»Upgrading to Latest 1.10.x

»Introduction

This guide explains how to best upgrade a single Consul Enterprise datacenter to latest v1.10.x from a version of Consul that is forward compatible with v1.10. If you are on a major version of Consul prior to 1.8, you must first upgrade to latest 1.8.x before continuing with this guide. If you are already on a major version of 1.8 or 1.9, then this guide will go over the procedures required for upgrading to v1.10.x. This process will require intermediate version upgrades to a forward-compatible release of v1.8 or v1.9, as well as other licensing related configuration changes. If you have multiple Consul datacenters, upgrade them in the normal order and take the following instructions into account for each upgrade.

For the open source version of Consul please follow the General Upgrade Process.

»Requirements

• All Consul servers, clients, and snapshot agents should be on a version of Consul >= 1.8.0 and < 1.10.0. If they are not at the minimum version or higher, follow the normal upgrade procedures to upgrade them until the version requirement is met.

»Assumptions

This guides makes the following assumptions:

• You are familiar with the General Upgrade Process.
• You have the ability to run Consul CLI commands.
• If ACLs are in use, then you possess a token with at least operator:read permissions.

»Considerations

The licensing changes outlined on the Specific Version Details page are the main breaking changes in Consul Enterprise 1.10 that require special handling during the upgrade process. The page also describes other changes that might cause issues during an upgrade. You can also review the licensing FAQ, which includes granular details, as well as the full changelog. We strongly recommend reviewing the changes prior to upgrading.

»Procedures

1. Retrieve the datacenter's current license by executing the following CLI command:

consul license get -signed > consul.hclic

consul license get -signed > consul.hclic

Note that you can run the command from anywhere Consul is already running or from a location that has network access to the cluster. Additional command line options for directing the request to the correct Consul API may be necessary if the command runs from another location.

This will save the license to a file in the local directory named consul.hclic. Having this will be useful when preparing the license for the 1.10 upgrades later on in the process.

2. Take a snapshot of the cluster by running the following command:

consul snapshot save original.snap

consul snapshot save original.snap

Note that you can run the command from anywhere Consul is already running or from a location that has network access to the cluster. Additional command line options for directing the request to the correct Consul API may be necessary if the command runs from another location.

Note that you will need to ensure that there is enough disk space in the current directory to store the snapshot. In the worst case, the snapshot size could be close to the amount of RAM the Consul server processes are consuming.

This snapshot should not be needed, but if something were to go wrong, having the snapshot would make it possible to restore the previous state.

3. Determine if ACLs are enabled by running the following CLI command.

consul info | grep "acl ="

consul info | grep "acl ="

If you receive output like either of the following, then ACLs are enabled:

Error querying agent: Unexpected response code: 403 (Permission denied)

Error querying agent: Unexpected response code: 403 (Permission denied)

        acl = enabled

        acl = enabled

Select the correct tab below based on whether ACLs are enabled or disabled or if you are operating Consul within Kubernetes.

consul snapshot save intermediate.snap

consul snapshot save intermediate.snap

»Post-Upgrade Configuration Changes

No configuration changes are required for this upgrade.