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Volcengine Kubernetes Engine

Product Announcement

[Announcements] Patch version upgrade for VKE clusters

Background information

In a Kubernetes cluster, when kube-apiserver starts, a self-signed certificate is automatically generated. In some earlier Kubernetes versions, the self-signed certificate is valid for only one year. Therefore, when the certificate expires, kube-apiserver becomes unavailable.

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For more details, see the community documentation.

To address the preceding issue and ensure the normal operation of your cluster, Volcano Engine provides a dedicated cluster patch version to reissue the certificate. To help you get the best experience with minimal effort, we strongly recommend that you upgrade your cluster to the latest patch version.

After the upgrade is complete, the apiserver self-signed certificate will be valid for 99 years.

The upgrade is fully backward compatible and does not introduce disruptive changes.

You only need to perform simple operations in the Volcano Engine console.

During the upgrade, running workloads and the control plane (such as apiserver and etcd) are not affected.

During the upgrade, the apiserver restarts in a rolling manner. Long-lived connections may be briefly interrupted for a few seconds and can be restored by retrying.

Version description

Select an appropriate patch version for upgrade based on the current version of your cluster.

Current version	Patch version
v1.20.15-vke.xx	v1.20.15-vke.36 and later
v1.24.xx-vke.xx	v1.24.17-vke.17 and later
v1.26.xx-vke.xx	v1.26.15-vke.32 and later

Procedure

In the left navigation bar, click Cluster.

On the Cluster page, click the name of the target cluster to go to the cluster management page.

In the left navigation bar, click Overview. On the Overview tab, find the Kubernetes version parameter and move the pointer over the Upgradable label.

In the pop-up message, click Upgrade to upgrade the current cluster version. This topic takes the upgrade of v1.26 as an example.

Select Patch version v1.26.15-vke.32 for the Upgrade target version parameter. Read Upgrade check warning, then select the check box. Click Confirm upgrade to perform a pre-upgrade check on the cluster.

Note

Make sure that you select the patch version.

Upgrading the patch version will not affect running services. However, we recommend that you upgrade the version during off-peak hours to ensure the secure running of the services.

In the left navigation bar of the cluster management page, click Cluster upgrade. Click the Kubernetes upgrade check tab to check whether the cluster passes the pre-upgrade check.

If the cluster passes the pre-upgrade check, the cluster will be automatically upgraded.

If the cluster fails to pass the pre-upgrade check, click View details in the Actions column, then fix the failed items according to the on-screen instructions. After you address the check items, perform the control plane upgrade check again. Ensure Pass appears in the Check status column before upgrading. For check item descriptions and fixes, see Cluster upgrade check items.

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For more operations and considerations during cluster upgrade, see Upgrading clusters.

Last updated: 2026.07.15 15:51:31