Managing Multiple Kubectl Versions | Shorts
Kubernetes versions move fast, and we might find ourselves managing clusters that are 4 or 5 minor versions apart. And since upgrading K8s is not a trivial task, we’ll always be playing catch-up with some clusters.
Right now, for example, I have to use a 1.18 cluster and a 1.22 cluster simultaneously, which is painful because the version of kubectl you use to access a cluster can only be a maximum of one minor version away: skew ≤ 1. But in my case, the skew = 4, which means that I need a different kubectl binary for each cluster.
Managing these binaries directly is out of the question, it’s just not a clean solution. Instead, we use the ‘asdf’ tool version manager.
- Install asdf.
- Install the asdf kubectl plugin.
- Before accessing a specific cluster, we request asdf for the correct kubectl version to be enabled.
- That’s it!
Steps
Core Installation
Taken from here.
# Clone the asdf Github Repository to ~/.asdf
git clone https://github.com/asdf-vm/asdf.git ~/.asdf --branch v0.10.2# Add the following lines to ~/.bashrc if on Linux.
# Or to ~/.bash_profile if on MacOS.. $HOME/.asdf/asdf.sh
. $HOME/.asdf/completions/asdf.bash
Kubectl Plugin Installation
Taken from here.
# Install the kubectl plugin.
asdf plugin-add kubectl# Install specific versions of kubectl as needed.
asdf install kubectl 1.18.20
asdf install kubectl 1.22.10
Use asdf
# To enable 1.18 access, run:
asdf global kubectl 1.18.20# To enable 1.22 access, run:
asdf global kubectl 1.22.10
In cases where a single machine is shared by multiple people, use local instead of global to use multiple versions of kubectl simultaneously.
asdf local kubectl 1.18.20
asdf local kubectl 1.22.10