Kubespray Operations

Overview

Kubespray provides playbooks for cluster lifecycle operations: upgrades, scaling, and reset. Understanding these operations prevents data loss and service disruption.

Core principle: Always backup etcd before destructive operations. Kubernetes upgrades must go one minor version at a time.

When to Use

• Upgrading Kubernetes versions (patch, minor, or major with Kubespray version bump)
• Adding new worker or control plane nodes
• Removing nodes from cluster (healthy or unreachable)
• Backing up and restoring etcd
• Resetting cluster to clean state

Not for: Initial deployment (use kubespray-deployment), troubleshooting failures (use kubespray-troubleshooting), certificate issues (use kubespray-certificates)

Node Management