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Chapter 2. Upgrading the Red Hat Quay Operator Overview

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The Red Hat Quay Operator follows a synchronized versioning scheme, which means that each version of the Operator is tied to the version of Red Hat Quay and the components that it manages. There is no field on the QuayRegistry custom resource which sets the version of Red Hat Quay to deploy; the Operator can only deploy a single version of all components. This scheme was chosen to ensure that all components work well together and to reduce the complexity of the Operator needing to know how to manage the lifecycles of many different versions of Red Hat Quay on Kubernetes.

2.1. Operator Lifecycle Manager

The Red Hat Quay Operator should be installed and upgraded using the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM). When creating a Subscription with the default approvalStrategy: Automatic, OLM will automatically upgrade the Red Hat Quay Operator whenever a new version becomes available.

Warning

When the Red Hat Quay Operator is installed by Operator Lifecycle Manager, it might be configured to support automatic or manual upgrades. This option is shown on the OperatorHub page for the Red Hat Quay Operator during installation. It can also be found in the Red Hat Quay Operator Subscription object by the approvalStrategy field. Choosing Automatic means that your Red Hat Quay Operator will automatically be upgraded whenever a new Operator version is released. If this is not desirable, then the Manual approval strategy should be selected.

2.2. Upgrading the Red Hat Quay Operator

The standard approach for upgrading installed Operators on OpenShift Container Platform is documented at Upgrading installed Operators.

In general, Red Hat Quay supports upgrades from a prior (N-1) minor version only. For example, upgrading directly from Red Hat Quay 3.0.5 to the latest version of 3.5 is not supported. Instead, users would have to upgrade as follows:

  1. 3.0.5 3.1.3
  2. 3.1.3 3.2.2
  3. 3.2.2 3.3.4
  4. 3.3.4 3.4.z
  5. 3.4.z 3.5.z

This is required to ensure that any necessary database migrations are done correctly and in the right order during the upgrade.

In some cases, Red Hat Quay supports direct, single-step upgrades from prior (N-2, N-3) minor versions. This simplifies the upgrade procedure for customers on older releases. The following upgrade paths are supported for Red Hat Quay 3.11:

  • 3.9.z 3.11.z
  • 3.10.z 3.11.z
Note

Upgrading from 3.8.z to 3.11 is unsupported. Users must first upgrade to 3.9 or 3.10, and then upgrade to 3.11.

Note

The Red Hat Quay Operator can be upgraded from 3.10.X for IBM Power and IBM Z.

For users on standalone deployments of Red Hat Quay wanting to upgrade to 3.11, see the Standalone upgrade guide.

2.2.1. Upgrading Red Hat Quay

To update Red Hat Quay from one minor version to the next, for example, 3.10 3.11, you must change the update channel for the Red Hat Quay Operator.

For z stream upgrades, for example, 3.10.1 3.10.2, updates are released in the major-minor channel that the user initially selected during install. The procedure to perform a z stream upgrade depends on the approvalStrategy as outlined above. If the approval strategy is set to Automatic, the Red Hat Quay Operator upgrades automatically to the newest z stream. This results in automatic, rolling Red Hat Quay updates to newer z streams with little to no downtime. Otherwise, the update must be manually approved before installation can begin.

2.2.2. Changing the update channel for the Red Hat Quay Operator

The subscription of an installed Operator specifies an update channel, which is used to track and receive updates for the Operator. To upgrade the Red Hat Quay Operator to start tracking and receiving updates from a newer channel, change the update channel in the Subscription tab for the installed Red Hat Quay Operator. For subscriptions with an Automatic approval strategy, the upgrade begins automatically and can be monitored on the page that lists the Installed Operators.

2.2.3. Manually approving a pending Operator upgrade

If an installed Operator has the approval strategy in its subscription set to Manual, when new updates are released in its current update channel, the update must be manually approved before installation can begin. If the Red Hat Quay Operator has a pending upgrade, this status will be displayed in the list of Installed Operators. In the Subscription tab for the Red Hat Quay Operator, you can preview the install plan and review the resources that are listed as available for upgrade. If satisfied, click Approve and return to the page that lists Installed Operators to monitor the progress of the upgrade.

