VAM upgrades are performed with the same vamctl installer that did the original install. The installer runs upgrades against the existing cluster — there is no separate "upgrade tool".

Warning: take a backup immediately before any upgrade, and confirm that the backup succeeded.

What an Upgrade Changes

A normal upgrade replaces the deployed VAM packages with newer versions. It does not by default:

  • Upgrade Kubernetes itself.
  • Reprovision cluster nodes.
  • Change your platform settings (hostname, certificates, OIDC).

Kubernetes node upgrades are a separate operation; see Upgrading Kubernetes nodes below.

Online Upgrade

  1. Take a backup. Confirm in Configuration Service → Backup that the latest backup is recent and succeeded.
  2. On the installer host, launch vamctl.exe.
  3. From the dashboard, choose Upgrade VAM.
  4. The installer fetches the list of available versions from the package source. Select the target version.
  5. The wizard shows a change summary: per package, the current version → target version.
  6. Click Start upgrade.
  7. The installer upgrades packages one at a time, in dependency order, with live progress.
  8. After deployment, a sanity check runs automatically — same as on first install.

Typical duration: 10–30 minutes for a routine upgrade.

Offline Upgrade

The flow is identical to online except for the package source:

  1. On a machine with internet access, run Prepare offline installation in the installer and select the target version. This produces an upgrade bundle.
  2. Transfer the bundle to the upgrade host (USB, file share, etc.).
  3. On the upgrade host, run Upgrade VAM and select Offline bundle as the source.

Rollback

If an upgrade fails or causes problems, restore from the backup you took in step 1:

  1. Launch vamctl.exe.
  2. From the dashboard, choose Restore.
  3. Select the pre-upgrade backup.
  4. Confirm the restore plan. The restore replaces the cluster contents.
  5. Run the restore.

Full restore details are in Backup and Restore.

Rolling back individual packages (without restoring a full backup) is not supported through the UI. If a single package is causing issues, contact support.

Upgrading Kubernetes Nodes

Kubernetes itself is upgraded separately, because it is disruptive (nodes are drained, restarted and rejoined one at a time):

  1. Take a backup.
  2. Launch vamctl.exe.
  3. From the dashboard, choose Cluster → Upgrade Kubernetes.
  4. Confirm the target Kubernetes version (the installer presents only versions compatible with your current VAM release).
  5. The installer drains and upgrades each node in turn, waiting for the cluster to stabilise before moving on.

Single-node clusters experience downtime during this operation. Multi-node clusters with redundant control planes continue serving requests throughout.

After an Upgrade

Re-run the post-install validation checks. In particular, watch the cluster for the first 24 hours — most issues surface within minutes, but slow leaks or background-job failures can take longer.