Kubernetes Upgrades for Startups
A No-Drama Playbook
Any startup always has features to ship, revenue to chase, and bugs that won’t fix themselves. Infra work and Kubernetes upgrades reliably slide to the backlog. Then the day comes and you receive EOL notification for the running version of your cluster and together with it — “hello there, four minor versions ahead, we have everything red”. And suddenly you’re staring at a multi-version leap with breaking API changes, incompatible Helm charts and CRDs we paid for in blood, and a nervous release manager.
Seen this movie before?
Flip the script:
Treat upgrades as a process, not an event.
Good preparation makes upgrades safe and predictable — invest in preflight, trial runs, and a rollback plan.
Monitor deprecated API; identify requests via audit logs; block regressions with policies/linters.
Keep DR one click away (etcd/Velero).
Move little and often so upgrades never block the business.
A stable platform is a startup multiplier. Fewer flaky incidents, fewer 3 AM war rooms, and more time building the thing you’re actually here to build. Upgrade small and often — until it’s boring.
Boring infra wins.
The full post packs a no-drama upgrade playbook: link below.