Vault HA upgrades without autopilot upgrade automation (Pre 1.11)

This is our recommended upgrade procedure if one of the following applies:

• Running Vault version earlier than 1.11
• Opt-out the Autopilot automated upgrade features with Vault 1.11 or later
• Running Vault with external storage backend such as Consul

You should consider how to apply the steps described in this document to your particular setup since HA setups can differ on whether a load balancer is in use, what addresses clients are being given to connect to Vault (standby + leader, leader-only, or discovered via service discovery), etc.

If you are running on Vault 1.11+ with Integrated Storage and wish to enable the Autopilot upgrade automation features, read to the automated upgrades documentation for details and the Automate Upgrades with Vault Enterprise tutorial for additional guidance.

HA installations

Regardless of the method you use, do not fail over from a newer version of Vault to an older version. Our suggested procedure is designed to prevent this.

Please note that Vault does not support true zero-downtime upgrades, but with proper upgrade procedure the downtime should be very short (a few hundred milliseconds to a second depending on how the speed of access to the storage backend).

Perform these steps on each standby:

1. Properly shut down Vault on the standby node via SIGINT or SIGTERM
2. Replace the Vault binary with the new version; ensure that mlock() capability is added to the new binary with setcap
3. Start the standby node
4. Unseal the standby node
5. Verify vault status shows correct Version and HA Mode is standby
6. Review the node's logs to ensure successful startup and unseal

At this point all standby nodes are upgraded and ready to take over. The upgrade will not complete until one of the upgraded standby nodes takes over active duty.

To complete the cluster upgrade:

1. Properly shut down the remaining (active) node via SIGINT or SIGTERM

   Important

   DO NOT attempt to issue a step-down operation at any time during the upgrade process.

   Note

   It is important that you shut the node down properly. This will release the current leadership and the HA lock, allowing a standby node to take over with a very short delay. If you kill Vault without letting it release the lock, a standby node will not be able to take over until the lock's timeout period has expired. This is backend-specific but could be ten seconds or more.

2. Replace the Vault binary with the new version; ensure that mlock() capability is added to the new binary with setcap

3. Start the node

4. Unseal the node

5. Verify vault status shows correct Version and HA Mode is standby

6. Review the node's logs to ensure successful startup and unseal

Internal upgrade tasks will happen after one of the upgraded standby nodes takes over active duty.

Be sure to also read and follow any instructions in the version-specific upgrade notes.

Enterprise replication installations

See the main upgrading page.