Updated on 2024-06-26 GMT+08:00

Compatibility Risks

Check Items

Read the version compatibility differences and ensure that they are not affected. The patch upgrade does not involve version compatibility differences.

Version compatibility

Upgrade Path

Version Difference

Self-Check

v1.23 or v1.25

Upgraded to v1.27

Docker is no longer recommended. Use containerd instead. For details, see Container Engines.

This item has been included in the pre-upgrade check.

v1.21 or v1.19

Upgraded to v1.23

For the Nginx Ingress Controller of an earlier version (community version v0.49 or earlier, or CCE nginx-ingress version v1.x.x), the created ingresses can be managed by the Nginx Ingress Controller even if kubernetes.io/ingress.class: nginx is not set in the ingress annotations. However, for the Nginx Ingress Controller of a later version (community version v1.0.0 or later, or CCE nginx-ingress version v2.x.x), the ingresses created without specifying the Nginx type will not be managed by the Nginx Ingress Controller, and ingress rules will become invalid, which interrupts services.

This item has been included in the pre-upgrade check. You can also perform the self-check by referring to nginx-ingress.

v1.19 to v1.21

The bug of exec probe timeouts is fixed in Kubernetes 1.21. Before this bug is fixed, the exec probe does not consider the timeoutSeconds field. Instead, the probe will run indefinitely, even beyond its configured deadline. It will stop until the result is returned. If this field is not specified, the default value 1 is used. This field takes effect after the upgrade. If the probe runs over 1 second, the application health check may fail and the application may restart frequently.

Before the upgrade, check whether the timeout is properly set for the exec probe.

kube-apiserver of CCE 1.19 or later requires that the Subject Alternative Names (SANs) field be configured for the certificate of your webhook server. Otherwise, kube-apiserver fails to call the webhook server after the upgrade, and containers cannot be started properly.

Root cause: X.509 CommonName is discarded in Go 1.15. kube-apiserver of CCE 1.19 is compiled using Go 1.15. If your webhook certificate does not have SANs, kube-apiserver does not process the CommonName field of the X.509 certificate as the host name by default. As a result, the authentication fails.

Before the upgrade, check whether the SAN field is configured in the certificate of your webhook server.

  • If you do not have your own webhook server, you can skip this check.
  • If the field is not set, use the SAN field to specify the IP address and domain name supported by the certificate.

v1.15 to v1.19

The control plane of CCE clusters of v1.19 is incompatible with kubelet v1.15. If a node fails to be upgraded or the node to be upgraded restarts after the master node is successfully upgraded, there is a high probability that the node is in the NotReady status.

This is because the node failed to be upgraded restarts the kubelet and trigger the node registration. In clusters of v1.15, the default registration tags (failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/is-baremetal and kubernetes.io/availablezone) are regarded as invalid tags by the clusters of v1.19.

The valid tags in the clusters of v1.19 are node.kubernetes.io/baremetal and failure-domain.beta.kubernetes.io/zone.

  1. In normal cases, this scenario is not triggered.
  2. After the master node is upgraded, do not suspend the upgrade so the node can be quickly upgraded.
  3. If a node fails to be upgraded and cannot be restored, evict applications on the node as soon as possible. Contact technical support and skip the node upgrade. After the upgrade is complete, reset the node.

In CCE v1.15 and v1.19 clusters, the Docker storage driver file system is switched from XFS to Ext4. As a result, the import package sequence in the pods of the upgraded Java application may be abnormal, causing pod exceptions.

Before the upgrade, check the Docker configuration file /etc/docker/daemon.json on the node. Check whether the value of dm.fs is xfs.

  • If the value is ext4 or the storage driver is Overlay, you can skip the next steps.
  • If the value is xfs, you are advised to deploy applications in the cluster of the new version in advance to test whether the applications are compatible with the new cluster version.
{
      "storage-driver": "devicemapper",
      "storage-opts": [
      "dm.thinpooldev=/dev/mapper/vgpaas-thinpool",
      "dm.use_deferred_removal=true",
      "dm.fs=xfs",
      "dm.use_deferred_deletion=true"
      ]
}

kube-apiserver of CCE v1.19 or later requires that the Subject Alternative Names (SANs) field be configured for the certificate of your webhook server. Otherwise, kube-apiserver fails to call the webhook server after the upgrade, and containers cannot be started properly.

Root cause: X.509 CommonName is discarded in Go v1.15. kube-apiserver of CCE v1.19 is compiled using Go v1.15. The CommonName field is processed as the host name. As a result, the authentication fails.

Before the upgrade, check whether the SAN field is configured in the certificate of your webhook server.

  • If you do not have your own webhook server, you can skip this check.
  • If the field is not set, use the SAN field to specify the IP address and domain name supported by the certificate.
NOTICE:

To mitigate the impact of version differences on cluster upgrade, CCE performs special processing during the upgrade from v1.15 to v1.19 and still supports certificates without SANs. However, no special processing is required for subsequent upgrades. You are advised to rectify your certificate as soon as possible.

In clusters of v1.17.17 and later, CCE automatically creates pod security policies (PSPs) for you, which restrict the creation of pods with unsafe configurations, for example, pods for which net.core.somaxconn under a sysctl is configured in the security context.

After an upgrade, you can allow insecure system configurations as required. For details, see Configuring a Pod Security Policy.

If initContainer or Istio is used in the in-place upgrade of a cluster of v1.15, pay attention to the following restrictions:

In kubelet v1.16 and later versions, QoS classes are different from those in earlier versions. In kubelet v1.15 and earlier versions, only containers in spec.containers are counted. In kubelet v1.16 and later versions, containers in both spec.containers and spec.initContainers are counted. The QoS class of a pod will change after the upgrade. As a result, the container in the pod restarts.

You are advised to modify the QoS class of the service container before the upgrade to avoid this problem. For details, see Table 1.

v1.13 to v1.15

After a VPC network cluster is upgraded, the master node occupies an extra CIDR block due to the upgrade of network components. If no container CIDR block is available for the new node, the pod scheduled to the node cannot run.

Generally, this problem occurs when the nodes in the cluster are about to fully occupy the container CIDR block. For example, the container CIDR block is 10.0.0.0/16, the number of available IP addresses is 65,536, and the VPC network is allocated a CIDR block with the fixed size (using the mask to determine the maximum number of container IP addresses allocated to each node). If the upper limit is 128, the cluster supports a maximum of 512 (65536/128) nodes, including the three master nodes. After the cluster is upgraded, each of the three master nodes occupies one CIDR block. As a result, 506 nodes are supported.

Table 1 QoS class changes before and after the upgrade

Init Container (Calculated Based on spec.initContainers)

Service Container (Calculated Based on spec.containers)

Pod (Calculated Based on spec.containers and spec.initContainers)

Impacted or Not

Guaranteed

Besteffort

Burstable

Yes

Guaranteed

Burstable

Burstable

No

Guaranteed

Guaranteed

Guaranteed

No

Besteffort

Besteffort

Besteffort

No

Besteffort

Burstable

Burstable

No

Besteffort

Guaranteed

Burstable

Yes

Burstable

Besteffort

Burstable

Yes

Burstable

Burstable

Burstable

No

Burstable

Guaranteed

Burstable

Yes