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This document guides you through the process of upgrading Kong. First, check if a section named "Upgrade to x.x.x" exists, with x.x.x being the version you are planning to upgrade to. If such a section does not exist, the upgrade you want to perform does not have any particular instructions, and you can simply consult the Suggested upgrade path.

Suggested upgrade path

Unless indicated otherwise in one of the upgrade paths of this document, it is possible to upgrade Kong without downtime.

Assuming that Kong is already running on your system, acquire the latest version from any of the available installation methods and proceed to install it, overriding your previous installation.

If you are planning to make modifications to your configuration, this is a good time to do so.

Then, run migration to upgrade your database schema:

$ kong migrations up [-c configuration_file]

If the command is successful, and no migration ran (no output), then you only have to reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Reminder: kong reload leverages the Nginx reload signal that seamlessly starts new workers, which take over from old workers before those old workers are terminated. In this way, Kong will serve new requests via the new configuration, without dropping existing in-flight connections.

Upgrade to 3.0.x

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will differ depending on which version you are migrating from.

Kong 3.0.x is a major upgrade, please be aware of any breaking changes between the 2.x and 3.x series. For 1.x series, please also refer to breaking changes of 2.x.

Dependencies

If you are using the prebuilt images/packages, you can skip this section as they have bundled all dependencies required by Kong.

If you are building your dependencies manually, you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches as there are changes since the previous release.

The required version of OpenResty is bumped up to 1.21.4.1. We recommend you to use the openresty-build-tools, which allows you to build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules more easily.

Template changes

There are changes in the Nginx configuration file, between Kong 2.x.x and 3.0.x

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between previous versions and 3.0.x:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.x.x 3.0.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.x.x) to the version number of Kong you are currently running.

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.x.x 3.0.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.x.x) to the version number of Kong you are currently running.

Suggested upgrade methods

Follow the migration guide for the backing datastore you are using. If you prefer to use a fresh datastore and migrate your kong.conf file only, see how to install 3.0.x on a fresh datastore.

Always backup your datastore before performing any upgrade.

You should avoid making changes to configuration with the Admin API during migration, as it may lead to unexpected/incompatible behavior and could break your existing configuration.

Version prerequisites for migrating to version 3.0.x

If you are migrating from Kong 2.7.x or lower versions, first migrate to Kong 2.8.1. Confirm Kong's behavior is correct after migrating to 2.8.x before proceeding with the major version upgrade to 3.0.0.

For Hybrid mode deployments, both the Control Planes and Data Planes should be on 2.8.x before attempting with the 3.0.x major version upgrade.

Once you have upgraded to Kong 2.8.x and confirmed everything still works as expected, you can follow the following steps to migrate to 3.0.x.

Upgrade from 2.8.x to 3.0.x for Traditional mode

  1. Backup & clone Kong datastore into a separate instance.
  2. Download & install Kong 3.0.x, and configure it to use the newly cloned datastore.
  3. Run kong migrations up and kong migrations finish to migrate the cloned datastore into 3.0.x format.
  4. Start the 3.0.x cluster with the cloned datastore.
  5. Now both the old (2.8.x) and new (3.0.x) cluster are running simultaneously. Start provisioning more 3.0.x nodes if necessary.
  6. Gradually shift traffic from your old cluster to your 3.0.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  7. Stop your old cluster when your traffic is fully shifted to the 3.0.x cluster.

Upgrade to 3.0.x for Hybrid mode

Data Planes (DPs) are capable of serving traffic normally during the entire migration, but will not be able to accept any new config updates until the upgrade finishes.

  1. Download & install Kong 3.0.x.
  2. Stop your existing Control Planes (CPs), DP will not be able to receive config updates, but will retain the last valid config and keep functioning normally. as your old one. Run kong migrations up and kong migrations finish.
  3. Start the newly installed 3.0.x CP. Old DPs are expected to complain about connection failure to the CP in the log, for example: connection to Control Plane ... broken: failed to connect: connection refused but this is perfectly okay during the upgrade ad does not affect normal proxy traffic.
  4. Start provisioning 3.0.x DPs.
  5. Gradually shift traffic from your old 2.8.x DPs to your 3.0.x DPs. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. Stop your old DPs when your traffic is fully shifted to 3.0.x DPs.

Installing 3.0.x on a fresh datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 3.0.x cluster from a fresh datastore. By default, the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can use the optional flag -c to specify a configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Unless indicated otherwise in one of the upgrade paths of this document, it is possible to upgrade Kong without downtime.

