This is the multi-page printable view of this section. Click here to print.

Return to the regular view of this page.

Upgrade cluster

How to upgrade your cluster to new EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes versions

1: Upgrade Overview
2: Upgrade Bare Metal cluster
3: Upgrade vSphere, CloudStack, Nutanix, or Snow cluster
4: Upgrade airgapped cluster
5: Upgrade management components
6:
7:

1 - Upgrade Overview

Overview of EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes version upgrades

Version upgrades in EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes are events that should be carefully planned, tested, and implemented. New EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes versions can introduce significant changes, and we recommend that you test the behavior of your applications against new EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes versions before you update your production clusters. Cluster backups should always be performed before initiating an upgrade. When initiating cluster version upgrades, new virtual or bare metal machines are provisioned and the machines on older versions are deprovisioned in a rolling fashion by default.

Unlike Amazon EKS, there are no automatic upgrades in EKS Anywhere and you have full control over when you upgrade. On the end of support date, you can still create new EKS Anywhere clusters with the unsupported Kubernetes version if the EKS Anywhere version you are using includes it. Any existing EKS Anywhere clusters with the unsupported Kubernetes version continue to function. As new Kubernetes versions become available in EKS Anywhere, we recommend that you proactively update your clusters to use the latest available Kubernetes version to remain on versions that receive CVE patches and bug fixes.

Reference the EKS Anywhere Changelog for information on fixes, features, and changes included in each EKS Anywhere release. For details on the EKS Anywhere version support policy, reference the Versioning page.

Upgrade Version Skew

There are a few dimensions of versioning to consider in your EKS Anywhere deployments:

Management clusters to workload clusters: Management clusters can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of workload clusters. Workload clusters cannot have an EKS Anywhere version greater than management clusters.
Management components to cluster components: Management components can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of cluster components.
EKS Anywhere version upgrades: Skipping EKS Anywhere minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v0.19.x to v0.21.x). We recommend you upgrade one EKS Anywhere minor version at a time (v0.19.x to v0.20.x to v0.21.x).
Kubernetes version upgrades: Skipping Kubernetes minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v1.29.x to v1.31.x). You must upgrade one Kubernetes minor version at a time (v1.29.x to v1.30.x to v1.31.x).
Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes: As of Kubernetes v1.28, worker nodes can be up to 3 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version. In earlier Kubernetes versions, worker nodes could be up to 2 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version.

User Interfaces

EKS Anywhere versions for management and standalone clusters must be upgraded with the eksctl anywhere CLI. Kubernetes versions for management, standalone, and workload clusters, and EKS Anywhere versions for workload clusters can be upgraded with the eksctl anywhere CLI or with Kubernetes API-compatible clients such as the kubectl CLI, GitOps, or Terraform. For an overview of the differences between management, standalone, workload clusters, reference the Architecture page.

If you are using the eksctl anywhere CLI, there are eksctl anywhere upgrade plan cluster and eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster commands. The former shows the components and versions that will be upgraded. The latter runs the upgrade, first validating a set of preflight checks and then upgrading your cluster to match the updated spec.

If you are using an Kubernetes API-compatible client, you modify your workload cluster spec yaml and apply the modified yaml to your management cluster. The EKS Anywhere lifecycle controller, which runs on the management cluster, reconciles the desired changes on the workload cluster.

As of EKS Anywhere version v0.19.0, management components can be upgraded separately from cluster components. This is enables you to get the latest updates to the management components such as Cluster API controller, EKS Anywhere controller, and provider-specific controllers without impact to your workload clusters. Management components can only be upgraded with the eksctl anywhere CLI, which has new eksctl anywhere upgrade plan management-components and eksctl anywhere upgrade management-component commands. For more information, reference the Upgrade Management Components page.

Upgrading EKS Anywhere Versions

Each EKS Anywhere version includes all components required to create and manage EKS Anywhere clusters. For example, this includes:

Administrative / CLI components (eksctl anywhere CLI, image-builder, diagnostics-collector)
Management components (Cluster API controller, EKS Anywhere controller, provider-specific controllers)
Cluster components (Kubernetes, Cilium)

You can find details about each EKS Anywhere releases in the EKS Anywhere release manifest. The release manifest contains references to the corresponding bundle manifest for each EKS Anywhere version. Within the bundle manifest, you will find the components included in a specific EKS Anywhere version. The images running in your deployment use the same URI values specified in the bundle manifest for that component. For example, see the bundle manifest for EKS Anywhere version v0.21.0.

