Migrating to a cluster with multi-architecture compute machines - Performing a cluster update | Updating clusters

Migrating to a cluster with multi-architecture compute machines using the cli

You can migrate your current cluster with single-architecture compute machines to a cluster with multi-architecture compute machines by updating to a multi-architecture, manifest-listed payload. This allows you to add mixed architecture compute nodes to your cluster.

For information about configuring your multi-architecture compute machines, see "Configuring multi-architecture compute machines on an OpenShift Container Platform cluster".

Before migrating your single-architecture cluster to a cluster with multi-architecture compute machines, it is recommended to install the Multiarch Tuning Operator, and deploy a ClusterPodPlacementConfig custom resource. For more information, see Managing workloads on multi-architecture clusters by using the Multiarch Tuning Operator.

Migration from a multi-architecture payload to a single-architecture payload is not supported. Once a cluster has transitioned to using a multi-architecture payload, it can no longer accept a single-architecture update payload.

Migrating to a cluster with multi-architecture compute machines using the cli

Prerequisites

You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.
Your OpenShift Container Platform version is up to date to at least version 4.13.0.

For more information on how to update your cluster version, see Updating a cluster using the web console or Updating a cluster using the cli.
You have installed the OpenShift cli (oc) that matches the version for your current cluster.
Your oc client is updated to at least verion 4.13.0.
Your OpenShift Container Platform cluster is installed on AWS, Azure, GCP, bare metal or IBM P/Z platforms.

For more information on selecting a supported platform for your cluster installation, see Selecting a cluster installation type.

Procedure

Verify that the RetrievedUpdates condition is True in the Cluster Version Operator (CVO) by running the following command:
```
$ oc get clusterversion/version -o=jsonpath="{.status.conditions[?(.type=='RetrievedUpdates')].status}"
```
If the RetrievedUpates condition is False, you can find supplemental information regarding the failure by using the following command:
```
$ oc adm upgrade
```
For more information about cluster version condition types, see Understanding cluster version condition types.
If the condition RetrievedUpdates is False, change the channel to stable-<4.y> or fast-<4.y> with the following command:
```
$ oc adm upgrade channel <channel>
```
After setting the channel, verify if RetrievedUpdates is True.

For more information about channels, see Understanding update channels and releases.
Migrate to the multi-architecture payload with following command:
```
$ oc adm upgrade --to-multi-arch
```

Verification

You can monitor the migration by running the following command:

$ oc adm upgrade

Machine launches may fail as the cluster settles into the new state. To notice and recover when machines fail to launch, we recommend deploying machine health checks. For more information about machine health checks and how to deploy them, see About machine health checks.

The migrations must be complete and all the cluster operators must be stable before you can add compute machine sets with different architectures to your cluster.

Additional resources