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Upgrade Considerations#

Upgrading from MKE 3 to MKE 4k requires careful preparation to avoid data loss and ensure a successful migration. The following considerations cover essential backup requirements and critical compatibility constraints for air-gapped environments.

Backup your MKE 3 cluster#

Before you upgrade to MKE 4k, confirm the existence of a backup of your MKE 3 cluster and review the Back up MKE disaster recovery documentation for MKE 3.

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The Swarm cluster and all associated artifacts are not included in the upgrade from MKE 3 to MKE 4k.

Back up all non-MKE components separately, making sure to check both manager and worker nodes, as these are at risk of being deleted rather than migrated during the upgrade to MKE 4k.

Air-gapped environment upgrades#

To upgrade MKE 3 to MKE 4 in an air-gapped environment, you must first download and install MKE 4 OCI binaries to a container registry inside the air gap. Ensure that the following requirements are met before you start the upgrade:

  • The registry inside the air gap must be an OCI-compliant hierarchical registry. For this, Mirantis recommends Mirantis Secure Registry 4, which is based on a recent release of Harbor Registry.

  • The container image management utility you use to push MKE 4 binaries to the registry must be OCI-compatible. For this, Mirantis recommends skopeo, version 1.17.0 or later.

Refer to Offline installation for instructions on how to install MKE 4k in an air-gapped environment.