Upgrade Guide

This upgrade guide is intended for Cilium running on Kubernetes. If you have questions, feel free to ping us on Cilium Slack.

Warning

Read the full upgrade guide to understand all the necessary steps before performing them.

Do not upgrade to 1.16 before reading the section 1.16 Upgrade Notes and completing the required steps. Skipping this step may lead to an non-functional upgrade.

The only tested rollback and upgrade path is between consecutive minor releases. Always perform rollbacks and upgrades between one minor release at a time. This means that going from (a hypothetical) 1.1 to 1.2 and back is supported while going from 1.1 to 1.3 and back is not.

Always update to the latest patch release of your current version before attempting an upgrade.

Running pre-flight check (Required)

When rolling out an upgrade with Kubernetes, Kubernetes will first terminate the pod followed by pulling the new image version and then finally spin up the new image. In order to reduce the downtime of the agent and to prevent ErrImagePull errors during upgrade, the pre-flight check pre-pulls the new image version. If you are running in Kubernetes Without kube-proxy mode you must also pass on the Kubernetes API Server IP and / or the Kubernetes API Server Port when generating the cilium-preflight.yaml file.

helm template ./cilium \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set preflight.enabled=true \
  --set agent=false \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  > cilium-preflight.yaml
kubectl create -f cilium-preflight.yaml

After applying the cilium-preflight.yaml, ensure that the number of READY pods is the same number of Cilium pods running.

$ kubectl get daemonset -n kube-system | sed -n '1p;/cilium/p'
NAME                      DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   NODE SELECTOR   AGE
cilium                    2         2         2       2            2           <none>          1h20m
cilium-pre-flight-check   2         2         2       2            2           <none>          7m15s

Once the number of READY pods are equal, make sure the Cilium pre-flight deployment is also marked as READY 1/1. If it shows READY 0/1, consult the CNP Validation section and resolve issues with the deployment before continuing with the upgrade.

$ kubectl get deployment -n kube-system cilium-pre-flight-check -w
NAME                      READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
cilium-pre-flight-check   1/1     1            0           12s

Clean up pre-flight check

Once the number of READY for the preflight DaemonSet is the same as the number of cilium pods running and the preflight Deployment is marked as READY 1/1 you can delete the cilium-preflight and proceed with the upgrade.

kubectl delete -f cilium-preflight.yaml

Upgrading Cilium

During normal cluster operations, all Cilium components should run the same version. Upgrading just one of them (e.g., upgrading the agent without upgrading the operator) could result in unexpected cluster behavior. The following steps will describe how to upgrade all of the components from one stable release to a later stable release.

Warning

Read the full upgrade guide to understand all the necessary steps before performing them.

Do not upgrade to 1.16 before reading the section 1.16 Upgrade Notes and completing the required steps. Skipping this step may lead to an non-functional upgrade.

The only tested rollback and upgrade path is between consecutive minor releases. Always perform rollbacks and upgrades between one minor release at a time. This means that going from (a hypothetical) 1.1 to 1.2 and back is supported while going from 1.1 to 1.3 and back is not.

Always update to the latest patch release of your current version before attempting an upgrade.

Step 1: Upgrade to latest patch version

When upgrading from one minor release to another minor release, for example 1.x to 1.y, it is recommended to upgrade to the latest patch release for a Cilium release series first. Upgrading to the latest patch release ensures the most seamless experience if a rollback is required following the minor release upgrade. The upgrade guides for previous versions can be found for each minor version at the bottom left corner.

Step 2: Use Helm to Upgrade your Cilium deployment

Helm can be used to either upgrade Cilium directly or to generate a new set of YAML files that can be used to upgrade an existing deployment via kubectl. By default, Helm will generate the new templates using the default values files packaged with each new release. You still need to ensure that you are specifying the equivalent options as used for the initial deployment, either by specifying a them at the command line or by committing the values to a YAML file.