To upgrade the EKS Anywhere version of a management or standalone cluster, you install a new version of the eksctl anywhere CLI, change the eksaVersion field in your management or standalone cluster’s spec yaml, and then run the eksctl anywhere upgrade management-components -f cluster.yaml (as of EKS Anywhere version v0.19) or eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f cluster.yaml command. The eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster command upgrades both management and cluster components.

To upgrade the EKS Anywhere version of a workload cluster, you change the eksaVersion field in your workload cluster’s spec yaml, and apply the new workload cluster’s spec yaml to your management cluster using the eksctl anywhere CLI or with Kubernetes API-compatible clients.

Upgrading Kubernetes Versions

Each EKS Anywhere version supports at least 4 minor versions of Kubernetes. Kubernetes patch version increments are included in EKS Anywhere minor and patch releases. There are two places in the cluster spec where you can configure the Kubernetes version, Cluster.Spec.KubernetesVersion and Cluster.Spec.WorkerNodeGroupConfiguration[].KubernetesVersion. If only Cluster.Spec.KubernetesVersion is set, then that version will apply to both control plane and worker nodes. You can use Cluster.Spec.WorkerNodeGroupConfiguration[].KubernetesVersion to upgrade your worker nodes separately from control plane nodes.

The Cluster.Spec.WorkerNodeGroupConfiguration[].KubernetesVersion cannot be greater than Cluster.Spec.KubernetesVersion. In Kubernetes versions lower than v1.28.0, the Cluster.Spec.WorkerNodeGroupConfiguration[].KubernetesVersion can be at most 2 versions lower than the Cluster.Spec.KubernetesVersion. In Kubernetes versions v1.28.0 or greater, the Cluster.Spec.WorkerNodeGroupConfiguration[].KubernetesVersion can be at most 3 versions lower than the Cluster.Spec.KubernetesVersion.

Upgrade Controls

By default, when you upgrade EKS Anywhere or Kubernetes versions, nodes are upgraded one at a time in a rolling fashion. All control plane nodes are upgraded before worker nodes. To control the speed and behavior of rolling upgrades, you can use the upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxSurge and upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxUnavailable fields in the cluster spec (available on all providers as of EKS Anywhere version v0.19). The maxSurge setting controls how many new machines can be queued for provisioning simultaneously, and the maxUnavailable setting controls how many machines must remain available during upgrades. For more information on these controls, reference Advanced configuration for vSphere, CloudStack, Nutanix, and Snow upgrades and Advanced configuration for bare metal upgrades.

As of EKS Anywhere version v0.19.0, if you are running EKS Anywhere on bare metal, you can use the in-place rollout strategy to upgrade EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes versions, which upgrades the components on the same physical machines without requiring additional server capacity. In-place upgrades are not available for other providers.

2 - Upgrade Bare Metal cluster

How to perform Bare Metal cluster upgrades

Note

Upgrade overview information was moved to a dedicated Upgrade Overview page.

Considerations

Only EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes version upgrades are supported for Bare Metal clusters. You cannot update other cluster configuration.
Upgrades should never be run from ephemeral nodes (short-lived systems that spin up and down on a regular basis). If the EKS Anywhere version is lower 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.
It is highly recommended to run the eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster 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.
In EKS Anywhere version v0.15.0, we introduced the EKS Anywhere cluster lifecycle controller that runs on management clusters and manages workload clusters. The EKS Anywhere lifecycle controller enables you to use Kubernetes API-compatible clients such as kubectl, GitOps, or Terraform for managing workload clusters. In this EKS Anywhere version, the EKS Anywhere cluster lifecycle controller rolls out new nodes in workload clusters when management clusters are upgraded. In EKS Anywhere version v0.16.0, this behavior was changed such that management clusters can be upgraded separately from workload clusters.
When running workload cluster upgrades after upgrading a management cluster, a machine rollout may be triggered on workload clusters during the workload cluster upgrade, even if the changes to the workload cluster spec didn’t require one (for example scaling down a worker node group).
Starting with EKS Anywhere v0.18.0, the osImageURL must include the Kubernetes minor version (Cluster.Spec.KubernetesVersion or Cluster.Spec.WorkerNodeGroupConfiguration[].KubernetesVersion in the cluster spec). For example, if the Kubernetes version is 1.31, the osImageURL must include 1.31, 1_31, 1-31 or 131. If you are upgrading Kubernetes versions, you must have a new OS image with your target Kubernetes version components.
If you are running EKS Anywhere in an airgapped environment, you must download the new artifacts and images prior to initiating the upgrade. Reference the Airgapped Upgrades page page for more information.

