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Upgrading OpenShift Virtualization

About upgrading OpenShift Virtualization

How OpenShift Virtualization upgrades work

  • You can upgrade to the next minor version of OpenShift Virtualization by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console to change the channel of your Operator subscription.

  • You can enable automatic z-stream updates during OpenShift Virtualization installation.

  • Updates are delivered via the Marketplace Operator, which is deployed during OpenShift Container Platform installation. The Marketplace Operator makes external Operators available to your cluster.

  • The amount of time an update takes to complete depends on your network connection. Most automatic updates complete within fifteen minutes.

How OpenShift Virtualization upgrades affect your cluster

  • Upgrading does not interrupt virtual machine workloads.

    • Virtual machine pods are not restarted or migrated during an upgrade. If you need to update the virt-launcher pod, you must restart or live migrate the virtual machine.

      Each virtual machine has a virt-launcher pod that runs the virtual machine instance. The virt-launcher pod runs an instance of libvirt, which is used to manage the virtual machine process.

  • Upgrading does not interrupt network connections.

  • Data volumes and their associated persistent volume claims are preserved during upgrade.

    If you have virtual machines running that cannot be live migrated, they might block an OpenShift Container Platform cluster upgrade. This includes virtual machines that use hostpath provisioner storage or SR-IOV network interfaces.

    As a workaround, you can reconfigure the virtual machines so that they can be powered off automatically during a cluster upgrade. Remove the evictionStrategy: LiveMigrate field and set the runStrategy field to Always.

Upgrade pathways for minor releases

The upgrade pathway is different depending on the 2.4.z version of OpenShift Virtualization that you have installed.

You must upgrade your OpenShift Container Platform to 4.6 before upgrading the minor release of OpenShift Virtualization.

Upgrading from 2.4.3 to 2.5.8

You must first upgrade to 2.5.0 before you can upgrade the z-stream. You can then upgrade from 2.5.0 to 2.5.1 and then to 2.5.2 and so on.

If your Approval Strategy is Automatic, which is the default, OpenShift Virtualization upgrades the z-stream automatically after you have upgraded to 2.5.0.

Upgrading from 2.4.4 or 2.4.5 to 2.5.8

You can upgrade from 2.4.4 or 2.4.5 directly to 2.5.2. You can then upgrade from 2.5.2 to 2.5.3 and so on.

If your Approval Strategy is Automatic, which is the default, OpenShift Virtualization upgrades the z-stream automatically after you have upgraded to 2.5.2.

Upgrading OpenShift Virtualization to the next minor version

You can manually upgrade OpenShift Virtualization to the next minor version by using the OpenShift Container Platform web console to change the channel of your Operator subscription.

Prerequisites

  • Log in to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

Procedure

  1. Access the OpenShift Container Platform web console and navigate to Operators → Installed Operators.

  2. Click OpenShift Virtualization to open the Operator Details page.

  3. Click the Subscription tab to open the Subscription Overview page.

  4. In the Channel pane, click the pencil icon on the right side of the version number to open the Change Subscription Update Channel window.

  5. Select stable. This ensures that you install the version of OpenShift Virtualization that is compatible with your OpenShift Container Platform version.

  6. Click Save.

  7. Check the status of the upgrade by navigating to Operators → Installed Operators. You can also check the status by running the following oc command:

    $ oc get csv -n openshift-cnv

Monitoring upgrade status

The best way to monitor OpenShift Virtualization upgrade status is to watch the cluster service version (CSV) PHASE. You can also monitor the CSV conditions in the web console or by running the command provided here.

The PHASE and conditions values are approximations that are based on available information.
Prerequisites

  • Log in to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

  • Install the OpenShift CLI (oc).

Procedure

  1. Run the following command:

    $ oc get csv

  2. Review the output, checking the PHASE field. For example:

    Example output
    VERSION  REPLACES                                        PHASE
2.5.0    kubevirt-hyperconverged-operator.v2.4.3         Installing
2.4.3                                                    Replacing

  3. Optional: Monitor the aggregated status of all OpenShift Virtualization component conditions by running the following command:

    $ oc get hco -n openshift-cnv kubevirt-hyperconverged \
-o=jsonpath='{range .status.conditions[*]}{.type}{"\t"}{.status}{"\t"}{.message}{"\n"}{end}'

    A successful upgrade results in the following output:

    Example output
    ReconcileComplete  True  Reconcile completed successfully
Available          True  Reconcile completed successfully
Progressing        False Reconcile completed successfully
Degraded           False Reconcile completed successfully
Upgradeable        True  Reconcile completed successfully

Additional resources