Download the Cilium release tarball and change to the kubernetes install directory:

curl -LO https://github.com/cilium/cilium/archive/main.tar.gz
tar xzf main.tar.gz
cd cilium-main/install/kubernetes

To minimize datapath disruption during the upgrade, the upgradeCompatibility option should be set to the initial Cilium version which was installed in this cluster.

Generate the required YAML file and deploy it:

helm template ./cilium \
  --set upgradeCompatibility=1.X \
  --namespace kube-system \
  > cilium.yaml
kubectl apply -f cilium.yaml

Note

Instead of using --set, you can also save the values relative to your deployment in a YAML file and use it to regenerate the YAML for the latest Cilium version. Running any of the previous commands will overwrite the existing cluster’s ConfigMap so it is critical to preserve any existing options, either by setting them at the command line or storing them in a YAML file, similar to:

agent: true
upgradeCompatibility: "1.8"
ipam:
  mode: "kubernetes"
k8sServiceHost: "API_SERVER_IP"
k8sServicePort: "API_SERVER_PORT"
kubeProxyReplacement: "true"

You can then upgrade using this values file by running:

helm upgrade cilium ./cilium \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  -f my-values.yaml

When upgrading from one minor release to another minor release using helm upgrade, do not use Helm’s --reuse-values flag. The --reuse-values flag ignores any newly introduced values present in the new release and thus may cause the Helm template to render incorrectly. Instead, if you want to reuse the values from your existing installation, save the old values in a values file, check the file for any renamed or deprecated values, and then pass it to the helm upgrade command as described above. You can retrieve and save the values from an existing installation with the following command:

helm get values cilium --namespace=kube-system -o yaml > old-values.yaml

The --reuse-values flag may only be safely used if the Cilium chart version remains unchanged, for example when helm upgrade is used to apply configuration changes without upgrading Cilium.

Step 3: Rolling Back

Occasionally, it may be necessary to undo the rollout because a step was missed or something went wrong during upgrade. To undo the rollout run:

kubectl rollout undo daemonset/cilium -n kube-system

This will revert the latest changes to the Cilium DaemonSet and return Cilium to the state it was in prior to the upgrade.

Note

When rolling back after new features of the new minor version have already been consumed, consult the Version Specific Notes to check and prepare for incompatible feature use before downgrading/rolling back. This step is only required after new functionality introduced in the new minor version has already been explicitly used by creating new resources or by opting into new features via the ConfigMap.

Version Specific Notes

This section documents the specific steps required for upgrading from one version of Cilium to another version of Cilium. There are particular version transitions which are suggested by the Cilium developers to avoid known issues during upgrade, then subsequently there are sections for specific upgrade transitions, ordered by version.

The table below lists suggested upgrade transitions, from a specified current version running in a cluster to a specified target version. If a specific combination is not listed in the table below, then it may not be safe. In that case, consider performing incremental upgrades between versions (e.g. upgrade from 1.12.x to 1.13.y first, and to 1.14.z only afterwards).

Current version

Target version

L3/L4 impact

L7 impact

1.13.x

1.14.y

Minimal to None

Clients must reconnect[1]

1.12.x

1.13.y

Minimal to None

Clients must reconnect[1]

1.11.x

1.12.y

Minimal to None

Clients must reconnect[1]

Annotations:

  1. Clients must reconnect: Any traffic flowing via a proxy (for example, because an L7 policy is in place) will be disrupted during upgrade. Endpoints communicating via the proxy must reconnect to re-establish connections.

1.16 Upgrade Notes

  • Cilium Envoy DaemonSet is now enabled by default, and existing in-container installs will be changed to DaemonSet mode unless specifically opted out of. This can be done by disabling it manually by setting envoy.enabled=false accordingly.

Removed Options

  • The unused flag sidecar-istio-proxy-image has been removed.

  • The flag endpoint-status has been removed. More information can be found in the following Helm upgrade notes.

  • The ip-allocation-timeout flag (which provided a time limit on blocking CIDR identity allocations) has been removed. CIDR identity allocation now always happens asynchronously, therefore making this timeout obsolete.

Helm Options

  • Deprecated helm option encryption.{keyFile,mountPath,secretName,interface} are removed in favor of encryption.ipsec.*.

