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Upgrading kubeadm clusters from v1.12 to v1.13

This page explains how to upgrade a Kubernetes cluster created with kubeadm from version 1.12.x to version 1.13.x, and from version 1.13.x to 1.13.y, where y > x.

Before you begin

Additional information

Warning: The command join --experimental-control-plane is known to fail on single node clusters created with kubeadm v1.12 and then upgraded to v1.13.x. This will be fixed when graduating the join --control-plane workflow from alpha to beta. A possible workaround is described here.

Determine which version to upgrade to

  1. Find the latest stable 1.13 version: 
apt update
apt-cache policy kubeadm
# find the latest 1.13 version in the list
# it should look like 1.13.x-00, where x is the latest patch

yum list --showduplicates kubeadm --disableexcludes=kubernetes
# find the latest 1.13 version in the list
# it should look like 1.13.x-0, where x is the latest patch

Upgrade the control plane node

  1. On your control plane node, upgrade kubeadm: 
# replace x in 1.13.x-00 with the latest patch version
apt-mark unhold kubeadm && \
apt-get update && apt-get install -y kubeadm=1.13.x-00 && \
apt-mark hold kubeadm

# replace x in 1.13.x-0 with the latest patch version
yum install -y kubeadm-1.13.x-0 --disableexcludes=kubernetes

  1. Verify that the download works and has the expected version:

    kubeadm version

  2. On the master node, run:

    kubeadm upgrade plan

    You should see output similar to this:

    [preflight] Running pre-flight checks.
[upgrade] Making sure the cluster is healthy:
[upgrade/config] Making sure the configuration is correct:
[upgrade/config] Reading configuration from the cluster...
[upgrade/config] FYI: You can look at this config file with 'kubectl -n kube-system get cm kubeadm-config -oyaml'
[upgrade] Fetching available versions to upgrade to
[upgrade/versions] Cluster version: v1.12.2
[upgrade/versions] kubeadm version: v1.13.0

Components that must be upgraded manually after you have upgraded the control plane with 'kubeadm upgrade apply':
COMPONENT   CURRENT       AVAILABLE
Kubelet     2 x v1.12.2   v1.13.0

Upgrade to the latest version in the v1.12 series:

COMPONENT            CURRENT   AVAILABLE
API Server           v1.12.2   v1.13.0
Controller Manager   v1.12.2   v1.13.0
Scheduler            v1.12.2   v1.13.0
Kube Proxy           v1.12.2   v1.13.0
CoreDNS              1.2.2     1.2.6
Etcd                 3.2.24    3.2.24

You can now apply the upgrade by executing the following command:

        kubeadm upgrade apply v1.13.0

_____________________________________________________________________

    This command checks that your cluster can be upgraded, and fetches the versions you can upgrade to.

  3. Choose a version to upgrade to, and run the appropriate command. For example:

    kubeadm upgrade apply v1.13.0

    You should see output similar to this:

