Performing the upgrade using HELM charts

Typical upgrade steps

A lot of the upgrade steps can be performed without impact on your users. Basically, the deployment or upgrade of components is split in two actions:

Configuration changes, such as added or changed configuration parameters, including the new component’s version
Deployment of the upgraded component, using the helm upgrade command.

Performing the upgrade using HELM charts

Step 1 - Upgrade Axual Platform to 0.13.0

Update the Axual helm repository to download the latest charts available
```
helm repo update
```

Upgrade Axual Platform

helm upgrade --install platform axual-stable/platform --version=0.13.0 -n kafka

This command will restart the all axual-platform pods.

Verify the upgrade by checking the pods and their images:

[clusterShortName]-clusterbrowse pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/cluster-browse:1.6.3
[clusterShortName]-clusterapi pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/clusterapi:2.2.6
[tenantShortName]-[instanceShortName]-instance-api pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/instance-application:3.7.3
[tenantShortName]-[instanceShortName]-rest-proxy pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/rest-proxy:1.6.0
[tenantShortName]-[instanceShortName]-discovery-api pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/discovery-api:2.6.5
selfservice-streambrowse pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/stream-browse:1.5.2
selfservice-ui pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/axual-frontend:7.0.2
selfservice-api pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual-api:6.20.4
selfservice-metricsexposer pod uses image: docker.axual.io/metricsexposer:0.9.0

Once restarted, verify everything is running fine before moving to next step.

Step 2 - Upgrade Axual Operator to 0.9.0

Update the Axual helm repository to download the latest charts available
```
helm repo update
```

Upgrade Axual Operator

helm upgrade --install strimzi --set watchAnyNamespace=true axual-stable/axual-operator --version=0.9.0 -n kafka

This command will restart the strimzi-cluster-operator, zookeeper and kafka pods.

Verify the upgrade by checking the pods and their images:

strimzi-cluster-operator pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/strimzi/operator:0.32.0
zookeeper pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/strimzi/kafka:0.32.0-kafka-3.2.3
kafka pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/strimzi/kafka:0.32.0-kafka-3.2.3

Once restarted, verify everything is running fine before moving to next step.

Step 3 - Upgrade Kafka to 3.3.1

After Axual Operator has been upgraded, Kafka can be upgraded to the latest version supported by Axual: 3.3.1.

Modify the Kafka version in your values.yaml file

Example:

platform:
  core:
    kafka:
      kafka:
        version: 3.3.1

Upgrade Axual platform using the above modified values.yaml.

helm upgrade --install platform axual-stable/platform -f values.yaml --version=0.13.0 -n kafka

Verify the upgrade by checking the pods and their images:

zookeeper pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/strimzi/kafka:0.32.0-kafka-3.3.1
kafka pod uses image: docker.axual.io/axual/strimzi/kafka:0.32.0-kafka-3.3.1

Once restarted, verify everything is running fine.

Step 4 - Enabling Insights in Self-service UI

Starting from platform version 2022.4, stream insights are now available on the UI.

To enable Insights:

Make sure MetricsExposer is enabled and accessible. Refer to Add Metrics Exposer to Axual Platform and Metrics Exposer
Add the below configuration in mgmt sub-chart.

mgmt:
  ui:
    insights:
      enabled: true
      metricsExposerUrl: 'metrics-exposer-url'

Step 5 - Optional: Migrate to Apicurio Schema Registry

Starting from platform version 2022.4 it is possible to use Apicurio as a schema registry. For information on how to migrate from the previous, legacy, schema registry you can refer to Migrating from Legacy Schema Registry to Apicurio Schema Registry

That’s it!

No other steps are required to upgrade or configure the platform components. You can read through the release blog to find out what has changed since the last release and forward it to your colleagues.