Kubernetes Cluster Upgrades with kubeadm
The complete guide to upgrading Kubernetes clusters in production using kubeadm. From planning and validation to control plane upgrades, worker node rollouts, and automation.
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What you'll learn
Curriculum
7 modules · 22 lessonsUpgrade Planning
Understand the Kubernetes release cycle, version skew policies, and how to build a bulletproof upgrade plan.
Pre-Upgrade Validation
Validate your cluster is ready for an upgrade — check deprecated APIs, test compatibility, and ensure backups are solid.
Control Plane Upgrade
Upgrade Kubernetes control plane components step by step — kube-apiserver, etcd, scheduler, and controller-manager.
Worker Node Upgrades
Upgrade worker nodes safely with drain, cordon, and rolling strategies that maintain application availability.
Post-Upgrade Validation
Verify everything works after an upgrade — component health, workload stability, and rollback procedures.
Automating Future Upgrades
Build automation pipelines for Kubernetes upgrades — from CI/CD validation to GitOps-driven cluster lifecycle management.
Airgapped Upgrades
Execute Kubernetes upgrades in airgapped environments — image inventory, private registry mirroring with ACR, pre-pulling strategies, and offline package management.
About the Author
Sharon Sahadevan
AI Infrastructure Engineer
Building production GPU clusters on Kubernetes — H100s, large-scale model serving, and end-to-end ML infrastructure across Azure and AWS.
10+ years designing cloud-native platforms with deep expertise in Kubernetes orchestration, GitOps (Argo CD), Terraform, and MLOps pipelines for LLM deployment.
Author of KubeNatives, a weekly newsletter read by 3,000+ DevOps and ML engineers for production insights on K8s internals, GPU scheduling, and model-serving patterns.