Upgrade and roll out#

This guide shows you how to upgrade the Plone images and the cdk8s-plone library, roll the change out safely, and roll it back if it fails.

Prerequisites#

A working Plone deployment created with cdk8s-plone.
Two or more replicas if you need a zero-downtime rollout. See Scale and run highly available.

Upgrade the Plone image#

Change the image tag on backend and frontend to the new version.

backend: {
  image: 'plone/plone-backend:6.1.4',
},
frontend: {
  image: 'plone/plone-frontend:16.1.0',
}

Pin a specific tag rather than latest, so the rollout is reproducible and you can roll back to a known version.

Regenerate the manifests and apply them:

cdk8s synth
kubectl apply -f dist/

Kubernetes replaces the pods with the default RollingUpdate strategy. With two or more replicas and a PodDisruptionBudget, the old pods drain only as new pods become ready.

Important

Upgrading to a new Plone major or minor version may require a Plone site upgrade step that cdk8s-plone does not perform. After the new backend pods are ready, run the upgrade from the Plone control panel (@@plone-upgrade) on the maintenance or uncached route.

Watch the rollout#

Follow the rollout and confirm it completes.

kubectl rollout status deployment/<backend-deployment> -n <namespace>
kubectl get pods -n <namespace> -w

Roll back a failed upgrade#

If the new version misbehaves, undo the rollout to the previous ReplicaSet:

kubectl rollout undo deployment/<backend-deployment> -n <namespace>

To return to a known-good definition instead, restore the previous image tag in your code, then cdk8s synth and kubectl apply -f dist/ again.

Warning

A rollback reverts the container image, not your data. If the upgrade ran an irreversible Plone site migration, restore the database from a backup. See Back up and restore.

Upgrade the cdk8s-plone library#

Bump the dependency, regenerate, and review the manifest diff before applying.

npm install @bluedynamics/cdk8s-plone@latest
cdk8s synth
git diff dist/

Read the changelog for renamed or deprecated options, then apply the reviewed manifests.