  • Deprecated options proxy.prometheus.enabled and proxy.prometheus.port have been removed. Please use envoy.prometheus.enabled and envoy.prometheus.port instead.

  • The unused helm option proxy.sidecarImageRegex has been removed.

  • The helm option endpointStatus has been removed. Instead of relying on additional statuses in CiliumEndpoints CRD, please rely on Cilium’s metrics to monitor status of endpoints. Example metrics include: cilium_policy, cilium_policy_endpoint_enforcement_status, cilium_controllers_failing and cilium_endpoint_state. More detailed information about specific endpoint status information is still available through cilium-dbg endpoint get.

Added Metrics

  • TBD

Removed Metrics

The following deprecated metrics were removed:

  • TBD

Changed Metrics

  • TBD

1.15 Upgrade Notes

  • If you configured Cilium with both IPv4 and IPv6 support enabled, and you have a network policy with a ToCIDR or ToCIDRSet rule matching a full IP range such as 0.0.0.0/0 or ::/0, then you may experience connection breakage when switching Cilium versions. When this problem occurs, existing connections allowed by the network policy may be denied until the application reconnects. New connections are not impacted. Upgrading from Cilium 1.14.x or earlier to 1.15.y or later does not trigger this problem. Downgrading from Cilium 1.15.y or later to Cilium 1.14.x or earlier may trigger this problem.

  • CiliumNetworkPolicy cannot match the reserved:init labels any more. If you have CiliumNetworkPolicy resources that have a match for labels reserved:init, these policies must be converted to CiliumClusterwideNetworkPolicy by changing the resource type for the policy.

  • Cluster name and ID are no longer automatically inferred by Cilium agents running on external workloads. If the cluster name and ID are different from the default values, you must specify them as parameters. Generate the installation script using Cilium CLI >=v0.15.8 to automatically include these parameters.

  • enable-endpoint-routes now automatically sets enable-local-node-route to false, as local node routes are redundant when per-endpoint routes are enabled.

  • L7 visibility using Pod annotations (policy.cilium.io/proxy-visibility) is no longer supported. We recommend users to switch to L7 policies instead (see Layer 7 Protocol Visibility).

  • If you are using Gateway API, please make sure that new v1 CRDs are installed. The existing Gateway API resources will continue to work as usual, however, it is better to migrate your resources from v1beta1 to v1 for GatewayClass, Gateway and HTTPRoute resources.

  • The tunnel protocol is no longer automatically set to geneve when Cilium is configured in native routing mode and Direct Server Return (DSR) with Geneve is enabled. Explicitly configure --tunnel-protocol=geneve (or the equivalent tunnelProtocol=geneve helm value) when DSR with Geneve is enabled.

  • The CILIUM_PREPEND_IPTABLES_CHAIN environment variable has been renamed to CILIUM_PREPEND_IPTABLES_CHAINS (note the trailing S) to more accurately match the name of the associated command line flag --prepend-iptables-chains.

  • CiliumNetworkPolicy changed the semantic of the empty non-nil slice. For an Ingress CNP, an empty slice in one of the fields fromEndpoints, fromCIDR, fromCIDRSet and fromEntities will not select any identity, thus falling back to default deny for an allow policy. Similarly, for an Egress CNP, an empty slice in one of the fields toEndpoints, toCIDR, toCIDRSet and toEntities will not select any identity either.

  • If Cilium is configured with BPF masquerade support but the requirements are not met (e.g: NodePort service implementation in BPF is disabled or socket load-balancing is disabled), it will fail to initialize and will log an error instead of silently fall back to iptables based masquerading.

  • The ICMP type field in Network Policy now can be either an ICMP message type integer (for example, 0 for Echo Reply), or a corresponding CamelCase message type string (EchoReply).

Cilium CLI

Upgrade Cilium CLI to v0.15.0 or later to switch to Helm installation mode to install and manage Cilium v1.14. Classic installation mode is not supported with Cilium v1.14.

Helm and classic mode installations are not compatible with each other. Do not use Cilium CLI in Helm mode to manage classic mode installations, and vice versa.