Assuming that Kong is already running on your system, acquire the latest version from any of the available installation methods and proceed to install it, overriding your previous installation.

If you are planning to make modifications to your configuration, this is a good time to do so.

Then, run migrations to upgrade your datastore schema:

$ kong migrations up [-c configuration_file]

If the command is successful, and no migration ran (no output), then you only have to reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Reminder: kong reload leverages the Nginx reload signal that seamlessly starts new workers, which take over from old workers before those old workers are terminated. In this way, Kong will serve new requests via the new configuration, without dropping existing in-flight connections.

Upgrade to 2.8.x

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different depending on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.x.x, upgrading into 2.8.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.8.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version for kong 2.8.x is 1.19.9.1. This is more recent than the version in Kong 2.5.0 (which used 1.19.3.2). In addition to an upgraded OpenResty, you will need the correct OpenResty patches for this new version, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to more easily build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules.

There is a new way to deploy Go using Plugin Servers. For more information, see Developing Go plugins.

Template changes

There are Changes in the Nginx configuration file, between kong 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x, 2.5.x, 2.6.x, 2.7.x and 2.8.x

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between previous versions and 2.8.x:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.8.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x, 2.5.x, 2.6.x, 2.7.x) to the version number you are currently using.

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.8.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x, 2.5.x, 2.6.x, 2.7.x) to the version number you are currently using.

Suggested upgrade path

Version prerequisites for migrating to version 2.8.x

The lowest version that Kong 2.8.x supports migrating from is 1.0.x. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.x first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.x are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the

Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0 with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.x, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.8.x.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 2.2.x to 2.8.x

Postgres

Kong 2.8.x supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.8.x).

  1. Download 2.8.x, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. After that finishes running, both the old (2.x.x) and new (2.8.x) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.8.x nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.8.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.8.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.8.x cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.8.x nodes.

Cassandra

Deprecation notice: Cassandra as a backend database for Kong Gateway is deprecated. This means the feature will eventually be removed. Our target for Cassandra removal is the Kong Gateway 4.0 release, and some new features might not be supported with Cassandra in the Kong Gateway 3.0 release.

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.8.x on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.1.x (or lower). Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.8.x, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.8.x) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.8.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.8.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.

Installing 2.8.x on a fresh datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.8.x cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Unless indicated otherwise in one of the upgrade paths of this document, it is possible to upgrade Kong without downtime.

Assuming that Kong is already running on your system, acquire the latest version from any of the available installation methods and proceed to install it, overriding your previous installation.

If you are planning to make modifications to your configuration, this is a good time to do so.

Then, run migration to upgrade your database schema:

$ kong migrations up [-c configuration_file]

If the command is successful, and no migration ran (no output), then you only have to reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Reminder: kong reload leverages the Nginx reload signal that seamlessly starts new workers, which take over from old workers before those old workers are terminated. In this way, Kong will serve new requests via the new configuration, without dropping existing in-flight connections.

Upgrade to 2.7.x

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different depending on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.x.x, upgrading into 2.7.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.7.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version for kong 2.7.x is 1.19.9.1. This is more recent than the version in Kong 2.5.0 (which used 1.19.3.2). In addition to an upgraded OpenResty, you will need the correct OpenResty patches for this new version, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to more easily build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules.

There is a new way to deploy Go using Plugin Servers. For more information, see Developing Go plugins.

Template changes

There are Changes in the Nginx configuration file, between kong 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x, 2.5.x, 2.6.x and 2.7.x

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between previous versions and 2.7.x:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.7.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x, 2.5.x, 2.6.x, 2.7.x) to the version number you are currently using.

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.7.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x, 2.5.x, 2.6.x, 2.7.x) to the version number you are currently using.

Suggested upgrade path

Version prerequisites for migrating to version 2.7.x

The lowest version that Kong 2.7.x supports migrating from is 1.0.x. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.x first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.x are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the

Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0 with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.x, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.7.x.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 2.2.x to 2.7.x

Postgres

Kong 2.7.x supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.7.x).

  1. Download 2.7.x, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. After that finishes running, both the old (2.x.x) and new (2.7.x) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.7.x nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.7.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.7.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.7.x cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.7.x nodes.

Cassandra

Deprecation notice: Cassandra as a backend database for Kong Gateway is deprecated. This means the feature will eventually be removed. Our target for Cassandra removal is the Kong Gateway 4.0 release, and some new features might not be supported with Cassandra in the Kong Gateway 3.0 release.

