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Kubee

How to upgrade K3s

About

Section titled “About”

This page shows you how to upgrade k3s on your cluster.

Steps

Section titled “Steps”

Choose the next minor version

Section titled “Choose the next minor version”

Version

Section titled “Version”

Kubernetes versions are expressed as x.y.z, where

  • x is the major version,
  • y is the minor version,
  • and z is the patch version.

In Kubernetes versioning v1.32.2:

  • 1 = major version
  • 32 = minor version
  • 2 = patch version

Don’t mess with the Skew Policy

Section titled “Don’t mess with the Skew Policy”

K3s follows the Kubernetes version skew policy, which requires that you not skip intermediate minor versions when upgrading K3s. The policy for all Kubernetes distributions is to take single steps between minor versions - no skipping minors.

Skipping MINOR versions when upgrading is unsupported. Ensure that your plan does not skip intermediate minor versions when upgrading. https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/kubeadm/kubeadm-upgrade/

The “don’t skip intermediate minor versions” rule means:

  • ❌ Don’t go from 1.32.x → 1.34.x (skipping 1.33)
  • ✅ Do go from 1.32.x → 1.33.x → 1.34.x (one minor version at a time)

Go check the next minor version

Section titled “Go check the next minor version”

https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s/releases

Set the version in your cluster file

Section titled “Set the version in your cluster file”

Set the version in your cluster file

Example:

k3s_ansible:
  # https://github.com/k3s-io/k3s/releases
  version: 'v1.33.5+k3s1'
  token: '${KUBEE_INFRA_K3S_TOKEN}'

Execute the cluster upgrade

Section titled “Execute the cluster upgrade”

Execute the cluster upgrade with the default cluster chart

Terminal window
kubee --cluster clusterName cluster upgrade
# same as
# kubee --cluster clusterName --cluster-chart k3s-ansible cluster upgrade

Support

Section titled “Support”

Downgrade not supported, only rollback

Section titled “Downgrade not supported, only rollback”

k3s does not support any downgrade, but you can roll back

If you cannot restore the database, you cannot roll back to a previous minor version.

See k3s-backup