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Labs

Upgrade an Azure Kubernetes (AKS) Cluster and Nodes

In this lab, you will upgrade an existing Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) managed cluster and nodes. For this lab, you should have a basic understanding of Kubernetes.

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Lab platform
Lab Info
Level
Intermediate
Last updated
Sep 25, 2025
Duration
30m

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Table of Contents
  1. Challenge

    Get Available Cluster Versions
    1. Use Cloud Shell to get the current cluster version.

    2. Use Cloud Shell to get the available cluster versions.

      Tip: You can save the AKS cluster name and Resource Group name to variables using the following Azure CLI command in Cloud Shell:

      RG=$(az group list --query [].name --output tsv)
      AKS=$(az aks list --query [].name --output tsv)
      
  2. Challenge

    Manually Upgrade the AKS Cluster
    1. Use Cloud Shell to manually upgrade to the latest available version.
  3. Challenge

    Configure Automatic Cluster Upgrades
    1. Use Cloud Shell to configure automatic cluster upgrades to use the stable upgrade channel.
  4. Challenge

    Check for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) Node Image Upgrades
    1. Use Cloud Shell to check for node image upgrades.
  5. Challenge

    Auto-upgrade Node OS Images
    1. Use Cloud Shell to configure automatic node image upgrades for the system node pool using the Security Patch upgrade channel.
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