Articles on: General

Upgrading Kubernetes version

Upgrading your Kubernetes version is crucial for security, stability, and access to new features. It ensures better performance, ecosystem support, and compatibility with applications while keeping your cluster up-to-date with the latest community knowledge and support.

There are two major steps to upgrading your Kubernetes cluster:
Upgrading the Control Plane
Upgrading the Node Groups

This article dives into how you can upgrade your cluster running on AWS or GCP on your own.

1. Upgrading the Control Plane



AWS


In your AWS Console, navigate to the Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) dashboard. Here, you should find a list of clusters along with their Kubernetes version. You can update the version from here.

EKS only allows you to update one version at a time. To update to the version after that, you have to update the Node Groups to the current version as well

upgrade-control-plane-aws

GCP


In your GCP Console, navigate to the Kubernetes Engine dashboard. From here, click into the cluster you wish to upgrade. In the cluster Details, under Cluster basics, you should find the version (cluster master version) along with a button to upgrade the master/ control plane version.

upgrade-control-plane-gcp


2. Upgrading the Node Groups



AWS


Refer to AWS Documentation here on updating Node groups: https://docs.aws.amazon.com/eks/latest/userguide/update-managed-node-group.html

GCP


In your GCP Console, go back to the Kubernetes Engine dashboard and click into the cluster. You should see a message prompting you to update your Node Pools. Click this button and select the version of your (now updated) Control Plane.

upgrade-node-pool-message-gcp

Updated on: 04/08/2023

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