    [preflight] Running pre-flight checks.
[upgrade] Making sure the cluster is healthy:
[upgrade/config] Making sure the configuration is correct:
[upgrade/config] Reading configuration from the cluster...
[upgrade/config] FYI: You can look at this config file with 'kubectl -n kube-system get cm kubeadm-config -oyaml'
[upgrade/apply] Respecting the --cri-socket flag that is set with higher priority than the config file.
[upgrade/version] You have chosen to change the cluster version to "v1.13.0"
[upgrade/versions] Cluster version: v1.12.2
[upgrade/versions] kubeadm version: v1.13.0
[upgrade/confirm] Are you sure you want to proceed with the upgrade? [y/N]: y
[upgrade/prepull] Will prepull images for components [kube-apiserver kube-controller-manager kube-scheduler etcd]
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulling image for component etcd.
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulling image for component kube-controller-manager.
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulling image for component kube-scheduler.
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulling image for component kube-apiserver.
[apiclient] Found 0 Pods for label selector k8s-app=upgrade-prepull-kube-controller-manager
[apiclient] Found 0 Pods for label selector k8s-app=upgrade-prepull-etcd
[apiclient] Found 0 Pods for label selector k8s-app=upgrade-prepull-kube-scheduler
[apiclient] Found 1 Pods for label selector k8s-app=upgrade-prepull-kube-apiserver
[apiclient] Found 1 Pods for label selector k8s-app=upgrade-prepull-kube-controller-manager
[apiclient] Found 1 Pods for label selector k8s-app=upgrade-prepull-etcd
[apiclient] Found 1 Pods for label selector k8s-app=upgrade-prepull-kube-scheduler
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulled image for component etcd.
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulled image for component kube-apiserver.
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulled image for component kube-scheduler.
[upgrade/prepull] Prepulled image for component kube-controller-manager.
[upgrade/prepull] Successfully prepulled the images for all the control plane components
[upgrade/apply] Upgrading your Static Pod-hosted control plane to version "v1.13.0"...
Static pod: kube-apiserver-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: 4af3463d6ace12615f1795e40811c1a1
Static pod: kube-controller-manager-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: a640b0098f5bddc701786e007c96e220
Static pod: kube-scheduler-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: ee7b1077c61516320f4273309e9b4690
map[localhost:2379:3.2.24]
[upgrade/staticpods] Writing new Static Pod manifests to "/etc/kubernetes/tmp/kubeadm-upgraded-manifests969681047"
[upgrade/staticpods] Moved new manifest to "/etc/kubernetes/manifests/kube-apiserver.yaml" and backed up old manifest to     "/etc/kubernetes/tmp/kubeadm-backup-manifests-2018-11-20-18-30-42/kube-apiserver.yaml"
[upgrade/staticpods] Waiting for the kubelet to restart the component
[upgrade/staticpods] This might take a minute or longer depending on the component/version gap (timeout 5m0s)
Static pod: kube-apiserver-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: 4af3463d6ace12615f1795e40811c1a1
Static pod: kube-apiserver-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: bf5b045d2be93e73654f3eb7027a4ef8
[apiclient] Found 1 Pods for label selector component=kube-apiserver
[upgrade/staticpods] Component "kube-apiserver" upgraded successfully!
[upgrade/staticpods] Moved new manifest to "/etc/kubernetes/manifests/kube-controller-manager.yaml" and backed up old manifest to     "/etc/kubernetes/tmp/kubeadm-backup-manifests-2018-11-20-18-30-42/kube-controller-manager.yaml"
[upgrade/staticpods] Waiting for the kubelet to restart the component
[upgrade/staticpods] This might take a minute or longer depending on the component/version gap (timeout 5m0s)
Static pod: kube-controller-manager-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: a640b0098f5bddc701786e007c96e220
Static pod: kube-controller-manager-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: 1e0eea23b3d971460ac032c18ab7daac
[apiclient] Found 1 Pods for label selector component=kube-controller-manager
[upgrade/staticpods] Component "kube-controller-manager" upgraded successfully!
[upgrade/staticpods] Moved new manifest to "/etc/kubernetes/manifests/kube-scheduler.yaml" and backed up old manifest to     "/etc/kubernetes/tmp/kubeadm-backup-manifests-2018-11-20-18-30-42/kube-scheduler.yaml"
[upgrade/staticpods] Waiting for the kubelet to restart the component
[upgrade/staticpods] This might take a minute or longer depending on the component/version gap (timeout 5m0s)
Static pod: kube-scheduler-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: ee7b1077c61516320f4273309e9b4690
Static pod: kube-scheduler-ip-10-0-0-7 hash: 7f7d929b61a2cc5bcdf36609f75927ec
[apiclient] Found 1 Pods for label selector component=kube-scheduler
[upgrade/staticpods] Component "kube-scheduler" upgraded successfully!
[uploadconfig] storing the configuration used in ConfigMap "kubeadm-config" in the "kube-system" Namespace
[kubelet] Creating a ConfigMap "kubelet-config-1.13" in namespace kube-system with the configuration for the kubelets in the cluster
[kubelet] Downloading configuration for the kubelet from the "kubelet-config-1.13" ConfigMap in the kube-system namespace
[kubelet-start] Writing kubelet configuration to file "/var/lib/kubelet/config.yaml"
[patchnode] Uploading the CRI Socket information "/var/run/dockershim.sock" to the Node API object "ip-10-0-0-7" as an annotation
[bootstraptoken] configured RBAC rules to allow Node Bootstrap tokens to post CSRs in order for nodes to get long term certificate credentials
[bootstraptoken] configured RBAC rules to allow the csrapprover controller automatically approve CSRs from a Node Bootstrap Token
[bootstraptoken] configured RBAC rules to allow certificate rotation for all node client certificates in the cluster
[addons] Applied essential addon: CoreDNS
[addons] Applied essential addon: kube-proxy

[upgrade/successful] SUCCESS! Your cluster was upgraded to "v1.13.0". Enjoy!

