This page provides instructions on how to upgrade the ECK operator.

For upgrades of Elastic Stack applications like Elasticsearch or Kibana, check Upgrade the Elastic Stack version.

Before you upgrade to ECK 2.12.1edit

The upgrade process results in an update to all the existing managed resources. This potentially triggers a rolling restart of all Elasticsearch and Kibana pods. This list details the affected target versions that will cause a rolling restart. If you have a large Elasticsearch cluster or multiple Elastic Stack deployments, the rolling restart could cause a performance degradation. When you plan to upgrade ECK for production workloads, take into consideration the time required to upgrade the ECK operator plus the time required to roll all managed workloads and Elasticsearch clusters. Check for more information on how to control the rolling restarts during the upgrade.

Before upgrading, refer to the release notes to make sure that the release does not contain any breaking changes that could affect you. The release highlights document provides more details and possible workarounds for any breaking changes or known issues in each release.

Note that the release notes and highlights only list the changes since the last release. If during the upgrade you skip any intermediate versions and go for example from 1.0.0 directly to 2.12.1, review the release notes and highlights of each of the skipped releases to understand all the breaking changes you might encounter during and after the upgrade.

Upgrade instructionsedit

Upgrading from ECK 1.6 or earlieredit

Release 1.7.0 moved the CustomResourceDefinitions (CRD) used by ECK to the v1 version. If you upgrade from a previous version of ECK, the new version of the CRDs replaces the existing CRDs. If you cannot remove the current ECK installation because you have production workloads that must not be deleted, the following approach is recommended.

If you are installing using the YAML manifests: replace existing CRDs.

kubectl replace -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/2.12.1/crds.yaml

kubectl create -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/2.12.1/crds.yaml

Then upgrade the remaining objects with the operator manifest:

kubectl apply -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/2.12.1/operator.yaml

If you are using Helm: force upgrade the CRD chart to move to the v1 CRDs.

helm upgrade elastic-operator elastic/eck-operator-crds -n elastic-system --force

Then upgrade the main chart as usual:

helm upgrade elastic-operator elastic/eck-operator -n elastic-system

If you are using ECK through an OLM-managed distribution channel like operatorhub.io or the OpenShift OperatorHub then the CRD version upgrade will be handled by OLM for you and you do not need to take special action.

Upgrading from ECK 1.9 or earlieredit

Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) and OpenShift OperatorHub users that run with automatic upgrades enabled, are advised to set the set-default-security-context operator flag explicitly before upgrading to ECK 2.0 or later. If not set, ECK can fail to auto-detect the correct security context configuration and Elasticsearch Pods may not be allowed to run.

Upgrading from ECK 2.0 or lateredit

There are no special instructions to follow if you upgrade from any 2.x version to 2.12.1. Use the upgrade method applicable to your installation method of choice.

If you are using our YAML manifests.

kubectl apply -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/2.12.1/crds.yaml
kubectl apply -f https://download.elastic.co/downloads/eck/2.12.1/operator.yaml

If you are using Helm.

helm upgrade elastic-operator elastic/eck-operator -n elastic-system

This will update the ECK installation to the latest binary and update the CRDs and other ECK resources in the cluster.

Control rolling restarts during the upgradeedit

Upgrading the operator results in a one-time update to existing managed resources in the cluster. This potentially triggers a rolling restart of pods by Kubernetes to apply those changes. The following list contains the ECK operator versions that would cause a rolling restart after they have been installed.

1.6, 1.9, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2, 2.4, 2.5, 2.6, 2.7, 2.8

If you have a very large Elasticsearch cluster or multiple Elastic Stack deployments, this rolling restart might be disruptive or inconvenient. To have more control over when the pods belonging to a particular deployment should be restarted, you can add an annotation to the corresponding resources to temporarily exclude them from being managed by the operator. When the time is convenient, you can remove the annotation and let the rolling restart go through.

Exclude Elastic resources from being managed by the operator.

ANNOTATION='eck.k8s.elastic.co/managed=false'

# Exclude a single Elasticsearch resource named "quickstart"
kubectl annotate --overwrite elasticsearch quickstart $ANNOTATION

# Exclude all resources in the current namespace
kubectl annotate --overwrite elastic --all $ANNOTATION

# Exclude all resources in all of the namespaces:
for NS in $(kubectl get ns -o=custom-columns='NAME:.metadata.name' --no-headers); do kubectl annotate --overwrite elastic --all $ANNOTATION -n $NS; done

Once the operator has been upgraded and you are ready to let the resource become managed again (triggering a rolling restart of pods in the process), remove the annotation.

Resume Elastic resource management by the operator.

RM_ANNOTATION='eck.k8s.elastic.co/managed-'

# Resume management of a single Elasticsearch cluster named "quickstart"
kubectl annotate elasticsearch quickstart $RM_ANNOTATION