To migrate a classic mode Cilium installation to Helm mode, you need to uninstall Cilium using classic mode Cilium CLI, and then re-install Cilium using Helm mode Cilium CLI.

Removed Options

  • The previously deprecated cluster-pool-v2beta IPAM mode has been removed. The functionality to dynamically allocate Pod CIDRs is now provided by the more flexible multi-pool IPAM mode.

  • The install-egress-gateway-routes flag has been deprecated because the datapath has been improved to not require any additional routes in ENI environments.

  • The tunnel option (deprecated in Cilium 1.14) has been removed. To enable native-routing mode, set routing-mode=native (previously tunnel=disabled). To configure the tunneling protocol, set tunnel-protocol=vxlan|geneve (previously tunnel=vxlan|geneve).

  • The long defunct and undocumented single-cluster-route flag has been removed.

  • Deprecated options enable-k8s-event-handover and cnp-status-update-interval has been removed.

Helm Options

  • Values clustermesh.apiserver.tls.ca.cert and clustermesh.apiserver.tls.ca.key were deprecated in Cilium 1.14 in favor of tls.ca.cert and tls.ca.key respectively, and have been removed. The `clustermesh-apiserver-ca-cert secret is no longer generated.

  • Values authentication.mutual.spire.install.agent.image and authentication.mutual.spire.install.server.image changed their type from a string to a structured definition that decouples repository and tag. This improves the usage in offline environments.

  • Prometheus metrics for cilium-operator and clustermesh’s kvstore are now enabled by default. If you want to disable these prometheus metrics, set operator.prometheus.enabled=false and clustermesh.apiserver.metrics.etcd.enabled=false respectively.

  • egressGateway.installRoutes has been deprecated because the setting is no longer necessary.

  • Value tunnel was deprecated in Cilium 1.14 in favor of routingMode and tunnelProtocol, and has been removed.

  • Values enableK8sEventHandover and enableCnpStatusUpdates have been removed.

Added Metrics

  • cilium_ipam_capacity

  • cilium_endpoint_max_ifindex See #27953 for configuration and usage information

Removed Metrics

The following deprecated metrics were removed:

  • cilium_policy_l7_parse_errors_total, cilium_policy_l7_forwarded_total, cilium_policy_l7_denied_total, cilium_policy_l7_received_total (replaced by cilium_policy_l7_total)

  • cilium_policy_import_errors_total (replaced by cilium_policy_change_total).

Changed Metrics

  • cilium_kvstore_operations_duration_seconds, cilium_clustermesh_apiserver_kvstore_operations_duration_seconds and cilium_kvstoremesh_kvstore_operations_duration_seconds do not include client-side rate-limiting latency anymore. For checking client-side rate-limiting you can use corresponding *_api_limiter_wait_duration_seconds metrics.

  • The cilium_bpf_map_pressure for policy maps is now exposed as a single label cilium_policy_*, rather than a label per policy map of an endpoint.

  • cilium_policy_l7_total now has label proxy_type to distinguish between fqdn and envoy proxy requests.

  • The cilium_cidrgroup_policies metric has been renamed to cilium_cidrgroups_referenced for better clarity.

  • The cilium_cidrgroup_translation_time_stats_seconds metric has been disabled by default.

Earlier Upgrade Notes

For upgrades from earlier releases, see the upgrade notes from the previous version.

Advanced

Upgrade Impact

Upgrades are designed to have minimal impact on your running deployment. Networking connectivity, policy enforcement and load balancing will remain functional in general. The following is a list of operations that will not be available during the upgrade:

  • API-aware policy rules are enforced in user space proxies and are running as part of the Cilium pod. Upgrading Cilium causes the proxy to restart, which results in a connectivity outage and causes the connection to reset.

  • Existing policy will remain effective but implementation of new policy rules will be postponed to after the upgrade has been completed on a particular node.

  • Monitoring components such as cilium-dbg monitor will experience a brief outage while the Cilium pod is restarting. Events are queued up and read after the upgrade. If the number of events exceeds the event buffer size, events will be lost.