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.7.x on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.1.x (or lower). Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.7.x, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.7.x) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.7.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.7.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.

Installing 2.7.x on a fresh datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.7.x cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Unless indicated otherwise in one of the upgrade paths of this document, it is possible to upgrade Kong without downtime.

Assuming that Kong is already running on your system, acquire the latest version from any of the available installation methods and proceed to install it, overriding your previous installation.

If you are planning to make modifications to your configuration, this is a good time to do so.

Then, run migration to upgrade your database schema:

$ kong migrations up [-c configuration_file]

If the command is successful, and no migration ran (no output), then you only have to reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Reminder: kong reload leverages the Nginx reload signal that seamlessly starts new workers, which take over from old workers before those old workers are terminated. In this way, Kong will serve new requests via the new configuration, without dropping existing in-flight connections.

Upgrade to 2.6.x

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different depending on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x or 2.3.x, 2.4.x or 2.5.x into 2.6.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.6.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version for kong 2.6.x is 1.19.9.1. This is more recent than the version in Kong 2.5.0 (which used 1.19.3.2). In addition to an upgraded OpenResty, you will need the correct OpenResty patches for this new version, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to more easily build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules.

There is a new way to deploy Go using Plugin Servers. For more information, see Developing Go plugins.

Template changes

There are Changes in the Nginx configuration file, between kong 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x and 2.5.x.

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between previous versions and 2.6.x:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.6.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x or 2.5.x) to the version number you are currently using.

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.6.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x or 2.5.x) to the version number you are currently using.

Suggested upgrade path

Version prerequisites for migrating to version 2.6.x

The lowest version that Kong 2.6.x supports migrating from is 1.0.x. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.x first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.x are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the

Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0 with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.x, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.6.x.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 2.2.x to 2.6.x

Postgres

Kong 2.6.x supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.6.x).

  1. Download 2.6.x, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. After that finishes running, both the old (2.x.x) and new (2.6.x) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.6.x nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.6.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.6.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.6.x cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.6.x nodes.

Cassandra

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.6.x on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.1.x (or lower). Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.6.x, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.6.x) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.6.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.6.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.

Installing 2.6.x on a fresh datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.6.x cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Unless indicated otherwise in one of the upgrade paths of this document, it is possible to upgrade Kong without downtime.

Assuming that Kong is already running on your system, acquire the latest version from any of the available installation methods and proceed to install it, overriding your previous installation.

If you are planning to make modifications to your configuration, this is a good time to do so.

Then, run migration to upgrade your database schema:

$ kong migrations up [-c configuration_file]

If the command is successful, and no migration ran (no output), then you only have to reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Reminder: kong reload leverages the Nginx reload signal that seamlessly starts new workers, which take over from old workers before those old workers are terminated. In this way, Kong will serve new requests via the new configuration, without dropping existing in-flight connections.

Upgrade to 2.5.x

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different depending on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x or 2.4.x, upgrading into 2.5.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.5.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version for kong 2.5.x is 1.19.3.2. This is more recent than the version in Kong 2.3.0 (which used 1.19.3.2). In addition to an upgraded OpenResty, you will need the correct OpenResty patches for this new version, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to more easily build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules.

There is a new way to deploy Go using Plugin Servers. For more information, see Developing Go plugins.

Template changes

There are Changes in the Nginx configuration file, between kong 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x, 2.4.x and 2.5.x.

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between previous versions and 2.5.x:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.5.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x or 2.4.x) to the version number you are currently using.

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.5.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x or 2.4.x) to the version number you are currently using.

Suggested upgrade path

Version prerequisites for migrating to version 2.5.x

The lowest version that Kong 2.5.x supports migrating from is 1.0.x. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.x first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.x are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the

Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0 with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.x, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.5.x.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 2.2.x to 2.5.x

Postgres

Kong 2.5.x supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.5.x).

  1. Download 2.5.x, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. After that finishes running, both the old (2.x.x) and new (2.5.x) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.5.x nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.5.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.5.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.5.x cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.5.x nodes.

Cassandra

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.5.x on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.1.x (or lower). Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.5.x, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.5.x) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.5.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.5.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.

Installing 2.5.x on a fresh datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.5.x cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Unless indicated otherwise in one of the upgrade paths of this document, it is possible to upgrade Kong without downtime.

Assuming that Kong is already running on your system, acquire the latest version from any of the available installation methods and proceed to install it, overriding your previous installation.

