Key Lessons From Studying EKS Cluster Upgrades the Right Way
An SRE newcomer shared practical insights after deeply researching Amazon EKS cluster upgrades, moving beyond the common assumption that a version bump is a simple console click. A critical finding is that EKS control plane upgrades are irreversible, meaning thorough pre-upgrade testing is mandatory since rollback is not an option. Deprecated Kubernetes API versions pose a hidden risk, particularly through forgotten Helm charts and third-party tools, which can be caught using utilities like Pluto and kube-no-trouble before an upgrade proceeds. Add-ons such as CoreDNS, kube-proxy, and the VPC CNI plugin must be manually verified and upgraded alongside the control plane, as compatibility is not guaranteed automatically. Admission webhooks from tools like cert-manager or service meshes can also silently break cluster-wide API requests if not confirmed compatible with the new Kubernetes version ahead of time.
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