Rebasing a ConfigMap

This section describes the procedure to rebase an existing ConfigMap to the template of another version.

Export the current ConfigMap

$ kubectl get configmap -n kube-system cilium-config -o yaml --export > cilium-cm-old.yaml
$ cat ./cilium-cm-old.yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
  clean-cilium-state: "false"
  debug: "true"
  disable-ipv4: "false"
  etcd-config: |-
    ---
    endpoints:
    - https://192.168.60.11:2379
    #
    # In case you want to use TLS in etcd, uncomment the 'trusted-ca-file' line
    # and create a kubernetes secret by following the tutorial in
    # https://cilium.link/etcd-config
    trusted-ca-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client-ca.crt'
    #
    # In case you want client to server authentication, uncomment the following
    # lines and add the certificate and key in cilium-etcd-secrets below
    key-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.key'
    cert-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.crt'
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: cilium-config
  selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/configmaps/cilium-config

In the ConfigMap above, we can verify that Cilium is using debug with true, it has a etcd endpoint running with TLS, and the etcd is set up to have client to server authentication.

Generate the latest ConfigMap

helm template cilium \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set agent.enabled=false \
  --set config.enabled=true \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  > cilium-configmap.yaml

Add new options

Add the new options manually to your old ConfigMap, and make the necessary changes.

In this example, the debug option is meant to be kept with true, the etcd-config is kept unchanged, and monitor-aggregation is a new option, but after reading the Version Specific Notes the value was kept unchanged from the default value.

After making the necessary changes, the old ConfigMap was migrated with the new options while keeping the configuration that we wanted:

$ cat ./cilium-cm-old.yaml
apiVersion: v1
data:
  debug: "true"
  disable-ipv4: "false"
  # If you want to clean cilium state; change this value to true
  clean-cilium-state: "false"
  monitor-aggregation: "medium"
  etcd-config: |-
    ---
    endpoints:
    - https://192.168.60.11:2379
    #
    # In case you want to use TLS in etcd, uncomment the 'trusted-ca-file' line
    # and create a kubernetes secret by following the tutorial in
    # https://cilium.link/etcd-config
    trusted-ca-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client-ca.crt'
    #
    # In case you want client to server authentication, uncomment the following
    # lines and add the certificate and key in cilium-etcd-secrets below
    key-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.key'
    cert-file: '/var/lib/etcd-secrets/etcd-client.crt'
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: null
  name: cilium-config
  selfLink: /api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/configmaps/cilium-config

Apply new ConfigMap

After adding the options, manually save the file with your changes and install the ConfigMap in the kube-system namespace of your cluster.

$ kubectl apply -n kube-system -f ./cilium-cm-old.yaml

As the ConfigMap is successfully upgraded we can start upgrading Cilium DaemonSet and RBAC which will pick up the latest configuration from the ConfigMap.

Migrating from kvstore-backed identities to Kubernetes CRD-backed identities

Beginning with cilium 1.6, Kubernetes CRD-backed security identities can be used for smaller clusters. Along with other changes in 1.6 this allows kvstore-free operation if desired. It is possible to migrate identities from an existing kvstore deployment to CRD-backed identities. This minimizes disruptions to traffic as the update rolls out through the cluster.

Affected versions

  • Cilium 1.6 deployments using kvstore-backend identities

Mitigation

When identities change, existing connections can be disrupted while cilium initializes and synchronizes with the shared identity store. The disruption occurs when new numeric identities are used for existing pods on some instances and others are used on others. When converting to CRD-backed identities, it is possible to pre-allocate CRD identities so that the numeric identities match those in the kvstore. This allows new and old cilium instances in the rollout to agree.

The steps below show an example of such a migration. It is safe to re-run the command if desired. It will identify already allocated identities or ones that cannot be migrated. Note that identity 34815 is migrated, 17003 is already migrated, and 11730 has a conflict and a new ID allocated for those labels.

