k8s Upgrades
Performing upgrades of Amazon EKS Clusters by yourself can be a complex, nuanced, time-consuming, manual activity. We have made this entire process simple and straightfoward for our customers. Depending on the nature and criticality of their workloads, different strategies can be employed for upgrades of Amazon EKS Clusters.
Upgrade Notification¶
The administrator is shown a notification when an upgrade is available for a cluster. Clicking on the notification will provide the administrator with additional information on what is available.
- A red banner indicates that the cluster is multiple versions behind the latest version.
- A blue banner indicates that the cluster is one version behind the latest version.
Scope of Upgrade¶
There are three components that need to be upgraded during an EKS Cluster upgrade.
- EKS Control Plane
- Attached Node Groups (both Managed and Self Managed)
- Critical Add Ons (coredns, kube-proxy and aws-node)
The Control plane always needs to be upgraded first before the node groups and the critical addons. Note that the Controller automatically upgrades the critical cluster addons as part of the upgrade process reducing the manual, operational burden for administrators.
Important
EKS Cluster upgrades performed by the controller are always performed in a manner where the cluster and resident workloads never encounter any downtime.
Upgrade Everything¶
This is the default option. When selected, it upgrades everything to the new version of k8s i.e.
- EKS Control Plane
- All Node Groups (Both Managed and Self Managed)
- Critical Cluster Addons
Tip
Upgrading the entire EKS cluster can take ~40 minutes.
During the upgrade, an indication is provided to administrators on the main cluster list page. An illustrative example is shown below.
Preflight Checks¶
A number of preflight checks are first performed before the upgrade is attempted.
During the K8s upgrade from 1.23 to 1.24, user might receive the below docker mount warning. In that case, remove the docker mount from the workload to complete the upgrade. For more info, visit here
EKS Control Plane¶
The EKS control plane is upgraded next. This can be a time-consuming step.
Critical Cluster Addons¶
Critical addons for the cluster such as "core-dns", "kube-proxy" and "aws-node" addons are then upgraded to the required versions.
Node Groups¶
Node Groups are then upgraded to the selected version of k8s. Shown below is an example of an EKS Cluster's node group that was upgraded from v1.16.x to v1.17.x
Post Upgrade Checks¶
Once upgrades is complete, a round of post upgrade tests are performed to ensure that there are no loose ends and everything is as expected.
Control Plane Only Upgrade¶
If selected, only the EKS Control Plane is upgraded. The attached node groups are left untouched. The administrator can then upgrade the node groups individually one by one when needed.
Tip
Upgrading the EKS Control Plane can take ~25-30 minutes.
Node Group Upgrade¶
This option is displayed to the administrator only if the controller detects that the node group is behind the EKS Control Plane from a Kubernetes version perspective.
- Click on cluster name
- Select Node Groups
- Click on upgrade notification for available node groups.
Proceed with the instructions presented. An illustrative screenshot of the administrative experience is shown below.
Upgrade History¶
The Controller maintains the upgrade history associated with every upgrade action whether it was successful or not. Administrators can view the entire history by
- Clicking on the cluster name
- Click on the Upgrade History tab
This will display the entire history of upgrades for the cluster.
Upgrade Details¶
Clicking on a specific row will provide detailed information about the specific upgrade. An illustrative example is shown below.
