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Upgrade an Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster

  • Article

As part of the Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster lifecycle, you need to perform periodic upgrades to the latest version of the OpenShift platform. Upgrading your Azure Red Hat OpenShift clusters enables you to upgrade to the latest features and functionalities and apply the latest security releases.

This article shows you how to upgrade all components in an OpenShift cluster using the OpenShift web console or the managed-upgrade-operator (MUO).

Before you begin

  • This article requires that you're running the Azure CLI version 2.6.0 or later. Run az --version to find your current version. If you need to install or upgrade Azure CLI/it, see Install Azure CLI.

  • This article assumes you have access to an existing Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster as a user with admin privileges.

  • This article assumes you've updated your Azure Red Hat OpenShift pull secret for an existing Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4.x cluster. Including the cloud.openshift.com entry from your pull secret enables your cluster to start sending telemetry data to Red Hat.

    For more information, see Add or update your Red Hat pull secret on an Azure Red Hat OpenShift 4 cluster.

  • Make sure that the credentials for the service principal used for the cluster are valid/updated before starting the upgrade. For more information, see Rotate service principal credentials for your Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) Cluster.

Check for Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster upgrades

  1. From the top-left of the OpenShift web console, which is the default when you sign as the kubeadmin, select the Administration tab.

  2. Select Cluster Settings and open the Details tab. You'll see the version, update status, and channel. The channel isn't configured by default.

  3. Select the Channel link, and at the prompt enter the desired update channel, for example stable-4.10. Once the desired channel is chosen, a graph showing available releases and channels is displayed. If the Update Status for your cluster shows Updates Available, you can update your cluster.

Upgrade your Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster with the OpenShift web console

From the OpenShift web console in the previous step, set the Channel to the correct channel for the version that you want to update to, such as stable-4.10.

Selection a version to update to, and select Update. You'll see the update status change to: Update to <product-version> in progress. You can review the progress of the cluster update by watching the progress bars for the operators and nodes.

Scheduling individual upgrades using the managed-upgrade-operator

Use the managed-upgrade-operator (MUO) to upgrade your Azure Red Hat OpenShift cluster.

The managed-upgrade-operator manages automated cluster upgrades. The managed-upgrade-operator starts the cluster upgrade, but it doesn't perform any activities of the cluster upgrade process itself. The OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) is responsible for upgrading the clusters. The goal of the managed-upgrade-operator is to satisfy the operating conditions that a managed cluster must hold, both before and after starting the cluster upgrade.

  1. Prepare the configuration file, as shown in the following example for upgrading to OpenShift 4.10.
apiVersion: upgrade.managed.openshift.io/v1alpha1
kind: UpgradeConfig
metadata:
  name: managed-upgrade-config
  namespace: openshift-managed-upgrade-operator
spec:
  type: "ARO"
  upgradeAt: "2022-02-08T03:20:00Z"
  PDBForceDrainTimeout: 60
  desired:
    channel: "stable-4.10"
    version: "4.10.10"

where:

  • channel is the channel the configuration file will pull from, according to the lifecycle policy. The channel used should be stable-4.10.
  • version is the version that you wish to upgrade to, such as 4.10.10.
  • upgradeAT is the time when the upgrade will take place.
  1. Apply the configuration file:
$ oc create -f <file_name>.yaml

Next steps