The steps below assume a stable cluster with no new identities created during the rollout. Once a cilium using CRD-backed identities is running, it may begin allocating identities in a way that conflicts with older ones in the kvstore.

The cilium preflight manifest requires etcd support and can be built with:

helm template cilium \
  --namespace=kube-system \
  --set preflight.enabled=true \
  --set agent.enabled=false \
  --set config.enabled=false \
  --set operator.enabled=false \
  --set etcd.enabled=true \
  --set etcd.ssl=true \
  > cilium-preflight.yaml
kubectl create -f cilium-preflight.yaml

Example migration

$ kubectl exec -n kube-system cilium-pre-flight-check-1234 -- cilium-dbg preflight migrate-identity
INFO[0000] Setting up kvstore client
INFO[0000] Connecting to etcd server...                  config=/var/lib/cilium/etcd-config.yml endpoints="[https://192.168.60.11:2379]" subsys=kvstore
INFO[0000] Setting up kubernetes client
INFO[0000] Establishing connection to apiserver          host="https://192.168.60.11:6443" subsys=k8s
INFO[0000] Connected to apiserver                        subsys=k8s
INFO[0000] Got lease ID 29c66c67db8870c8                 subsys=kvstore
INFO[0000] Got lock lease ID 29c66c67db8870ca            subsys=kvstore
INFO[0000] Successfully verified version of etcd endpoint  config=/var/lib/cilium/etcd-config.yml endpoints="[https://192.168.60.11:2379]" etcdEndpoint="https://192.168.60.11:2379" subsys=kvstore version=3.3.13
INFO[0000] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=CiliumNetworkPolicy/v2 subsys=k8s
INFO[0000] Updating CRD (CustomResourceDefinition)...    name=v2.CiliumEndpoint subsys=k8s
INFO[0001] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=v2.CiliumEndpoint subsys=k8s
INFO[0001] Updating CRD (CustomResourceDefinition)...    name=v2.CiliumNode subsys=k8s
INFO[0002] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=v2.CiliumNode subsys=k8s
INFO[0002] Updating CRD (CustomResourceDefinition)...    name=v2.CiliumIdentity subsys=k8s
INFO[0003] CRD (CustomResourceDefinition) is installed and up-to-date  name=v2.CiliumIdentity subsys=k8s
INFO[0003] Listing identities in kvstore
INFO[0003] Migrating identities to CRD
INFO[0003] Skipped non-kubernetes labels when labelling ciliumidentity. All labels will still be used in identity determination  labels="map[]" subsys=crd-allocator
INFO[0003] Skipped non-kubernetes labels when labelling ciliumidentity. All labels will still be used in identity determination  labels="map[]" subsys=crd-allocator
INFO[0003] Skipped non-kubernetes labels when labelling ciliumidentity. All labels will still be used in identity determination  labels="map[]" subsys=crd-allocator
INFO[0003] Migrated identity                             identity=34815 identityLabels="k8s:class=tiefighter;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;"
WARN[0003] ID is allocated to a different key in CRD. A new ID will be allocated for the this key  identityLabels="k8s:class=deathstar;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;" oldIdentity=11730
INFO[0003] Reusing existing global key                   key="k8s:class=deathstar;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;" subsys=allocator
INFO[0003] New ID allocated for key in CRD               identity=17281 identityLabels="k8s:class=deathstar;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=empire;" oldIdentity=11730
INFO[0003] ID was already allocated to this key. It is already migrated  identity=17003 identityLabels="k8s:class=xwing;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.cluster=default;k8s:io.cilium.k8s.policy.serviceaccount=default;k8s:io.kubernetes.pod.namespace=default;k8s:org=alliance;"

Note

It is also possible to use the --k8s-kubeconfig-path and --kvstore-opt cilium CLI options with the preflight command. The default is to derive the configuration as cilium-agent does.

cilium preflight migrate-identity --k8s-kubeconfig-path /var/lib/cilium/cilium.kubeconfig --kvstore etcd --kvstore-opt etcd.config=/var/lib/cilium/etcd-config.yml

Once the migration is complete, confirm the endpoint identities match by listing the endpoints stored in CRDs and in etcd:

