Running applications in the cloud is considered the golden standard when it comes to deploying K8s clusters due to its scalability features. But Kubernetes evolves fast — on-prem or cloud via Amazon EKS (Elastic Kubernetes Service), K8s undergoes frequent routine cluster maintenance every three to four months introducing new versions with patches, improved security, added features, and better cluster performance.

This blog discusses the importance of upgrading K8s and how EKS helps to streamline the process while ensuring the smoothest transition possible.

Why you should consider upgrading K8s

K8s supports a limited lifecycle for versions due to the security risks attached to outdated ones. Unsupported versions are a threat to workloads bound to encounter newer security features within 12 months. Each minor release comes with an enhanced patch for CVEs and deprecated features alongside improvements on industry services.

Other reasons for upgrading include;

- Outdated tools and features along new, more stable HTTP interfaces.

- Services provided by third-parties in simplified, yet advanced toolkits.

Upgrading systems is vital as it ensures devices are future-proof and overall performance is enhanced.

Complications attached to upgrading K8s

Unlike features… functionalities provided under K8s are complex when it comes to implementing kubernetes upgrades. The process is multi-faceted and requires moving parts such as;

- Kube-apiserver

- Controller manager

- Updating nodes on all pods of your cluster.

- Validation with your custom logic and integration for the external applications.

- Version changes and deprecation of API features and functionalities.

Regressions and downtime risks could be encountered without proper planning and testing of the upgrade. This is the reason EKS provides a managed approach and structure to alleviate these concerns.

Managed Kubernetes: Handles Upgrades

Provides control of Kubernetes in “EKS”. With it, the complexity of managing seamlessly upgrades in a Kubernetes cluster is very low. For K8s or Kubernetes users on AWS, control EKS takes care of on-call upgrades of the entire control plane on EKS with fast click and command line interface request (CLI) while the user is responsible of updating the worker node.

About halfway into any cloud-native changes lifecycle, teams tend to forget continue following Kubernetes followed by EKS upgrades, not because security but also reasons leveraging the latest features such as Karpenter autoscaling, cost saving measures, and improvements to Identity Access Management (IAM).

EKS offers these interfaces corresponding to the mounted control layer:

- AWS Management Console

- eksctl CLI

- Terraform or other pipeline systems With CDK

They also provide notes outlining deprecated features and as well outline the behavior changes through the release note explaining changes and strategy updates.

Smooth Upgrade Best Practices

To reduce the disruption while having positive experiences, these steps are the golden rules:

Check LTS, RTFM and Kubernetes update notes & Supposed to check check list: Do Everything in the proposal and indeed proffered pour avancer.”

Backup everything:

Snap etcd and back up your manifests, secrets, and configuration files.

Upgrade in Staging First:

Run the upgrade in a staging environment that mirrors production.

Update APIs and CRDs:

Migrate custom resources and deprecated APIs as necessary.

Monitor Post-Upgrade Metrics:

Keep an eye on metrics post-upgrade with Prometheus, Grafana, or CloudWatch.

Automation and CI/CD Workflows for Upgrades

These days, many teams are using CI/CD pipelines to automate EKS  upgrades. This can include:

- Pre-upgrade validation jobs

- Automated node group creation and drain

- Canary rollouts of new versions

- Post-upgrade integration tests

You reduce manual intervention errors and trust faster upgrade cycles by treating infrastructure as code.

To Conclude

Upgrading Kubernetes and EKS is no longer just routine upkeep; it’s a key component for optimizing system performance, safeguarding security, and improving scalability. With EKS control planes fully managed and integrated into the AWS ecosystem, keeping current is now easier than ever.

Stop waiting to receive end-of-life warnings or deprecated API errors. Incorporate kubernetes upgrade and eks upgrade into your regular DevOps routines