clusterctl upgrade

The clusterctl upgrade command can be used to upgrade the version of the Cluster API providers (CRDs, controllers) installed into a management cluster.

upgrade plan

The clusterctl upgrade plan command can be used to identify possible targets for upgrades.

clusterctl upgrade plan

Produces an output similar to this:

Checking new release availability...

Management group: capi-system/cluster-api, latest release available for the v1alpha3 API Version of Cluster API (contract):

NAME                NAMESPACE                          TYPE                     CURRENT VERSION   TARGET VERSION
cluster-api         capi-system                        CoreProvider             v0.3.0            v0.3.1
kubeadm             capi-kubeadm-bootstrap-system      BootstrapProvider        v0.3.0            v0.3.1
kubeadm             capi-kubeadm-control-plane-system  ControlPlaneProvider     v0.3.0            v0.3.1
docker              capd-system                        InfrastructureProvider   v0.3.0            v0.3.1


You can now apply the upgrade by executing the following command:

   clusterctl upgrade apply --management-group capi-system/cluster-api  --contract v1alpha3

The output contains the latest release available for each management group in the cluster/for each API Version of Cluster API (contract) available at the moment.

upgrade apply

After choosing the desired option for the upgrade, you can run the following command to upgrade all the providers in the management group. This upgrades all the providers to the latest stable releases.

clusterctl upgrade apply \
  --management-group capi-system/cluster-api  \
  --contract v1alpha3

The upgrade process is composed by three steps:

  • Check the cert-manager version, and if necessary, upgrade it.
  • Delete the current version of the provider components, while preserving the namespace where the provider components are hosted and the provider’s CRDs.
  • Install the new version of the provider components.

Please note that clusterctl does not upgrade Cluster API objects (Clusters, MachineDeployments, Machine etc.); upgrading such objects are the responsibility of the provider’s controllers.