Upgrade K8S Cluster with Kubeadm

In a real world scenario, upgrading the K8S cluster to the latest version is very common requirement and it helps us to keep the cluster up-to-date. So, I thought of writing it down the procedure and the steps involved in upgrading the K8S cluster which is created with kubeadm.

Below is a simple architecture indicating our K8S Cluster for this example:

Fig-1 : K8S Cluster Ready for Upgrade with kubeadm

Note — Skipping MINOR version when upgrading is NOT supported. In this example, we are upgrading from v1.20.1 to v1.20.2

As shows in Fig-1, the K8S Cluster consists of One Master Node and two Worker Nodes referred as [K8S Server] and [K8S Worker1 and K8S Worker2] in the picture

The Upgrade workflow at a high level looks below:

1. Upgrade the K8S Server — The Master Node and Additional Control Plane modules inside
2. Upgrade the K8S Worker1
3. Upgrade the K8S Worker2

Note — There is no reason for you to follow the order for Worker Nodes instead you can also pick to upgrade Worker2 and then Worker1 in this example. But ensure to perform worker nodes upgrade one-after-the-other as you don’t want to block your service by bringing all the worker nodes down at the same time. In a real world scenario, make sure you have enough nodes available at any given time to provide the uninterrupted service., so always balance the upgrades vs availability of the service

1. Upgrade the Master Node

ssh in to the Master

Once, you were able to log in to the Master Node — Upgrade the kubeadm using below

Check if it is upgraded correctly with —

If successfully upgraded, you’ll see similar message

Drain the Master Node to safely evict all of the pods from the node before we perform the maintenance on the master node. Use the below command to do so.

Plan the upgrade now

Now, upgrade the control plane node [master node]

Next is to upgrade the kubelet and kubectl on the control plane node

Restart the kubelet now

Uncordon the control plane node. That means bringing this node back to online by making it schedulable. Before the upgrade, we made the node ‘drain’ ie., non-schedulable but after the upgrade, we have to make the node schedulable such that it comes back to online for the required actions as part of the K8S Cluster responsibilities

Finally, verify if the control plane node is working

Fig : 2 — Master is upgraded to v1.20.2 now

Note — In case if the master node shows ‘NotReady’ status, wait for couple more seconds and re-runt the same command. Repeat the same until you see the status as ‘Ready’ before proceeding further

2. Upgrade the Worker Node 1

Run the below command on the Master Node first to drain the worker node1

Ignore error message as you may not be able to delete certain pods. Move ahead

On the Worker Node1 shell

Upgrade kubeadm

Check the kubeadm version

If successfully upgraded, you’ll see similar message

Upgrade the kubelet configuration on the same node

Upgrade the kubelet and kubectl on the same node

Restart the kubelet

From the Control Plane Node —

Fig — 3 : Worker-Node-1 is Upgraded with v1.20.2 now

3. Upgrade the Worker Node 2

Follow the same guidelines to upgrade the kubeadm to v1.20.2 on this node.

After all the successful upgrade, run the below command on the Control Plane Node

The final output looks like below on the Control Plane Node. In case if any of the node status shows as ‘NotReady’, wait for some more time and re-run the same command until you notice the status as ‘Ready’

Fig — 4: All Nodes are Upgraded to v1.20.2 now

Fig-5 : K8S Cluster Upgraded with kubeadm with Steps 1 → 2 →3

Congratulations, You were able to successfully upgrade the K8S Cluster using kubeadm!