Updating a cluster within a minor version using the CLI

You can update, or upgrade, an OKD cluster within a minor version by using the OpenShift CLI (oc).

Prerequisites

  • Have access to the cluster as a user with admin privileges. See Using RBAC to define and apply permissions.

  • Have a recent etcd backup in case your upgrade fails and you must restore your cluster to a previous state.

  • Ensure all Operators previously installed through Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) are updated to their latest version in their latest channel. Updating the Operators ensures they have a valid upgrade path when the default OperatorHub catalogs switch from the current minor version to the next during a cluster upgrade. See Upgrading installed Operators for more information.

  • Ensure that all machine config pools (MCPs) are running and not paused. Nodes associated with a paused MCP are skipped during the update process. You can pause the MCPs if you are performing a canary rollout update strategy.

  • If your cluster uses manually maintained credentials, ensure that the Cloud Credential Operator (CCO) is in an upgradeable state. For more information, see Upgrading clusters with manually maintained credentials for AWS, Azure, or GCP.

  • If your cluster uses manually maintained credentials with the AWS Secure Token Service (STS), obtain a copy of the ccoctl utility from the release image being upgraded to and use it to process any updated credentials. For more information, see Upgrading an OpenShift Container Platform cluster configured for manual mode with STS.

  • Ensure that you address all Upgradeable=False conditions so the cluster allows an upgrade to the next minor version. You can run the oc adm upgrade command for an output of all Upgradeable=False conditions and the condition reasoning to help you prepare for a minor version upgrade.

Using the unsupportedConfigOverrides section to modify the configuration of an Operator is unsupported and might block cluster upgrades. You must remove this setting before you can upgrade your cluster.

If you are running cluster monitoring with an attached PVC for Prometheus, you might experience OOM kills during cluster upgrade. When persistent storage is in use for Prometheus, Prometheus memory usage doubles during cluster upgrade and for several hours after upgrade is complete. To avoid the OOM kill issue, allow worker nodes with double the size of memory that was available prior to the upgrade. For example, if you are running monitoring on the minimum recommended nodes, which is 2 cores with 8 GB of RAM, increase memory to 16 GB. For more information, see BZ#1925061.

Additional resources

Pausing a MachineHealthCheck resource

During the upgrade process, nodes in the cluster might become temporarily unavailable. In the case of worker nodes, the machine health check might identify such nodes as unhealthy and reboot them. To avoid rebooting such nodes, pause all the MachineHealthCheck resources before updating the cluster.

Prerequisites

  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).

Procedure

  1. To list all the available MachineHealthCheck resources that you want to pause, run the following command:

    1. $ oc get machinehealthcheck -n openshift-machine-api

  2. To pause the machine health checks, add the cluster.x-k8s.io/paused="" annotation to the MachineHealthCheck resource. Run the following command:

    1. $ oc -n openshift-machine-api annotate mhc <mhc-name> cluster.x-k8s.io/paused=""

    The annotated MachineHealthCheck resource resembles the following YAML file:

    1. apiVersion: machine.openshift.io/v1beta1
    2. kind: MachineHealthCheck
    3. metadata:
    4.   name: example
    5.   namespace: openshift-machine-api
    6.   annotations:
    7.     cluster.x-k8s.io/paused: ""
    8. spec:
    9.   selector:
    10.     matchLabels:
    11.       role: worker
    12.   unhealthyConditions:
    13.   - type:    "Ready"
    14.     status:  "Unknown"
    15.     timeout: "300s"
    16.   - type:    "Ready"
    17.     status:  "False"
    18.     timeout: "300s"
    19.   maxUnhealthy: "40%"
    20. status:
    21.   currentHealthy: 5
    22.   expectedMachines: 5

    Resume the machine health checks after updating the cluster. To resume the check, remove the pause annotation from the MachineHealthCheck resource by running the following command:

    1. $ oc -n openshift-machine-api annotate mhc <mhc-name> cluster.x-k8s.io/paused-

About updating single node OKD

You can update, or upgrade, a single-node OKD cluster by using either the console or CLI.

However, note the following limitations:

  • The prerequisite to pause the MachineHealthCheck resources is not required because there is no other node to perform the health check.

  • Restoring a single-node OKD cluster using an etcd backup is not officially supported. However, it is good practice to perform the etcd backup in case your upgrade fails. If your control plane is healthy, you might be able to restore your cluster to a previous state by using the backup.

  • Updating a single-node OKD cluster requires downtime and can include an automatic reboot. The amount of downtime depends on the update payload, as described in the following scenarios:

    • If the update payload contains an operating system update, which requires a reboot, the downtime is significant and impacts cluster management and user workloads.

    • If the update contains machine configuration changes that do not require a reboot, the downtime is less, and the impact on the cluster management and user workloads is lessened. In this case, the node draining step is skipped with single-node OKD because there is no other node in the cluster to reschedule the workloads to.

    • If the update payload does not contain an operating system update or machine configuration changes, a short API outage occurs and resolves quickly.

There are conditions, such as bugs in an updated package, that can cause the single node to not restart after a reboot. In this case, the update does not rollback automatically.

Additional resources

For information on which machine configuration changes require a reboot, see the note in Understanding the Machine Config Operator.

Updating a cluster by using the CLI

If updates are available, you can update your cluster by using the OpenShift CLI (oc).