Upgrade Version Skew

There are a few dimensions of versioning to consider in your EKS Anywhere deployments:

Management clusters to workload clusters: Management clusters can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of workload clusters. Workload clusters cannot have an EKS Anywhere version greater than management clusters.
Management components to cluster components: Management components can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of cluster components.
EKS Anywhere version upgrades: Skipping EKS Anywhere minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v0.19.x to v0.21.x). We recommend you upgrade one EKS Anywhere minor version at a time (v0.19.x to v0.20.x to v0.21.x).
Kubernetes version upgrades: Skipping Kubernetes minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v1.29.x to v1.31.x). You must upgrade one Kubernetes minor version at a time (v1.29.x to v1.30.x to v1.31.x).
Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes: As of Kubernetes v1.28, worker nodes can be up to 3 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version. In earlier Kubernetes versions, worker nodes could be up to 2 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version.

Prerequisites

EKS Anywhere upgrades on Bare Metal require at least one spare hardware server for control plane upgrade and one for each worker node group upgrade. During 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.

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:

Checking new release availability...
NAME                 CURRENT VERSION                NEXT VERSION
EKS-A Management     v0.19.0-dev+build.20+a0037f0   v0.19.0-dev+build.26+3bc5008
cert-manager         v1.13.2+129095a                v1.13.2+bb56494
cluster-api          v1.6.1+5efe087                 v1.6.1+9cf3436
kubeadm              v1.6.1+8ceb315                 v1.6.1+82f1c0a
tinkerbell           v0.4.0+cdde180                 v0.4.0+e848206
kubeadm              v1.6.1+6420e1c                 v1.6.1+2f0b35f
etcdadm-bootstrap    v1.0.10+7094b99                v1.0.10+a3f0355
etcdadm-controller   v1.0.17+0259550                v1.0.17+ba86997

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 1.30 to 1.31 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: "1.31"
      ...

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
controlPlaneConfiguration.count
controlPlaneConfiguration.upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxSurge
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.count
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.kubernetesVersion (in case of modular upgrade)
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxSurge
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxUnavailable

TinkerbellDatacenterConfig:

osImageURL

Advanced configuration for upgrade rollout strategy

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

upgradeRolloutStrategy can be configured 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: "1.31"
  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

Default: RollingUpdate

Type of rollout strategy. Supported values: RollingUpdate,InPlace.

NOTE: The upgrade rollout strategy type must be the same for all control plane and worker nodes.

upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate

Configuration parameters for customizing rolling upgrade behavior.

NOTE: The rolling update parameters can only be configured if upgradeRolloutStrategy.type is RollingUpdate.

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.

This can only be configured for worker nodes.

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

The RollingUpdate rollout strategy type 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

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.

In-Place Upgrades

As of EKS Anywhere version v0.19.0, the InPlace rollout strategy type can be used to upgrade the EKS Anywhere and Kubernetes versions by upgrading the components on the same physical machines without requiring additional server capacity. EKS Anywhere schedules a privileged pod that executes the upgrade logic as a sequence of init containers on each node to be upgraded. This upgrade logic includes updating the containerd, cri-tools, kubeadm, kubectl and kubelet binaries along with core Kubernetes components and restarting those services.

Due to the nature of this upgrade, temporary downtime of workloads can be expected. It is best practice to configure your clusters in a way that they are resilient to having one node down.