The following image shows the Subscription tab in the UI, including the update Channel, the Approval strategy, the Upgrade status and the InstallPlan:

Subscription tab including upgrade Channel and Approval strategy

The list of Installed Operators provides a high-level summary of the current Quay installation:

Installed Operators

2.3. Upgrading a QuayRegistry resource

When the Red Hat Quay Operator starts, it immediately looks for any QuayRegistries it can find in the namespace(s) it is configured to watch. When it finds one, the following logic is used:

  • If status.currentVersion is unset, reconcile as normal.
  • If status.currentVersion equals the Operator version, reconcile as normal.
  • If status.currentVersion does not equal the Operator version, check if it can be upgraded. If it can, perform upgrade tasks and set the status.currentVersion to the Operator’s version once complete. If it cannot be upgraded, return an error and leave the QuayRegistry and its deployed Kubernetes objects alone.

2.4. Upgrading a QuayEcosystem

Upgrades are supported from previous versions of the Operator which used the QuayEcosystem API for a limited set of configurations. To ensure that migrations do not happen unexpectedly, a special label needs to be applied to the QuayEcosystem for it to be migrated. A new QuayRegistry will be created for the Operator to manage, but the old QuayEcosystem will remain until manually deleted to ensure that you can roll back and still access Quay in case anything goes wrong. To migrate an existing QuayEcosystem to a new QuayRegistry, use the following procedure.

Procedure

  1. Add "quay-operator/migrate": "true" to the metadata.labels of the QuayEcosystem. 

    $ oc edit quayecosystem <quayecosystemname>
    metadata:
  labels:
    quay-operator/migrate: "true"
  2. Wait for a QuayRegistry to be created with the same metadata.name as your QuayEcosystem. The QuayEcosystem will be marked with the label "quay-operator/migration-complete": "true".
  3. After the status.registryEndpoint of the new QuayRegistry is set, access Red Hat Quay and confirm that all data and settings were migrated successfully.
  4. If everything works correctly, you can delete the QuayEcosystem and Kubernetes garbage collection will clean up all old resources.

2.4.1. Reverting QuayEcosystem Upgrade

If something goes wrong during the automatic upgrade from QuayEcosystem to QuayRegistry, follow these steps to revert back to using the QuayEcosystem:

Procedure

  1. Delete the QuayRegistry using either the UI or kubectl: 

    $ kubectl delete -n <namespace> quayregistry <quayecosystem-name>
  2. If external access was provided using a Route, change the Route to point back to the original Service using the UI or kubectl.
Note

If your QuayEcosystem was managing the PostgreSQL database, the upgrade process will migrate your data to a new PostgreSQL database managed by the upgraded Operator. Your old database will not be changed or removed but Red Hat Quay will no longer use it once the migration is complete. If there are issues during the data migration, the upgrade process will exit and it is recommended that you continue with your database as an unmanaged component.

2.4.2. Supported QuayEcosystem Configurations for Upgrades

The Red Hat Quay Operator reports errors in its logs and in status.conditions if migrating a QuayEcosystem component fails or is unsupported. All unmanaged components should migrate successfully because no Kubernetes resources need to be adopted and all the necessary values are already provided in Red Hat Quay’s config.yaml file.

Database

Ephemeral database not supported (volumeSize field must be set).

Redis

Nothing special needed.

External Access

Only passthrough Route access is supported for automatic migration. Manual migration required for other methods.

  • LoadBalancer without custom hostname: After the QuayEcosystem is marked with label "quay-operator/migration-complete": "true", delete the metadata.ownerReferences field from existing Service before deleting the QuayEcosystem to prevent Kubernetes from garbage collecting the Service and removing the load balancer. A new Service will be created with metadata.name format <QuayEcosystem-name>-quay-app. Edit the spec.selector of the existing Service to match the spec.selector of the new Service so traffic to the old load balancer endpoint will now be directed to the new pods. You are now responsible for the old Service; the Quay Operator will not manage it.
  • LoadBalancer/NodePort/Ingress with custom hostname: A new Service of type LoadBalancer will be created with metadata.name format <QuayEcosystem-name>-quay-app. Change your DNS settings to point to the status.loadBalancer endpoint provided by the new Service.

Clair

Nothing special needed.

Object Storage

QuayEcosystem did not have a managed object storage component, so object storage will always be marked as unmanaged. Local storage is not supported.

Repository Mirroring

Nothing special needed.

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