrade EKS Anywhere clusters in airgapped environments is similar to the procedure for creating new clusters in airgapped environments. The only difference is that you must upgrade your eksctl anywhere CLI before running the steps to download and import the EKS Anywhere dependencies to your local registry mirror.

Prerequisites

• An existing Admin machine
• The upgraded version of the eksctl anywhere CLI installed on the Admin machine
• Docker running on the Admin machine
• At least 80GB in storage space on the Admin machine to temporarily store the EKS Anywhere images locally before importing them to your local registry. Currently, when downloading images, EKS Anywhere pulls all dependencies for all infrastructure providers and supported Kubernetes versions.
• The download and import images commands must be run on an amd64 machine to import amd64 images to the registry mirror.

Procedure

1. Download the EKS Anywhere artifacts that contain the list and locations of the EKS Anywhere dependencies. A compressed file eks-anywhere-downloads.tar.gz will be downloaded. You can use the eksctl anywhere download artifacts --dry-run command to see the list of artifacts it will download.

   eksctl anywhere download artifacts
   

2. Decompress the eks-anywhere-downloads.tar.gz file using the following command. This will create an eks-anywhere-downloads folder.

   tar -xvf eks-anywhere-downloads.tar.gz
   

3. Download the EKS Anywhere image dependencies to the Admin machine. This command may take several minutes (10+) to complete. To monitor the progress of the command, you can run with the -v 6 command line argument, which will show details of the images that are being pulled. Docker must be running for the following command to succeed.

   eksctl anywhere download images -o images.tar
   

4. Set up a local registry mirror to host the downloaded EKS Anywhere images and configure your Admin machine with the certificates and authentication information if your registry requires it. For details, refer to the Registry Mirror Configuration documentation.

5. Import images to the local registry mirror using the following command. Set REGISTRY_MIRROR_URL to the url of the local registry mirror you created in the previous step. This command may take several minutes to complete. To monitor the progress of the command, you can run with the -v 6 command line argument. When using self-signed certificates for your registry, you should run with the --insecure command line argument to indicate skipping TLS verification while pushing helm charts and bundles.

   export REGISTRY_MIRROR_URL=<registryurl>
   

   eksctl anywhere import images -i images.tar -r ${REGISTRY_MIRROR_URL} \
      --bundles ./eks-anywhere-downloads/bundle-release.yaml
   

6. Optionally import curated packages to your registry mirror. The curated packages images are copied from Amazon ECR to your local registry mirror in a single step, as opposed to separate download and import steps. For post-cluster creation steps, reference the Curated Packages documentation.

   Expand for curated packages instructions

   If your EKS Anywhere cluster is running in an airgapped environment, and you set up a local registry mirror, you can copy curated packages from Amazon ECR to your local registry mirror with the following command.

   Set $KUBEVERSION to be equal to the spec.kubernetesVersion of your EKS Anywhere cluster specification.

   The copy packages command uses the credentials in your docker config file. So you must docker login to the source registries and the destination registry before running the command.

   When using self-signed certificates for your registry, you should run with the --dst-insecure command line argument to indicate skipping TLS verification while copying curated packages.

   eksctl anywhere copy packages \
     ${REGISTRY_MIRROR_URL}/curated-packages \
     --kube-version $KUBEVERSION \
     --src-chart-registry public.ecr.aws/eks-anywhere \
     --src-image-registry 783794618700.dkr.ecr.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
   

If the previous steps succeeded, all of the required EKS Anywhere dependencies are now present in your local registry. Before you upgrade your EKS Anywhere cluster, configure registryMirrorConfiguration in your EKS Anywhere cluster specification with the information for your local registry. For details see the Registry Mirror Configuration documentation.

NOTE: If you are running EKS Anywhere on bare metal, you must configure osImageURL and hookImagesURLPath in your EKS Anywhere cluster specification with the location of the upgraded node operating system image and hook OS image. For details, reference the bare metal configuration documentation.

Next Steps

• Build upgraded node operating system images for your cluster
• Upgrade a cluster on vSphere, Snow, Cloudstack, or Nutanix
• Upgrade a cluster on bare metal