Cluster upgrades

An `eksctl`-managed cluster can be upgraded in 3 easy steps:

1. upgrade control plane version with eksctl upgrade cluster

2. upgrade nodegroups

3. update the default networking add-ons (For more information, see Default add-on updates):

Carefully review cluster upgrade related resources:

• Update existing cluster to new Kubernetes version in the Amazon EKS User Guide

• Best Practices for Cluster Upgrades in the EKS Best Practices Guide

Note

The old eksctl update cluster will be deprecated. Use eksctl upgrade cluster instead.

Updating control plane version

Control plane version upgrades must be done for one minor version at a time.

To upgrade control plane to the next available version run:

eksctl upgrade cluster --name=<clusterName>

This command will not apply any changes right away, you will need to re-run it with --approve to apply the changes.

The target version for the cluster upgrade can be specified both with the CLI flag:

eksctl upgrade cluster --name=<clusterName> --version=1.16

or with the config file

cat cluster1.yaml
---
apiVersion: eksctl.io/v1alpha5
kind: ClusterConfig

metadata:
  name: cluster-1
  region: eu-north-1
  version: "1.16"

eksctl upgrade cluster --config-file cluster1.yaml

Warning

The only values allowed for the --version and metadata.version arguments are the current version of the cluster or one version higher. Upgrades of more than one Kubernetes version are not supported.