Cluster Components Upgrade Order

The following is a recommended Upgrade Order for the Components of a Kubernetes cluster:

  • Control Plane Components
    1. kube-apiserver
    2. kube-controller-manager
      1. If used, cloud-controller-manager
    3. kube-scheduler
    4. etcd
  • Node Components
    1. kubelet
    2. kube-proxy

Other components of a Kubernetes cluster can mostly be updated in any order, as long as the documentation of the component doesn't state otherwise:

  • CNI (e.g., Calico, Cillium)
  • Operators

Warning

Be aware of any changes to the operator configs and CustomResourceDefinitions causing unwanted "results".

E.g., new versions of CustomResourceDefinitions have new fields and / or change the behavior.