Upgrading Instana backend on Kubernetes/OpenShift

To upgrade the operator-based Instana setup, follow these steps:

Upgrade procedure

The upgrade policy provides that at most one release can be skipped, that is, it's possible to upgrade from release 247-x to release 249-x or release 251-x, but no further. If the policy does not allow you to do the required upgrade in one go, then you need to carry out more than one upgrade step.

  1. Install the target version of Instana kubectl plug-in. For more information, see Installing the Instana kubectl plug-in.

  2. Upgrade the operator by using either of the following methods:

    Notes:

    • Ensure that you apply or generate new YAML manifests. Don't update the image version in the existing YAML manifests directly. If you update the image version in the existing YAML manifests, then you might miss the CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) updates or other changes that can lead to unpredictable errors.

    • To upgrade to a specific version, you might require to do some extra actions. Refer to the Upgrade notes section. When you skip a release, ensure that you consider the upgrade notes (including upgrade notes for the skipped version and the target version).

  3. Verify the Instana backend upgrade by doing the following steps:

    • Check whether the Instana kubectl plug-in version is updated by running the kubectl instana -version command.
    • Check whether the Instana backend version is updated by running the kubectl get core -n instana-core and kubectl get units -n instana-units commands.

Upgrade notes

Upgrading to release 259

  1. The minimum required ClickHouse version is increased. Make sure that your ClickHouse cluster is running on version 23.3.10.x before you upgrade to Instana 259.

    • If ClickHouse is operated as an instana-console Docker instance, update instana-console first to the lastest 259.
    • If ClickHouse is operated through the ClickHouse Operator, replace the ClickHouse image in the Clickhouse Operator deployment with this image: artifact-public.instana.io/self-hosted-images/k8s/clickhouse:23.3.10.5-1-lts-ibm_v0.29.0, and apply the deployment by running the command kubectl apply -f clickhouse.yaml -n instana-clickhouse.
    • For all other types of installation, follow the official update path.

  2. The downloadKey field is moved to the Unit Secret from the Core Secret. You need to add the repositoryPassword field to the Core Secret, which contains the current valid download key as value.

Upgrading to release 257

No special steps are needed.

Upgrading to release 255

No special steps are needed.