During in place upgrades, EKS Anywhere pauses machine health checks to ensure that new nodes are not rolled out while the node is temporarily down during the upgrade process. Moreover, autoscaler configuration is not supported when using InPlace upgrade rollout strategy to further ensure that no new nodes are rolled out unexpectedly.

Example configuration:

upgradeRolloutStrategy:
  type: InPlace

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 vSphere, CloudStack, Nutanix, or Snow cluster

How to perform vSphere, CloudStack, Nutanix, or Snow cluster upgrades

Note

Upgrade overview information was moved to a dedicated Upgrade Overview page.

Considerations

Upgrades should never be run from ephemeral nodes (short-lived systems that spin up and down on a regular basis). If the EKS Anywhere version is lower 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.
It is highly recommended to run the eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster 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.
In EKS Anywhere version v0.13.0, we introduced the EKS Anywhere cluster lifecycle controller that runs on management clusters and manages workload clusters. The EKS Anywhere lifecycle controller enables you to use Kubernetes API-compatible clients such as kubectl, GitOps, or Terraform for managing workload clusters. In this EKS Anywhere version, the EKS Anywhere cluster lifecycle controller rolls out new nodes in workload clusters when management clusters are upgraded. In EKS Anywhere version v0.16.0, this behavior was changed such that management clusters can be upgraded separately from workload clusters.
When running workload cluster upgrades after upgrading a management cluster, a machine rollout may be triggered on workload clusters during the workload cluster upgrade, even if the changes to the workload cluster spec didn’t require one (for example scaling down a worker node group).
Starting with EKS Anywhere v0.18.0, the image/template must include the Kubernetes minor version (Cluster.Spec.KubernetesVersion or Cluster.Spec.WorkerNodeGroupConfiguration[].KubernetesVersion in the cluster spec). For example, if the Kubernetes version is 1.24, the image/template must include 1.24, 1_24, 1-24 or 124. If you are upgrading Kubernetes versions, you must have a new image with your target Kubernetes version components.
If you are running EKS Anywhere on Snow, a new Admin instance is needed when upgrading to 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.
If you are running EKS Anywhere in an airgapped environment, you must download the new artifacts and images prior to initiating the upgrade. Reference the Airgapped Upgrades page page for more information.

Upgrade Version Skew

There are a few dimensions of versioning to consider in your EKS Anywhere deployments:

Management clusters to workload clusters: Management clusters can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of workload clusters. Workload clusters cannot have an EKS Anywhere version greater than management clusters.
Management components to cluster components: Management components can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of cluster components.
EKS Anywhere version upgrades: Skipping EKS Anywhere minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v0.19.x to v0.21.x). We recommend you upgrade one EKS Anywhere minor version at a time (v0.19.x to v0.20.x to v0.21.x).
Kubernetes version upgrades: Skipping Kubernetes minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v1.29.x to v1.31.x). You must upgrade one Kubernetes minor version at a time (v1.29.x to v1.30.x to v1.31.x).
Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes: As of Kubernetes v1.28, worker nodes can be up to 3 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version. In earlier Kubernetes versions, worker nodes could be up to 2 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version.

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.

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:

Checking new release availability...
NAME                 CURRENT VERSION                 NEXT VERSION
EKS-A Management     v0.19.0-dev+build.170+6a04c21   v0.19.0-dev+build.225+c137128
cert-manager         v1.13.2+a34c207                 v1.14.2+c0da11a
cluster-api          v1.6.1+9bf197f                  v1.6.2+f120729
kubeadm              v1.6.1+2c7274d                  v1.6.2+8091cf6
vsphere              v1.8.5+205ebc5                  v1.8.5+65d2d66
kubeadm              v1.6.1+46e4754                  v1.6.2+44d7c68
etcdadm-bootstrap    v1.0.10+43a3235                 v1.0.10+e5e6ac4
etcdadm-controller   v1.0.17+fc882de                 v1.0.17+3d9ebdc

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 1.30 to 1.31 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: "1.31"
      ...

