Upgrade Kong Gateway 3.x.x

Upgrade to major, minor, and patch Kong Gateway releases using the kong migrations commands.

You can also use the commands to migrate all Kong Gateway open-source entities to Kong Gateway (Enterprise). See Migrating from Kong Gateway (OSS) to Kong Gateway.

If you experience any issues when running migrations, contact Kong Support for assistance.

Upgrade path for Kong Gateway releases

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between major, minor, and patch versions.

The upgrade to 3.5.x is a minor upgrade.

Important: Blue-green migration in traditional mode for versions below 2.8.2 to 3.0.x is not supported. The 2.8.2 release includes blue-green migration support. If you want to perform migrations for traditional mode with no downtime, upgrade to 2.8.2, then migrate to 3.5.x.

While you can upgrade directly to the latest version, be aware of any breaking changes between the 2.x and 3.x series noted in this document (both this version and prior versions) and in the open-source (OSS) and Enterprise Gateway changelogs. Since Kong Gateway is built on an open-source foundation, any breaking changes in OSS affect all Kong Gateway packages.

Kong Gateway does not support directly upgrading from 1.x to 3.5.x. If you are running 1.x, upgrade to 2.8.2 first and then to 3.0.x and 3.1.x at a minimum. Finally, upgrade to 3.5.x from there.

In either case, you can review the breaking changes for your version, then follow the database migration instructions.

Upgrade path for Kong Gateway 3.5.x

The following table outlines various upgrade path scenarios to 3.5.x depending on the Kong Gateway version you are currently using:

Current versionTopologyDirect upgrade possible?Upgrade path
2.x–2.7.xTraditionalNoUpgrade to 2.8.2.x (required for blue/green deployments only), upgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
2.x–2.7.xHybridNoUpgrade to 2.8.2.x, upgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
2.x–2.7.xDB lessNoUpgrade to 3.0.x, upgrade to 3.1.x, upgrade to 3.2.x, upgrade to 3.3.x upgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
2.8.xHybridNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
2.8.xDB lessNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.0.xTraditionalNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.0.xHybridNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.0.xDB lessNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.1.xTraditionalNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.1.0.x-3.1.1.2HybridNoUpgrade to 3.1.1.3, upgrade to 3.2.x, upgrade to 3.3.x, upgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.1.1.3HybridNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.1.xDB lessNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.2.xTraditionalNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.2.xHybridNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.2.xDB lessNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.3.xTraditionalNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.3.xHybridNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.3.xDB lessNoUpgrade to 3.4.x, and then upgrade to 3.5.x.
3.4.xTraditionalYesUpgrade to 3.5.x.
3.4.xHybridYesUpgrade to 3.5.x.
3.4.xDB lessYesUpgrade to 3.5.x.

General upgrade path

Running kong migrations in this workflow is irrevocable, therefore we recommend that you backup data before making any changes.

A database dump is recommended so that you can recover from migrations failure at the database level.

Additionally, Kong Gateway supports exporting data in YAML format with kong config db_export, which later on can be imported back by kong config db_import. For more information, see kong config CLI.

Traditional mode

  1. Clone your database.
  2. Download the version of Kong Gateway you want to upgrade to, and configure it to point to the cloned data store. Run kong migrations up and kong migrations finish.
  3. Start the new Kong Gateway version cluster.
  4. Now both the old and new clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning the new Kong Gateway version nodes.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your new cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the new cluster, decommission your old nodes.

Hybrid mode

Do not make any changes to Kong configuration (kong.conf) or use the Admin API in the middle of an upgrade. This can cause incompatibilities between data plane nodes.

Perform a rolling upgrade of your cluster:

  1. Download the version of Kong Gateway you want to upgrade to.
  2. Decommission your existing control plane. Your existing data planes can continue to handle proxy traffic during this time, even with no active control plane.
  3. Configure the new Kong Gateway version control plane to point to the same data store as your old control plane. Run kong migrations up and kong migrations finish.
  4. Start the new control plane.
  5. Start new data planes.
  6. Gradually divert traffic away from your old data planes, and into the new data planes. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  7. When your traffic is fully migrated to the new cluster, decommission your old data planes.

Upgrade to Kong Gateway 3.x.x and retain 2.x.x alerts for Prometheus

You can upgrade to Kong Gateway 3.x.x while still retaining your Kong Gateway 2.x.x Prometheus alerts or dashboards. This can be useful if you don’t have the capacity to patch them to comply with the new Kong Gateway 3.x.x Prometheus metrics.

Convert Kong Gateway 3.x.x Prometheus metrics into Kong Gateway 2.x.x Prometheus metrics in the kong.config file:

  1. - job_name: kong-3x-metrics-as-kong-2x
  2. scrape_interval: 20s
  3. scrape_timeout: 19s
  4. metrics_path: /metrics
  5. scheme: http
  6. metric_relabel_configs:
  7. - action: replace
  8. source_labels:
  9. - __name__
  10. regex: kong_http_requests_total
  11. target_label: __name__
  12. replacement: kong_http_status
  13. - action: replace
  14. source_labels:
  15. - __name__
  16. regex: kong_(.*)_latency_ms_(bucket|count|sum)
  17. target_label: type
  18. replacement: $1
  19. - action: replace
  20. source_labels:
  21. - __name__
  22. regex: kong_(.*)_latency_ms_(bucket|count|sum)
  23. target_label: __name__
  24. replacement: kong_latency_$2
  25. - action: replace
  26. source_labels:
  27. - __name__
  28. - direction
  29. regex: (kong_bandwidth_bytes);(egress|ingress)
  30. separator: ;
  31. target_label: type
  32. replacement: $2
  33. - action: replace
  34. source_labels:
  35. - __name__
  36. regex: kong_bandwidth_bytes
  37. target_label: __name__
  38. replacement: kong_bandwidth
  39. - action: replace
  40. source_labels:
  41. - __name__
  42. regex: kong_nginx_connections_total
  43. target_label: node_id
  44. replacement: ""
  45. - action: replace
  46. source_labels:
  47. - __name__
  48. regex: kong_nginx_connections_total
  49. target_label: subsystem
  50. replacement: ""
  51. - action: replace
  52. source_labels:
  53. - __name__
  54. regex: kong_nginx_connections_total
  55. target_label: __name__
  56. replacement: kong_nginx_http_current_connections