Part 5: Upgrade

What Will You Do

In this part of the self-paced exercise, you will upgrade the Kubernetes version on your Amazon EKS cluster utilizing the declarative cluster specification we used to create the cluster

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Step 1: Cluster Spec

• Open Terminal (on macOS/Linux) or Command Prompt (Windows) and navigate to the folder where you forked the Git repository
• Navigate to the folder "/getstarted/karpenter/cluster"

The "cluster.yaml" file contains the declarative specification for our Amazon EKS Cluster.

Cluster Details

In the cluster spec file, we define the Kuberetes version for the control plane and the nodegroups of the cluster.

version: "1.29"

The following items will need to be updated to 1.29.

apiVersion: infra.k8smgmt.io/v3
kind: Cluster
metadata:
  name: karpenter-cluster
  project: defaultproject
spec:
  blueprintConfig:
    name: minimal
  cloudCredentials: aws-cloud-credential
  config:
    addons:
    - name: kube-proxy
      version: latest
    - name: vpc-cni
      version: latest
    - name: coredns
      version: latest
    - name: aws-ebs-csi-driver
      version: latest
      configurationValues: |-
        {
          "controller": {
            "tolerations": [
              {
                "effect": "NoSchedule",
                "key": "nodeInfra",
                "operator": "Exists"
              }
            ]
          }
        }
    iam:
      serviceAccounts:
      - attachPolicy:
          Statement:
          - Action:
            - ec2:CreateLaunchTemplate
            - ec2:CreateFleet
            - ec2:RunInstances
            - ec2:CreateTags
            - iam:PassRole
            - iam:CreateInstanceProfile
            - iam:TagInstanceProfile
            - iam:AddRoleToInstanceProfile
            - iam:RemoveRoleFromInstanceProfile
            - iam:DeleteInstanceProfile
            - ec2:DeleteLaunchTemplate
            - ec2:TerminateInstances
            - ec2:DescribeLaunchTemplates
            - ec2:DescribeSpotPriceHistory
            - ec2:DescribeImage
            - ec2:DescribeImages
            - ec2:DescribeInstances
            - ec2:DescribeSecurityGroups
            - ec2:DescribeSubnets
            - ec2:DescribeInstanceTypes
            - ec2:DescribeInstanceTypeOfferings
            - ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones
            - ssm:GetParameter
            - eks:DescribeCluster
            - pricing:DescribeServices
            - pricing:GetAttributeValues
            - pricing:GetProducts
            - iam:GetInstanceProfile
            Effect: Allow
            Resource: '*'
          Version: "2012-10-17"
        metadata:
          name: karpenter
          namespace: karpenter
      withOIDC: true
    identityMappings:
      arns:
      - arn: "arn:aws:iam::<ACCOUNT-NUMBER>:role/KarpenterNodeRole-Rafay"
        group:
        - system:bootstrappers
        - system:nodes
        username: system:node:{{EC2PrivateDNSName}}
    managedNodeGroups:
    - amiFamily: AmazonLinux2
      desiredCapacity: 1
      instanceType: t3.large
      labels:
        nodes: infra
      maxSize: 2
      minSize: 0
      name: infra-nodegroup
      taints:
      - effect: NoSchedule
        key: nodeInfra
      version: "1.29"
    metadata:
      name: karpenter-cluster
      region: us-west-2
      tags:
        cluster-name: karpenter-cluster
        email: <EMAIL>
        env: <ENV>
      version: "1.29"
    vpc:
      autoAllocateIPv6: false
      cidr: 192.168.0.0/16
      clusterEndpoints:
        privateAccess: true
        publicAccess: false
  systemComponentsPlacement:
    tolerations:
    - effect: NoSchedule
      key: nodeInfra
      operator: Exists
  type: aws-eks

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Step 2: Upgrade Cluster

• Type the command below to start the Upgrade of the EKS cluster

rctl apply -f cluster.yaml

If there are no errors, you will be presented with a "Task ID" that you can use to check progress/status. Note that this step can take ~30-45 minutes to complete.

[
  {
    "tasksetId": "d2wyryk",
    "tasksetOperations": [
      {
        "operationName": "ClusterUpgrade",
        "resourceName": "karpenter-cluster",
        "operationStatus": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_INPROGRESS"
      }
    ],
    "tasksetStatus": "PROVISION_TASKSET_STATUS_INPROGRESS",
    "comments": "Configuration is being applied to the cluster"
  },
  {
    "tasksetId": "emp9j02",
    "tasksetOperations": [
      {
        "operationName": "BlueprintUpdation",
        "resourceName": "karpenter-cluster",
        "operationStatus": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_SUCCESS"
      }
    ],
    "tasksetStatus": "PROVISION_TASKSET_STATUS_COMPLETE",
    "comments": "Configuration is applied to the cluster successfully"
  },
  {
    "tasksetId": "7kr6npk",
    "tasksetOperations": [
      {
        "operationName": "NodegroupScaling",
        "resourceName": "infra-nodegroup",
        "operationStatus": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_SUCCESS"
      },
      {
        "operationName": "BlueprintUpdation",
        "resourceName": "karpenter-cluster",
        "operationStatus": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_SUCCESS"
      }
    ],
    "tasksetStatus": "PROVISION_TASKSET_STATUS_COMPLETE",
    "comments": "Configuration is applied to the cluster successfully"
  },
  {
    "tasksetId": "d27990k",
    "tasksetOperations": [
      {
        "operationName": "BlueprintUpdation",
        "resourceName": "karpenter-cluster",
        "operationStatus": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_SUCCESS"
      }
    ],
    "tasksetStatus": "PROVISION_TASKSET_STATUS_COMPLETE",
    "comments": "Configuration is applied to the cluster successfully"
  },
  {
    "tasksetId": "gkj55z2",
    "tasksetOperations": [
      {
        "operationName": "BlueprintUpdation",
        "resourceName": "karpenter-cluster",
        "operationStatus": "PROVISION_TASK_STATUS_FAILED",
        "errorSummary": "rpc error: code = Unknown desc = error in getting blueprint-karpenter-blueprint version-latest object"
      }
    ],
    "tasksetStatus": "PROVISION_TASKSET_STATUS_FAILED",
    "comments": "There were problem(s) while applying configuration to the cluster"
  }
]

• Navigate to the "defaultproject" project in your Org
• Click on Infrastructure -> Clusters. You should see something like the following

• Click on the cluster name and then navigate to the Upgrade Jobs tab, the upgrade can take ~45 minutes

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Step 3: Verify Cluster

Once the upgrade is complete, you should see the cluster in the web console with the updated K8s version

• Click on the kubectl link and type the following command

kubectl get nodes

You should see something like the following

NAME                                            STATUS   ROLES    AGE   VERSION
ip-192-168-107-161.us-west-2.compute.internal   Ready    <none>   22m   v1.29.3-eks-ae9a62a
ip-192-168-53-39.us-west-2.compute.internal     Ready    <none>   25m   v1.29.3-eks-ae9a62a
ip-192-168-89-92.us-west-2.compute.internal     Ready    <none>   23m   v1.29.3-eks-ae9a62a

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Recap

Congratulations! At this point, you have successfully upgraded an Amazon EKS cluster with a managed nodegroup and additional nodes managed by Karpenter in your AWS account using the RCTL CLI.

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