Upgrade vSphere, CloudStack, Nutanix, or Snow cluster

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

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

  • 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.

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.

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:

  1. 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.
  1. 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 .