[upgrade/kubelet] Now that your control plane is upgraded, please proceed with upgrading your kubelets if you haven't already done so.

  4. Manually upgrade your Software Defined Network (SDN).

    Your Container Network Interface (CNI) provider may have its own upgrade instructions to follow. Check the addons page to find your CNI provider and see whether additional upgrade steps are required.

  5. Upgrade the kubelet on the control plane node:

# replace x in 1.13.x-00 with the latest patch version
apt-mark unhold kubelet && \
apt-get update && apt-get install -y kubelet=1.13.x-00 && \
apt-mark hold kubelet

# replace x in 1.13.x-0 with the latest patch version
yum install -y kubelet-1.13.x-0 --disableexcludes=kubernetes

Upgrade kubectl on all nodes

  1. Upgrade kubectl on all nodes: 
# replace x in 1.13.x-00 with the latest patch version
apt-mark unhold kubectl && \
apt-get update && apt-get install -y kubectl=1.13.x-00 && \
apt-mark hold kubectl

# replace x in 1.13.x-0 with the latest patch version
yum install -y kubectl-1.13.x-0 --disableexcludes=kubernetes

Drain control plane and worker nodes

  1. Prepare each node for maintenance by marking it unschedulable and evicting the workloads. Run:

    kubectl drain $NODE --ignore-daemonsets

    On the control plane node, you must add --ignore-daemonsets:

    kubectl drain ip-172-31-85-18
node "ip-172-31-85-18" cordoned
error: unable to drain node "ip-172-31-85-18", aborting command...

There are pending nodes to be drained:
ip-172-31-85-18
error: DaemonSet-managed pods (use --ignore-daemonsets to ignore): calico-node-5798d, kube-proxy-thjp9
    kubectl drain ip-172-31-85-18 --ignore-daemonsets
node "ip-172-31-85-18" already cordoned
WARNING: Ignoring DaemonSet-managed pods: calico-node-5798d, kube-proxy-thjp9
node "ip-172-31-85-18" drained

Upgrade the kubelet config on worker nodes

  1. On each node except the control plane node, upgrade the kubelet config:

    kubeadm upgrade node config --kubelet-version v1.13.x

    Replace x with the patch version you picked for this ugprade.

Upgrade kubeadm and the kubelet on worker nodes

  1. Upgrade the Kubernetes package version on each $NODE node by running the Linux package manager for your distribution: 
# replace x in 1.13.x-00 with the latest patch version
apt-mark unhold kubelet kubeadm
apt-get update
apt-get install -y kubelet=1.13.x-00 kubeadm=1.13.x-00
apt-mark hold kubelet kubeadm

# replace x in 1.13.x-0 with the latest patch version
yum install -y kubelet-1.13.x-0 kubeadm-1.13.x-0 --disableexcludes=kubernetes

Restart the kubelet for all nodes

  1. Restart the kubelet process for all nodes:

    systemctl restart kubelet

  2. Verify that the new version of the kubelet is running on the node:

    systemctl status kubelet

  3. Bring the node back online by marking it schedulable:

    kubectl uncordon $NODE

  4. After the kubelet is upgraded on all nodes, verify that all nodes are available again by running the following command from anywhere kubectl can access the cluster:

    kubectl get nodes

    The STATUS column should show Ready for all your nodes, and the version number should be updated.

Recovering from a failure state

If kubeadm upgrade fails and does not roll back, for example because of an unexpected shutdown during execution, you can run kubeadm upgrade again. This command is idempotent and eventually makes sure that the actual state is the desired state you declare.

To recover from a bad state, you can also run kubeadm upgrade --force without changing the version that your cluster is running.

How it works

kubeadm upgrade apply does the following:

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