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

Important

For kubectl, GitOps and Terraform

If you want to update the registry mirror

credential with kubectl, GitOps or Terraform, you need to update the registry-credentials secret in the eksa-system namespace of your management cluster. For example with kubectl, you can run:

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

Replace username and password fields with the base64-encoded values of your new username and password. You can encode the values using the echo command, for example:

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
controlPlaneConfiguration.count
controlPlaneConfiguration.machineGroupRef.name
controlPlaneConfiguration.upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxSurge
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.count
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.machineGroupRef.name
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.kubernetesVersion (in case of modular upgrade)
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxSurge
workerNodeGroupConfigurations.upgradeRolloutStrategy.rollingUpdate.maxUnavailable
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.

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:
  controlPlaneConfiguration:
    count: 1
    endpoint:
      host: "xx.xx.xx.xx"
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: VSphereMachineConfig
      name: my-cluster-name-cp
    upgradeRolloutStrategy:
      type: RollingUpdate
      rollingUpdate:
        maxSurge: 1 
  workerNodeGroupConfigurations:
  - count: 2
    machineGroupRef:
      kind: VSphereMachineConfig
      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.

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.

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

Update vSphere credential

Currently EKS Anywhere does not support updating vSphere credential when upgrading cluster with eksctl anywhere upgrade command. There are two ways to perform a vsphere credentials update:

Manually update all vSphere credentials in related Secret objects, follow the steps below:

Update EKSA_VSPHERE_PASSWORD environment variable to the new password and get the base64 encoded string of the password using echo -n "<YOUR_PASSWORD>" | base64
Update the following secrets in your vSphere cluster using kubectl edit command:
- {CLUSTER_NAME}-vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Update password field under data.
- {CLUSTER_NAME}-cloud-provider-vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Decode the string under data, in the decoded string (which is the template for Secret object cloud-provider-vsphere-credential under kube-system namespace), update the {CLUSTER_NAME}.password with the base64 encoding of new password, then encode the string and update data field with the encoded string.
- vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Update password, passwordCP, passwordCSI field under data.
- If annotation kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration exists on any of the above Secret object, update password in kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration field.
- {CLUSTER_NAME}-csi-vsphere-config under eksa-system namespace - If annotation kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration exists on the secret object, update password in kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration field.

Only update Secret vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace then trigger a full EKS-A CAPI cluster upgrade by modifying the cluster spec:

Update EKSA_VSPHERE_PASSWORD environment variable to the new password and get the base64 encoded string of the password using echo -n "<YOUR_PASSWORD>" | base64
Update secret vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Update password, passwordCP, passwordCSI field under data and in kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration if annotation exists.
Modify any field in the cluster config file and then run eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f <cluster-config-file> to trigger a full cluster upgrade. This will automatically apply the new credentials to all related secrets.

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 .

4 - Upgrade airgapped cluster

Upgrading EKS Anywhere clusters in airgapped environments

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

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
```
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
```
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
```
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.
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
```
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

5 - Upgrade management components

How to upgrade EKS Anywhere management components

Note

The eksctl anywhere upgrade management-components subcommand was added in EKS Anywhere version v0.19.0 for all providers. Management component upgrades can only be done through the eksctl CLI, not through the Kubernetes API.

What are management components?

Management components run on management or standalone clusters and are responsible for managing the lifecycle of workload clusters. Management components include but are not limited to:

Cluster API controller
EKS Anywhere cluster lifecycle controller
Curated Packages controller
Provider-specific controllers (vSphere, Tinkerbell etc.)
Tinkerbell services (Boots, Hegel, Rufio, etc.)
Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) (clusters, eksareleases, etc.)

Why upgrade management components separately?

The existing eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster command, when run against management or standalone clusters, upgrades both the management and cluster components. When upgrading versions, this upgrade process performs a rolling replacement of nodes in the cluster, which brings operational complexity, and should be carefully planned and executed.

With the new eksctl anywhere upgrade management-components command, you can upgrade management components separately from cluster components. This enables you to get the latest updates to the management components such as Cluster API controller, EKS Anywhere controller, and provider-specific controllers without a rolling replacement of nodes in the cluster, which reduces the operational complexity of the operation.

