Upgrading Kubernetes is essential for security, performance, and compatibility—especially when using Amazon EKS.
Keeping your Kubernetes cluster up to date is a critical part of maintaining security, performance, and compatibility. Whether you’re managing your own cluster or using Amazon EKS, upgrades help ensure your workloads run smoothly and benefit from the latest features and patches.
An EKS upgrade refers specifically to updating the Kubernetes version within Amazon’s managed Kubernetes service. While AWS handles the control plane, users are responsible for updating their worker nodes and ensuring workload compatibility. Understanding the process of a Kubernetes upgrade, especially in an EKS context, helps reduce risk and prevent unexpected downtime.
Each Kubernetes version brings improvements in stability, security, and performance. Delaying upgrades can lead to compatibility issues, exposure to vulnerabilities, and limited support from cloud providers.
Key reasons to upgrade:
Access to new features and APIs
Security fixes and vulnerability patches
Compatibility with cloud-native tools and Helm charts
Continued AWS and open-source community support
AWS supports each Kubernetes version on EKS for approximately 14 months, so timely upgrades are necessary.
A Kubernetes upgrade involves updating the cluster control plane and worker nodes. In a self-managed environment, this process is entirely manual.
An EKS upgrade simplifies the process by letting AWS handle the control plane update. However, node upgrades and workload testing are still your responsibility. This two-step approach includes:
Upgrading the EKS control plane via the AWS console or CLI.
Updating managed or self-managed node groups to the same version as the control plane.
Upgrade your EKS cluster when:
Your current version is nearing end-of-support.
You need access to newer Kubernetes features.
Security patches or compatibility requirements demand it.
Delaying upgrades increases technical debt and risks downtime when forced to upgrade quickly due to deprecations or bugs.
Here’s how to handle upgrades effectively:
Study Kubernetes and EKS release notes before upgrading. They detail deprecated APIs, removed features, and other changes that could affect your cluster.
Ensure your applications and controllers don’t rely on deprecated APIs. Updating them before an upgrade prevents failures during or after the process.
Always test upgrades in a staging environment that mirrors production. This helps catch issues early and ensures workloads behave as expected.
Before upgrading, back up critical components such as configuration files, secrets, and persistent volumes.
Start with the control plane. Once stable, move on to node groups. Perform rolling upgrades of nodes to maintain workload availability.
After upgrading, continuously monitor application performance, resource usage, and logs to catch regressions or unexpected behavior.
With EKS, AWS handles the high-availability upgrade of the control plane. Once that’s complete, you need to:
Replace old node groups with updated ones
Confirm compatibility of workloads and Helm charts
Retest networking, storage, and ingress configurations
You should also align the version of kubectl and other CLI tools with the new Kubernetes version for consistent behavior.
Post-upgrade, make sure:
All workloads are running and stable
Node groups are up to date
Monitoring tools show normal metrics
Applications pass functionality and smoke tests
This ensures the upgrade did not introduce hidden issues or disruptions.
Whether you’re managing a self-hosted cluster or using EKS, a Kubernetes upgrade is more than a version bump—it’s a strategic step toward maintaining a secure and efficient environment. In EKS, AWS helps by automating parts of the process, but it’s still essential to plan, test, and validate every step.
A thoughtful, phased approach ensures your infrastructure stays reliable as you scale and evolve with Kubernetes.
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