TKG 1.4 Upgrade

Vimal P. Nov 1, 2021

Easy way to upgrade Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.3.1 to 1.4.0

To take advantage of the latest features in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid, such as the Tanzu CLI with more feature, Proxy Enhancements, NSX Advanced Load Balancer Enhancements, and many more feature Enhancements. You will get more info about New Features in Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4, you’ll need to upgrade to version TKG1.4.x.

I have tried to explain how easily upgrade process from Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.3.1 to Tanzu Kubernetes Grid 1.4.0. But if your environment running on TKG 1.0.x, then first upgrade TKG 1.0.x to TKG 1.1.x, 1.1.x to TKG 1.2.x then after upgrade 1.2.x to TKG 1.3.1.

TKG 1.4.0 upgrade is done in four steps. These steps are required for both major v1.3.x to v1.4.x and minor v1.4.x to v1.4.y upgrades.

TKG upgrade compatibility matrix

TKG Version	TKG v1.0.x	TKG v1.1.x	TKG v1.2.x	TKG v1.3.x	TKG v1.4.x
v1.0.x	Yes	Yes
v1.1.x		Yes	Yes
v1.2.x			Yes	Yes
v1.3.1				Yes	Yes
v1.4.x					Yes

Workflow of upgrade TKG 1.3.1 to TKG 1.4.0

Step 1: The management and workload clusters present in the environment should be in a healthy state. Conduct a health and version check with help of the below command.

# kubectl version

# tanzu version

# tanzu plugin list

# tanzu get cluster –include-management-cluster

# tanzu get management-cluster

Download and install the new version of the Tanzu CLI and Kubectl on the TKG bootstrapper machine.

Step 2 : Upgrade Management Cluster

Login to management cluster & list the clusters for upgrade

# tanzu login –server <xxxxxxxx>

# tanzu cluster list –include-management-cluster

Note: If you have imported the same version of Kubernetes templates, for e.g Photon and Ubuntu templates with Kubernetes v1.21.2, specify —os-name in the upgrade command to upgrade your management cluster to run a specific os version.

Note: If for some reason the upgrade times out before it completes, run the upgrade command with the –timeout option with a value greater than the default of 30 minutes.

The upgrade process first upgrades the Cluster API providers followed by upgrading the Kubernetes version on all the control plane and worker nodes of the management cluster.

When the upgrade finishes, list the management cluster again to verify that the management cluster has been upgraded.

# tanzu management-cluster upgrade –os-name ubuntu –yes –timeout 45m0s

Verify Management cluster upgrade status

# tanzu cluster list –include-management-cluster

Note: In Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v1.3.x, by default all configuration information for your clusters and TKG installation was stored in the folder ~/.tanzu. In TKG v1.4.x, configuration information is stored in the folder ~/.config/tanzu. All information that was stored in the ~/.tanzu folder is automatically migrated into the ~/.config/tanzu folder when you run the tanzu management-cluster upgrade command to upgrade to v1.4. After verification new path available, you can delete the ~/.tanzu folder.

Step 3 : Upgrade Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters.

Upgrade all the control plane and worker nodes of Tanzu Kubernetes cluster one by one cluster.

Connect the context of require Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster which need to upgrade.

a) List Tanzu Kubernetes Clusters available for upgrade.

b) To discover which versions of Kubernetes are available for upgrade, run the tanzu cluster available-upgrades command against your Tanzu Kubernetes Cluster.

c) Upgrade Tanzu Kubernetes clusters, run the tanzu cluster upgrade <CLUSTER-NAME> command and enter ‘y’ to confirm.

Note: If the Tanzu Kubernetes cluster is not running in the default namespace, specify the –namespace option with the upgrade command.

# tanzu kubernetes-release get

# tanzu kubernetes-release available-upgrades get v1.19.8—vmware.1-tkg.1

# tanzu cluster upgrade <CLUSTER-NAME> –os-name photon –timeout 45m0s –yes

Verify cluster status

# tanzu cluster list –include-management-cluster

Step 4: Upgrade Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Extensions from v1.3.1 to v1.4.0

As there aren’t any TKG Extension configure in my environment, hence I would skip this step. Please do refer Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Extension upgrade for details.

Important Note:

Once your TKG 1.4 management & TKG cluster upgrade completed, Tanzu Kubernetes Grid extensions are deployed and managed by kapp-controller from the Carvel Tools. you should upgrade following extensions if running in your environment.

• Cert Manager
• Contour
• Fluent Bit
• Grafana
• Harbor
• Prometheus
• External DNS

Warning: Do not migrate extensions to packages for vSphere 7 clusters. See vSphere 7 Does Not Support Packages.