Upgrading Google Distributed Cloud

Version 1.8 (unsupported)

• Latest
• Version 1.16
• Earlier versions (unsupported)

When you install a new version of bmctl, you can upgrade your existing clusters that were created with an earlier version. Upgrading a cluster to the latest Google Distributed Cloud version brings added features and fixes to your cluster. It also ensures that your cluster remains supported. You can upgrade admin, hybrid, standalone, or user clusters with the bmctl upgrade cluster command.

Note: When upgrading Google Distributed Cloud from a version with a security patch to the next minor release, we recommend you upgrade to the highest patch version available to ensure you have the latest security patches. Always review the release notes before upgrading so you are aware of what has changed, including security fixes and known issues. Upgrading to a lower patch version is not supported.

Enable SELinux

If you want to enable SELinux to secure your containers, you must make sure that SELinux is enabled in Enforced mode before upgrading your clusters. If you're upgrading from Google Distributed Cloud 1.7.1 or later, SELinux is enabled by default. If SELinux is disabled in your clusters or you aren't sure, see Securing your containers using SELinux for instructions on how to enable it.

Note: 1.7.1 Clusters using SELinux with containerd can't upgrade to 1.8.0. For details, see Known issues.

Google Distributed Cloud supports SELinux in only RHEL and CentOS systems.

Upgrade admin, standalone, hybrid, or user clusters Google Distributed Cloud

When you download and install a new version of bmctl, you can upgrade your admin, hybrid, standalone, and user clusters created with an earlier version. For a given version of bmctl, clusters can be upgraded to the same version only.

Preflight checks are run before a cluster upgrade to validate cluster status and node health.

The following examples show the upgrade process from version 1.7.2 to Google Distributed Cloud 1.8.9.

You can upgrade any given version to the next available version (for example, 1.8.0 to 1.8.1) in the same fashion. Skip upgrades, such as 1.7.1 to 1.8.9, are also supported.

Google Distributed Cloud supports the configuration of up to 250 maximum pods per node. This configuration can only be done during cluster creation and cannot be updated for existing clusters.

Upgrading admin, standalone, hybrid, or user clusters

When you download and install a new version of bmctl, you can upgrade your admin, hybrid, standalone, and user clusters created with an earlier version. For a given version of bmctl, clusters can be upgraded to the same version only.

First, you download the latest bmctl, then modify the appropriate cluster config files, and then you issue the bmctl upgrade cluster command to complete the upgrade.

Note: You should upgrade an admin cluster before upgrading any associated user clusters. However, before upgrading the admin cluster to 1.8.9, make sure its associated user clusters are at version 1.7.0 or above. bmctl will emit an error if it finds any user cluster is below 1.7.0.

1. Download the latest bmctl from the Cloud Storage bucket and use chmod to give bmctl execute permissions to all users:

   gcloud storage cp gs://anthos-baremetal-release/bmctl/1.8.9/linux-amd64/bmctl bmctl
   chmod a+x bmctl
   

2. Modify the cluster config file to change the Google Distributed Cloud cluster version from 1.7.2 to 1.8.9. The following shows an example from an admin cluster config:

   ---
   apiVersion: baremetal.cluster.gke.io/v1
   kind: Cluster
   metadata:
     name: cluster1
     namespace: cluster-cluster1
   spec:
     # Cluster type. This can be:
     #   1) admin:  to create an admin cluster. This can later be used to create user clusters.
     #   2) user:   to create a user cluster. Requires an existing admin cluster.
     #   3) hybrid: to create a hybrid cluster that runs admin cluster components and user workloads.
     #   4) standalone: to create a cluster that manages itself, runs user workloads, but does not manage other clusters.
     type: admin
     # Anthos cluster version.
     # Change the following line from 1.7.2 to 1.8.9, shown below
     anthosBareMetalVersion: 1.8.9
   

3. When upgrading clusters to 1.8.9, you must register the clusters with Connect to your project fleet, if they have not been already.

   1. Manually create service accounts and retrieve the JSON key files as described in Configuring service accounts for use with Connect on the Enabling Google services and service accounts page.
   2. Reference the downloaded JSON keys in the associated gkeConnectAgentServiceAccountKeyPath and gkeConnectRegisterServiceAccountKeyPath fields of the cluster config file.

4. Use the bmctl upgrade cluster command to complete the upgrade:

   bmctl upgrade cluster -c CLUSTER_NAME --kubeconfig ADMIN_KUBECONFIG
   

   Replace the following:

   • CLUSTER_NAME: the name of the cluster to upgrade.
   • ADMIN_KUBECONFIG: the path to the admin cluster kubeconfig file.