Preparing to update your cluster

Before you update the master or worker nodes, review what changes in the new version, check your add-ons and plug-ins, and confirm your access. Completing these checks once reduces the risk of version skew failures, app downtime, and blocked updates.

Complete these checks before you update the cluster master and again before you update worker nodes if time has passed.

Before you begin

Make sure that you have the Operator or Administrator IAM platform access role. If you're unsure of your access role, go to Manage > Access (IAM) > Users in the IBM Cloud console, or ask your account administrator. The Operator role is the minimum role that the cluster master update, worker update, worker replace, and worker reload commands require. For classic clusters, infrastructure actions are authorized through your IAM platform access role.

If a certificate authority (CA) certificate rotation is in progress, the master update is blocked until the rotation completes. Check the status of any in-progress CA certificate rotation before you begin.

Reviewing version changes and backing up

Review the changes that come with the new version and protect data that you can't re-create.

  1. Access your Red Hat OpenShift cluster.
  2. Review the Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud version information and make any changes that are marked Update before master or Update after master in the Red Hat OpenShift version preparation guide.
  3. Review any Kubernetes helpful warnings, such as deprecation notices.
  4. Back up your app data and any configuration that you can't re-create, including data on persistent storage. IBM backs up the etcd data for your cluster master, such as your Kubernetes workload configuration files. For more information, see Your responsibilities with using Red Hat OpenShift on IBM Cloud.

You can't roll back a cluster to a previous version after the update process takes place. Use a test cluster to address potential issues before you update your production cluster.

Checking add-ons

Check that the managed add-ons in your cluster support the version that you are updating to.

  1. List the add-ons in the cluster.

    ibmcloud oc cluster addon ls --cluster CLUSTER

  2. Check the supported Red Hat OpenShift version for each add-on that is installed.

    ibmcloud oc addon-versions

  3. If an add-on must be updated to run in the Red Hat OpenShift version that you want to update your cluster to, update the add-on.

Checking plug-ins

Check that the plug-ins that you installed from the Helm catalog support the version that you are updating to.

  1. In the Helm catalog, find the plug-ins that you installed in your cluster.
  2. From the side menu, expand the SOURCES & TAR FILE section.
  3. Download and open the source code.
  4. Check the README.md or RELEASENOTES.md files for supported versions.
  5. If a plug-in must be updated to run in the Red Hat OpenShift version that you want to update your cluster to, update the plug-in by following the plug-in instructions.

Next steps

Update the cluster master. When the master update is complete, update your worker nodes.

It is good practice to rotate your CA certificates whenever you update your worker nodes, as the longest step of certificate rotation includes reloading or replacing your worker nodes.