Upgrading in an Air-Gapped Environment

note

These instructions assume you have already followed the instructions for a Kubernetes upgrade on this page, including the prerequisites, up until step 3. Upgrade Rancher.

Rancher Helm Upgrade Options

To upgrade with Helm, apply the same options that you used when installing Rancher. Refer to the reference table below to replace each placeholder. Rancher needs to be configured to use the private registry in order to provision any Rancher launched Kubernetes clusters or Rancher tools.

Based on the choice you made during installation, complete one of the procedures below.

Placeholder	Description
<VERSION>	The version number of the output tarball.
<RANCHER.YOURDOMAIN.COM>	The DNS name you pointed at your load balancer.
<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT>	The DNS name for your private registry.
<CERTMANAGER_VERSION>	Cert-manager version running on k8s cluster.

Option A: Default Self-signed Certificate

helm upgrade rancher ./rancher-<VERSION>.tgz \
    --namespace cattle-system \
    --set hostname=<RANCHER.YOURDOMAIN.COM> \
    --set certmanager.version=<CERTMANAGER_VERSION> \
    --set rancherImage=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT>/rancher/rancher \
    --set systemDefaultRegistry=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT> \ # Set a default private registry to be used in Rancher
    --set useBundledSystemChart=true # Use the packaged Rancher system charts

Resolving UPGRADE FAILED Error

If you encounter the error message, Error: UPGRADE FAILED: "rancher" has no deployed releases, Rancher might have been installed via the helm template command. To successfully upgrade Rancher, use the following command instead:

helm template rancher ./rancher-<VERSION>.tgz --output-dir . \
    --no-hooks \ # prevent files for Helm hooks from being generated
    --namespace cattle-system \
    --set hostname=<RANCHER.YOURDOMAIN.COM> \
    --set certmanager.version=<CERTMANAGER_VERSION> \
    --set rancherImage=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT>/rancher/rancher \
    --set systemDefaultRegistry=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT> \ # Set a default private registry to be used in Rancher
    --set useBundledSystemChart=true # Use the packaged Rancher system charts

After you run the Helm command, apply the rendered template:

kubectl -n cattle-system apply -R -f ./rancher

Option B: Certificates from Files using Kubernetes Secrets

helm upgrade rancher ./rancher-<VERSION>.tgz \
    --namespace cattle-system \
    --set hostname=<RANCHER.YOURDOMAIN.COM> \
    --set rancherImage=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT>/rancher/rancher \
    --set ingress.tls.source=secret \
    --set systemDefaultRegistry=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT> \ # Set a default private registry to be used in Rancher
    --set useBundledSystemChart=true # Use the packaged Rancher system charts

If you are using a Private CA signed cert, add --set privateCA=true following --set ingress.tls.source=secret:

helm upgrade rancher ./rancher-<VERSION>.tgz \
    --namespace cattle-system \
    --set hostname=<RANCHER.YOURDOMAIN.COM> \
    --set rancherImage=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT>/rancher/rancher \
    --set ingress.tls.source=secret \
    --set privateCA=true \
    --set systemDefaultRegistry=<REGISTRY.YOURDOMAIN.COM:PORT> \ # Set a default private registry to be used in Rancher
    --set useBundledSystemChart=true # Use the packaged Rancher system charts

Verify the Upgrade

Log into Rancher to confirm that the upgrade succeeded.

tip

Having network issues following upgrade?

See Restoring Cluster Networking.

Known Upgrade Issues

A list of known issues for each Rancher version can be found in the release notes on GitHub and on the Rancher forums.