If you are planning to make modifications to your configuration, this is a good time to do so.

Then, run migration to upgrade your database schema:

$ kong migrations up [-c configuration_file]

If the command is successful, and no migration ran (no output), then you only have to reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Reminder: kong reload leverages the Nginx reload signal that seamlessly starts new workers, which take over from old workers before those old workers are terminated. In this way, Kong will serve new requests via the new configuration, without dropping existing in-flight connections.

Upgrade to 2.4.x

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different depending on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x or 2.3.x, upgrading into 2.4.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.4.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version for kong 2.4.x is 1.19.3.1. This is more recent than the version in Kong 2.3.0 (which used 1.17.8.2). In addition to an upgraded OpenResty, you will need the correct OpenResty patches for this new version, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to more easily build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules.

There is a new way to deploy Go using Plugin Servers. For more information, see Developing Go plugins.

Template changes

There are Changes in the Nginx configuration file, between kong 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x, 2.3.x and 2.4.x.

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between previous versions and 2.4.x:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.4.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x or 2.3.x) to the version number you are currently using.

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.4.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x or 2.3.x) to the version number you are currently using.

Suggested upgrade path

Version prerequisites for migrating to version 2.4.x

The lowest version that Kong 2.4.x supports migrating from is 1.0.x. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.x first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.x are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the

Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0 with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.x, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.4.x.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 2.2.x to 2.4.x

Postgres

Kong 2.4.x supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.4.x).

  1. Download 2.4.x, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. After that finishes running, both the old (2.x.x) and new (2.4.x) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.4.x nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.4.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.4.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.4.x cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.4.x nodes.

Cassandra

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.4.x on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.1.x (or lower). Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.4.x, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.4.x) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.4.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.4.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.

Installing 2.4.x on a fresh datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.4.x cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Unless indicated otherwise in one of the upgrade paths of this document, it is possible to upgrade Kong without downtime.

Assuming that Kong is already running on your system, acquire the latest version from any of the available installation methods and proceed to install it, overriding your previous installation.

If you are planning to make modifications to your configuration, this is a good time to do so.

Then, run migration to upgrade your database schema:

$ kong migrations up [-c configuration_file]

If the command is successful, and no migration ran (no output), then you only have to reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Reminder: kong reload leverages the Nginx reload signal that seamlessly starts new workers, which take over from old workers before those old workers are terminated. In this way, Kong will serve new requests via the new configuration, without dropping existing in-flight connections.

Upgrade to 2.3.x

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different depending on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.0.x, 2.1.x, or 2.2.x, upgrading into 2.3.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.3.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version for kong 2.3.x is 1.17.8.2. This is more recent than the version in Kong 2.1.0 (which used 1.15.8.3). In addition to an upgraded OpenResty, you will need the correct OpenResty patches for this new version, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to more easily build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules.

There is a new way to deploy Go using Plugin Servers. For more information, see Developing Go plugins.

Template changes

There are Changes in the Nginx configuration file, between kong 2.0.x, 2.1.x, 2.2.x and 2.3.x.

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between 2.0.x and 2.1.x, or 2.2.x and 2.3.x:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.3.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, or 2.2.x) to the version number you are currently using.

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.3.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

Note: Adjust the starting version number (2.0.x, 2.1.x, or 2.2.x) to the version number you are currently using.

Suggested upgrade path

Version prerequisites for migrating to version 2.3.x

The lowest version that Kong 2.3.x supports migrating from is 1.0.x. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.x first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.x are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the

Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0 with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.x, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.3.x.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 2.2.x to 2.3.x

Postgres

Kong 2.3.x supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.3.x).

  1. Download 2.3.x, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. After that finishes running, both the old (2.x.x) and new (2.3.x) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.3.x nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.3.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.3.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.3.x cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.3.x nodes.

Cassandra

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.3.x on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.1.x (or lower). Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.3.x, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.3.x) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.3.x cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.3.x cluster, decommission your old nodes.

Installing 2.3.x on a fresh datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.3.x cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Upgrade to 2.2.0

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different depending on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.0.0 or 2.1.x, upgrading into 2.2.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.2.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

1. Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version for kong 2.2.x is 1.17.8.2. This is more recent than the version in Kong 2.1.0 (which used 1.15.8.3). In addition to an upgraded OpenResty, you will need the correct OpenResty patches for this new version, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules easily.

For Go support, you also need to build both your plugins and the Kong go-pluginserver. The documentation includes detailed instructions on how to build the plugin server and your plugins.