Check management components versions

You can check the current and new versions of management components with the eksctl anywhere upgrade plan management-components command:

eksctl anywhere upgrade plan management-components -f management-cluster.yaml

The output should appear similar to the following:

NAME                 CURRENT VERSION       NEXT VERSION
EKS-A Management     v0.18.3+cc70180       v0.19.0+a672f31
cert-manager         v1.13.0+68bec33       v1.13.2+a34c207
cluster-api          v1.5.2+b14378d        v1.6.0+04c07bc
kubeadm              v1.5.2+5762149        v1.6.0+5bf0931
vsphere              v1.7.4+6ecf386        v1.8.5+650acfa
etcdadm-bootstrap    v1.0.10+c9a5a8a       v1.0.10+1ceb898
etcdadm-controller   v1.0.16+0ed68e6       v1.0.17+5e33062

Alternatively, you can run the eksctl anywhere upgrade plan cluster command against your management cluster, which shows the version differences for both management and cluster components.

Upgrade management components

To perform the management components upgrade, run the following command:

eksctl anywhere upgrade management-components -f management-cluster.yaml

The output should appear similar to the following:

Performing setup and validations
✅ Docker provider validation
✅ Control plane ready
✅ Cluster CRDs ready
Upgrading core components
Installing new eksa components
🎉 Management components upgraded!

At this point, a new eksarelease custom resource will be available in your management cluster, which means new cluster components that correspond to your current EKS Anywhere version are available for cluster upgrades. You can subsequently run a workload cluster upgrade with the eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster command, or by updating eksaVersion field in your workload cluster’s spec and applying it to your management cluster with Kubernetes API-compatible tooling such as kubectl, GitOps, or Terraform.

6 -

There are a few dimensions of versioning to consider in your EKS Anywhere deployments:

Management clusters to workload clusters: Management clusters can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of workload clusters. Workload clusters cannot have an EKS Anywhere version greater than management clusters.
Management components to cluster components: Management components can be at most 1 EKS Anywhere minor version greater than the EKS Anywhere version of cluster components.
EKS Anywhere version upgrades: Skipping EKS Anywhere minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v0.19.x to v0.21.x). We recommend you upgrade one EKS Anywhere minor version at a time (v0.19.x to v0.20.x to v0.21.x).
Kubernetes version upgrades: Skipping Kubernetes minor versions during upgrade is not supported (v1.29.x to v1.31.x). You must upgrade one Kubernetes minor version at a time (v1.29.x to v1.30.x to v1.31.x).
Kubernetes control plane and worker nodes: As of Kubernetes v1.28, worker nodes can be up to 3 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version. In earlier Kubernetes versions, worker nodes could be up to 2 minor versions lower than the Kubernetes control plane minor version.

7 -

Currently EKS Anywhere does not support updating vSphere credential when upgrading cluster with eksctl anywhere upgrade command. There are two ways to perform a vsphere credentials update:

Manually update all vSphere credentials in related Secret objects, follow the steps below:

Update EKSA_VSPHERE_PASSWORD environment variable to the new password and get the base64 encoded string of the password using echo -n "<YOUR_PASSWORD>" | base64
Update the following secrets in your vSphere cluster using kubectl edit command:
- {CLUSTER_NAME}-vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Update password field under data.
- {CLUSTER_NAME}-cloud-provider-vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Decode the string under data, in the decoded string (which is the template for Secret object cloud-provider-vsphere-credential under kube-system namespace), update the {CLUSTER_NAME}.password with the base64 encoding of new password, then encode the string and update data field with the encoded string.
- vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Update password, passwordCP, passwordCSI field under data.
- If annotation kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration exists on any of the above Secret object, update password in kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration field.
- {CLUSTER_NAME}-csi-vsphere-config under eksa-system namespace - If annotation kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration exists on the secret object, update password in kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration field.

Only update Secret vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace then trigger a full EKS-A CAPI cluster upgrade by modifying the cluster spec:

Update EKSA_VSPHERE_PASSWORD environment variable to the new password and get the base64 encoded string of the password using echo -n "<YOUR_PASSWORD>" | base64
Update secret vsphere-credentials under eksa-system namespace - Update password, passwordCP, passwordCSI field under data and in kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration if annotation exists.
Modify any field in the cluster config file and then run eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -f <cluster-config-file> to trigger a full cluster upgrade. This will automatically apply the new credentials to all related secrets.