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Istio Canary Upgrade: upgrading our Istio from v1.10.x to v1.15.6


We are in the process of upgrading our Istio from v1.10.x to v1.15.6, I have gone through the Canary upgrade document and as per my understandings I can install newer version i.e. v1.15.6 and then switch the revision tags. Is my understanding correct? or I can only perform sequential major upgrades?

warm regards, Suhas


Solution

  • You should only perform one or two sequential minor version upgrades with istio when using canary upgrades.

    v1.10.x -> v1.11.x  ok
    v1.10.x -> v1.12.x  ok
    v1.10.x -> v1.13.x  not recommended
    

    Though it might work, jumping more than two minor versions isn't officially supported and might break things, from docs

    Upgrading across more than two minor versions (e.g., 1.6.x to 1.9.x) in one step is not officially tested or recommended.

    Without canary upgrade you can only jump one minor version (e.g. 1.10 to 1.11).

    So in your case you could do

    v1.10.x -> v1.12.x
    v1.12.x -> v1.14.x
    v1.14.x -> v1.15.x (or 1.16, see comment below)
    

    Note that 1.17 has already been released so you might as well go to 1.17 or at least 1.16 instead of 1.15. Especially with canary upgrade, going to 1.16 is the same effort as going to 1.15.