$ kubectl get ciliumendpoints -A # new CRD-backed endpoints
$ kubectl exec -n kube-system cilium-1234 -- cilium-dbg endpoint list # existing etcd-backed endpoints

Clearing CRD identities

If a migration has gone wrong, it possible to start with a clean slate. Ensure that no cilium instances are running with identity-allocation-mode crd and execute:

$ kubectl delete ciliumid --all

CNP Validation

Running the CNP Validator will make sure the policies deployed in the cluster are valid. It is important to run this validation before an upgrade so it will make sure Cilium has a correct behavior after upgrade. Avoiding doing this validation might cause Cilium from updating its NodeStatus in those invalid Network Policies as well as in the worst case scenario it might give a false sense of security to the user if a policy is badly formatted and Cilium is not enforcing that policy due a bad validation schema. This CNP Validator is automatically executed as part of the pre-flight check Running pre-flight check (Required).

Start by deployment the cilium-pre-flight-check and check if the Deployment shows READY 1/1, if it does not check the pod logs.

$ kubectl get deployment -n kube-system cilium-pre-flight-check -w
NAME                      READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
cilium-pre-flight-check   0/1     1            0           12s

$ kubectl logs -n kube-system deployment/cilium-pre-flight-check -c cnp-validator --previous
level=info msg="Setting up kubernetes client"
level=info msg="Establishing connection to apiserver" host="https://172.20.0.1:443" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Connected to apiserver" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cidr-rule': OK!
level=error msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cnp-update': unexpected validation error: spec.labels: Invalid value: \"string\": spec.labels in body must be of type object: \"string\""
level=error msg="Found invalid CiliumNetworkPolicy"

In this example, we can see the CiliumNetworkPolicy in the default namespace with the name cnp-update is not valid for the Cilium version we are trying to upgrade. In order to fix this policy we need to edit it, we can do this by saving the policy locally and modify it. For this example it seems the .spec.labels has set an array of strings which is not correct as per the official schema.

$ kubectl get cnp -n default cnp-update -o yaml > cnp-bad.yaml
$ cat cnp-bad.yaml
  apiVersion: cilium.io/v2
  kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
  [...]
  spec:
    endpointSelector:
      matchLabels:
        id: app1
    ingress:
    - fromEndpoints:
      - matchLabels:
          id: app2
      toPorts:
      - ports:
        - port: "80"
          protocol: TCP
    labels:
    - custom=true
  [...]

To fix this policy we need to set the .spec.labels with the right format and commit these changes into Kubernetes.

$ cat cnp-bad.yaml
  apiVersion: cilium.io/v2
  kind: CiliumNetworkPolicy
  [...]
  spec:
    endpointSelector:
      matchLabels:
        id: app1
    ingress:
    - fromEndpoints:
      - matchLabels:
          id: app2
      toPorts:
      - ports:
        - port: "80"
          protocol: TCP
    labels:
    - key: "custom"
      value: "true"
  [...]
$
$ kubectl apply -f ./cnp-bad.yaml

After applying the fixed policy we can delete the pod that was validating the policies so that Kubernetes creates a new pod immediately to verify if the fixed policies are now valid.

$ kubectl delete pod -n kube-system -l k8s-app=cilium-pre-flight-check-deployment
pod "cilium-pre-flight-check-86dfb69668-ngbql" deleted
$ kubectl get deployment -n kube-system cilium-pre-flight-check
NAME                      READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
cilium-pre-flight-check   1/1     1            1           55m
$ kubectl logs -n kube-system deployment/cilium-pre-flight-check -c cnp-validator
level=info msg="Setting up kubernetes client"
level=info msg="Establishing connection to apiserver" host="https://172.20.0.1:443" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Connected to apiserver" subsys=k8s
level=info msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cidr-rule': OK!
level=info msg="Validating CiliumNetworkPolicy 'default/cnp-update': OK!
level=info msg="All CCNPs and CNPs valid!"

Once they are valid you can continue with the upgrade process. Clean up pre-flight check