You can find information about available OKD advisories and updates in the errata section of the Customer Portal.

Prerequisites

  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc) that matches the version for your updated version.

  • Log in to the cluster as user with cluster-admin privileges.

  • Install the jq package.

  • Pause all MachineHealthCheck resources.

Procedure

  1. Ensure that your cluster is available:

    1. $ oc get clusterversion

    Example output

    1. NAME      VERSION   AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   SINCE   STATUS
    2. version   4.8.13     True        False         158m    Cluster version is 4.8.13

  2. Review the current update channel information and confirm that your channel is set to stable-4.9:

    1. $ oc get clusterversion -o json|jq ".items[0].spec"

    Example output

    1. {
    2.   "channel": "stable-4.9",
    3.   "clusterID": "990f7ab8-109b-4c95-8480-2bd1deec55ff",
    4. }

    For production clusters, you must subscribe to a stable- or fast- channel.

  3. View the available updates and note the version number of the update that you want to apply:

    1. $ oc adm upgrade

    Example output

    1. Cluster version is 4.8.13
    3. Updates:
    5. VERSION IMAGE
    6. 4.9.0   quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release@sha256:9c5f0df8b192a0d7b46cd5f6a4da2289c155fd5302dec7954f8f06c878160b8b

  4. Apply an update:

    • To update to the latest version:

      1. $ oc adm upgrade --to-latest=true (1)

    • To update to a specific version:

      1. $ oc adm upgrade --to=<version> (1)
      1<version> is the update version that you obtained from the output of the previous command.

  5. Review the status of the Cluster Version Operator:

    1. $ oc get clusterversion -o json|jq ".items[0].spec"

    Example output

    1. {
    2.   "channel": "stable-4.9",
    3.   "clusterID": "990f7ab8-109b-4c95-8480-2bd1deec55ff",
    4.   "desiredUpdate": {
    5.     "force": false,
    6.     "image": "quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release@sha256:9c5f0df8b192a0d7b46cd5f6a4da2289c155fd5302dec7954f8f06c878160b8b",
    7.     "version": "4.9.0" (1)
    8. }
    1If the version number in the desiredUpdate stanza matches the value that you specified, the update is in progress.

  6. Review the cluster version status history to monitor the status of the update. It might take some time for all the objects to finish updating.

    1. $ oc get clusterversion -o json|jq ".items[0].status.history"

    Example output

    1. [
    2.   {
    3.     "completionTime": null,
    4.     "image": "quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release@sha256:b8fa13e09d869089fc5957c32b02b7d3792a0b6f36693432acc0409615ab23b7",
    5.     "startedTime": "2021-01-28T20:30:50Z",
    6.     "state": "Partial",
    7.     "verified": true,
    8.     "version": "4.9.0"
    9.   },
    10.   {
    11.     "completionTime": "2021-01-28T20:30:50Z",
    12.     "image": "quay.io/openshift-release-dev/ocp-release@sha256:b8fa13e09d869089fc5957c32b02b7d3792a0b6f36693432acc0409615ab23b7",
    13.     "startedTime": "2021-01-28T17:38:10Z",
    14.     "state": "Completed",
    15.     "verified": false,
    16.     "version": "4.8.13"
    17.   }
    18. ]

    The history contains a list of the most recent versions applied to the cluster. This value is updated when the CVO applies an update. The list is ordered by date, where the newest update is first in the list. Updates in the history have state Completed if the rollout completed and Partial if the update failed or did not complete.

    If an upgrade fails, the Operator stops and reports the status of the failing component. Rolling your cluster back to a previous version is not supported. If your upgrade fails, contact Red Hat support.

  7. After the update completes, you can confirm that the cluster version has updated to the new version:

    1. $ oc get clusterversion

    Example output

    1. NAME      VERSION     AVAILABLE   PROGRESSING   SINCE     STATUS
    2. version   4.9.0       True        False         2m        Cluster version is 4.9.0

  8. If you are upgrading your cluster to the next minor version, like version 4.y to 4.(y+1), it is recommended to confirm your nodes are upgraded before deploying workloads that rely on a new feature:

    1. $ oc get nodes

    Example output

    1. NAME                           STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
    2. ip-10-0-168-251.ec2.internal   Ready    master   82m   v1.22.1
    3. ip-10-0-170-223.ec2.internal   Ready    master   82m   v1.22.1
    4. ip-10-0-179-95.ec2.internal    Ready    worker   70m   v1.22.1
    5. ip-10-0-182-134.ec2.internal   Ready    worker   70m   v1.22.1
    6. ip-10-0-211-16.ec2.internal    Ready    master   82m   v1.22.1
    7. ip-10-0-250-100.ec2.internal   Ready    worker   69m   v1.22.1

Changing the update server by using the CLI

Changing the update server is optional. If you have an OpenShift Update Service (OSUS) installed and configured locally, you must set the URL for the server as the upstream to use the local server during updates. The default value for upstream is https://api.openshift.com/api/upgrades_info/v1/graph.

Procedure

  • Change the upstream parameter value in the cluster version:

    1. $ oc patch clusterversion/version --patch '{"spec":{"upstream":"<update-server-url>"}}' --type=merge

    The <update-server-url> variable specifies the URL for the update server.

    Example output

    1. clusterversion.config.openshift.io/version patched