Version: v2.13

Upgrades

The following instructions will guide you through upgrading a Rancher server that was installed on a Kubernetes cluster with Helm. These steps also apply to air-gapped installs with Helm.

For the instructions to upgrade Rancher installed with Docker, refer to this page.

Prerequisites

Access to Kubeconfig

Helm should be run from the same location as your Kubeconfig file, or the same location where you run your kubectl commands from.

If you installed Kubernetes with RKE2/K3s, the Kubeconfig is stored in the /etc/rancher/rke2/rke2.yaml or /etc/rancher/k3s/k3s.yaml directory depending on your chosen distribution.

The Kubeconfig can also be manually targeted for the intended cluster with the --kubeconfig tag (see: https://helm.sh/docs/helm/helm/)

Review Known Issues

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

Note that upgrades to or from any chart in the rancher-alpha repository aren't supported.

Helm Version

info

Important: In Rancher Community v2.13.1 if your registry configuration is one of the following you may see Rancher generate the cattle-cluster-agent image with an incorrect docker.io path segment:

Environments where a cluster-scoped container registry is configured for system images.
Environments where a global system-default-registry is configured (e.g. airgap setups), even if no cluster-scoped registry is set.

Workaround for Affected Setups: As a workaround, override the cattle-cluster-agent image via the CATTLE_AGENT_IMAGE environment variable. This value must not contain any registry prefix (Rancher will handle that automatically). It should be set only to the repository and tag, for example:rancher/rancher-agent:v2.13.1

Helm install example:

helm install rancher rancher-latest/rancher \
...
 --set extraEnv[0].name=CATTLE_AGENT_IMAGE \
 --set extraEnv[0].value=rancher/rancher-agent:v2.13.1

Helm upgrade example:

helm upgrade rancher rancher-latest/rancher \
...
 --set extraEnv[0].name=CATTLE_AGENT_IMAGE \
 --set extraEnv[0].value=rancher/rancher-agent:v2.13.1

Important Upgrade Note:

The CATTLE_AGENT_IMAGE override is intended only as a temporary workaround for the affected configurations. Once a Rancher version is available that corrects this behavior, the CATTLE_AGENT_IMAGE override should be removed from Helm values, so that Rancher can resume managing the agent image normally and automatically track future image and tag changes. See #53187 for further information.

The upgrade instructions assume you are using Helm 3.

danger

Helm v2 support is deprecated as of the Rancher v2.7 line and will be removed in Rancher v2.9.

For migration of installs started with Helm 2, refer to the official Helm 2 to 3 migration docs. The Helm 2 upgrade page here provides a copy of the older upgrade instructions that used Helm 2, and it is intended to be used if upgrading to Helm 3 is not feasible.

For air-gapped installs: Populate private registry

For air-gapped installs only, collect and populate images for the new Rancher server version. Follow the guide to populate your private registry with the images for the Rancher version that you want to upgrade to.

For upgrades with cert-manager older than 0.8.0

Let's Encrypt will be blocking cert-manager instances older than 0.8.0 starting November 1st 2019. Upgrade cert-manager to the latest version by following these instructions.

Upgrade Outline

Follow the steps to upgrade Rancher server:

1. Back up Your Kubernetes Cluster that is Running Rancher Server

Use the backup application to back up Rancher.

You'll use the backup as a restore point if something goes wrong during upgrade.

2. Update the Helm chart repository

Update your local Helm repo cache.
```
helm repo update
```
Get the repository name that you used to install Rancher.
For information about the repos and their differences, see Helm Chart Repositories.
- Latest: Recommended for trying out the newest features
```
helm repo add rancher-latest https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/latest
```
- Stable: Recommended for production environments
```
helm repo add rancher-stable https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/stable
```
- Alpha: Experimental preview of upcoming releases.
```
helm repo add rancher-alpha https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/alpha
```
  Note: Upgrades are not supported to, from, or between Alphas.
```
helm repo list

NAME                   URL
stable                 https://charts.helm.sh/stable
rancher-<CHART_REPO>     https://releases.rancher.com/server-charts/<CHART_REPO>
```
note
If you want to switch to a different Helm chart repository, please follow the steps on how to switch repositories. If you switch repositories, make sure to list the repositories again before continuing onto Step 3 to ensure you have the correct one added.
Fetch the latest chart to install Rancher from the Helm chart repository.
This command will pull down the latest charts and save it in the current directory as a .tgz file.
```
helm fetch rancher-<CHART_REPO>/rancher
```
You can fetch the chart for the specific version you are upgrading to by adding in the --version= tag. For example:
```
helm fetch rancher-<CHART_REPO>/rancher --version=2.6.8
```

3. Upgrade Rancher

This section describes how to upgrade normal (Internet-connected) or air-gapped installations of Rancher with Helm.

Air Gap Instructions:

If you are installing Rancher in an air-gapped environment, skip the rest of this page and render the Helm template by following the instructions on this page.

Get the values, which were passed with --set, from the current Rancher Helm chart that is installed.

helm get values rancher -n cattle-system

hostname: rancher.my.org

note

There will be more values that are listed with this command. This is just an example of one of the values.

tip

Your deployment name may vary; for example, if you're deploying Rancher through the AWS Marketplace, the deployment name is 'rancher-stable'. Thus:

helm get values rancher-stable -n cattle-system

hostname: rancher.my.org

If you are upgrading cert-manager to the latest version from v1.5 or below, follow the cert-manager upgrade docs to learn how to upgrade cert-manager without needing to perform an uninstall or reinstall of Rancher. Otherwise, follow the steps to upgrade Rancher below.

Steps to Upgrade Rancher

Upgrade Rancher to the latest version with all your settings.

Take all the values from the previous step and append them to the command using --set key=value.

helm upgrade rancher rancher-<CHART_REPO>/rancher \
  --namespace cattle-system \
  --set hostname=rancher.my.org

note

The above is an example, there may be more values from the previous step that need to be appended.

tip

If you deploy Rancher through the AWS Marketplace, the deployment name is 'rancher-stable'. Thus:

helm upgrade rancher-stable rancher-<CHART_REPO>/rancher \
  --namespace cattle-system \
  --set hostname=rancher.my.org

Alternatively, it's possible to export the current values to a file and reference that file during upgrade. For example, to only change the Rancher version:

Export the current values to a file:

helm get values rancher -n cattle-system -o yaml > values.yaml

Update only the Rancher version:

helm upgrade rancher rancher-<CHART_REPO>/rancher \
  --namespace cattle-system \
  -f values.yaml \
  --version=2.6.8

4. 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.

Prerequisites​

Access to Kubeconfig​

Review Known Issues​

Helm Version​

For air-gapped installs: Populate private registry​

For upgrades with cert-manager older than 0.8.0​

Upgrade Outline​

1. Back up Your Kubernetes Cluster that is Running Rancher Server​

2. Update the Helm chart repository​

3. Upgrade Rancher​

Steps to Upgrade Rancher​

4. Verify the Upgrade​

Known Upgrade Issues​