2. Template Changes

There are Changes in the Nginx configuration file, between kong 2.0.0, 2.1.0 and 2.2.0.

To view the configuration changes between versions, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability.

Here's how to see the differences between 2.0.0 and 2.2.0:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.2.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.2.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 2.2.0

The lowest version that Kong 2.2.0 supports migrating from is 1.0.0. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.0 first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.0 are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0, with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.0, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.2.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.0 - 2.1.0 to 2.2.0

Postgres

Kong 2.2.0 supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.2.0).

  1. Download 2.2.0, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.2.0) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.2.0 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.2.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.2.0 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.2.0 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.2.0 nodes.

Cassandra

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.2.0 on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.0.0. Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.2.0, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.2.0) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.2.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.2.0 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
Installing 2.2.0 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.2.0 cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Upgrade to 2.1.0

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different on which previous version from which you are migrating.

If you are migrating from 2.0.0, upgrading into 2.1.x is a minor upgrade, but read below for important instructions on database migration, especially for Cassandra users.

If you are migrating from 1.x, upgrading into 2.1.x is a major upgrade, so, in addition, be aware of any breaking changes between the 1.x and 2.x series below, further detailed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

1. Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies for the gateway are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

In order to use all Kong features, including the new dynamic upstream keepalive behavior, the required OpenResty version is 1.15.8.3 and the the set of OpenResty patches included has changed, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. The kong-build-tools repository contains openresty-build-tools, which allows you to build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules easily.

For Go support, you also need to build both your plugins and the Kong go-pluginserver. The documentation includes detailed instructions on how to build the plugin server and your plugins.

2. Template Changes

The Nginx configuration file has changed, which means that you need to update it if you are using a custom template.

To view the configuration changes between 2.0.0 and 2.1.0, clone the Kong repository and run git diff on the configuration templates, using -w for greater readability:

git clone https://github.com/kong/kong
cd kong
git diff -w 2.0.0 2.1.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua

To produce a patch file, use the following command:

git diff 2.0.0 2.1.0 kong/templates/nginx_kong*.lua > kong_config_changes.diff

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 2.1.0

The lowest version that Kong 2.1.0 supports migrating from is 1.0.0. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.0 first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.0 are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0, with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.0, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.1.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.0 - 2.0.0 to 2.1.0

Postgres

Kong 2.1.0 supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that the new version of Kong is able to use the database as it is migrated while the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is time to decommission it. For this reason, the migration is split into two steps, performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.1.0).

  1. Download 2.1.0, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 2.0) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.1.0) clusters can now run simultaneously. Start provisioning 2.1.0 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.1.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.1.0 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.1.0 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.1.0 nodes.

Cassandra

Due to internal changes, the table schemas used by Kong 2.1.0 on Cassandra are incompatible with those used by Kong 2.0.0. Migrating using the usual commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish will require a small window of downtime, since the old and new versions cannot use the database at the same time. Alternatively, to keep your previous version fully operational while the new one initializes, you will need to transfer the data to a new keyspace via a database dump, as described below:

  1. Download 2.1.0, and configure it to point to a new keyspace. Run kong migrations bootstrap.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old (pre-2.1) and new (2.1.0) clusters can now run simultaneously, but the new cluster does not have any data yet.
  3. On the old cluster, run kong config db_export. This will create a file kong.yml with a database dump.
  4. Transfer the file to the new cluster and run kong config db_import kong.yml. This will load the data into the new cluster.
  5. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.1.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  6. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.1.0 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
Installing 2.1.0 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.1.0 cluster from a fresh datastore. By default the kong CLI tool will load the configuration from /etc/kong/kong.conf, but you can optionally use the flag -c to indicate the path to your configuration file:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]
$ kong start [-c /path/to/your/kong.conf]

Upgrade to 2.0.0

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different on which previous version from which you are migrating. Upgrading into 2.0.x is a major version upgrade, so be aware of any breaking changes listed in the CHANGELOG.md document.

1. Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies are bundled and you can skip this section.

If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are changes since the previous release, so you will need to rebuild them with the latest patches.

The required OpenResty version is 1.15.8.2, and the the set of OpenResty patches included has changed, including the latest release of lua-kong-nginx-module. Our kong-build-tools repository allows you to build OpenResty with the necessary patches and modules easily.

For Go support, you also need the Kong go-pluginserver. This is bundled with Kong binary packages and it is automatically started by Kong if Go plugin support is enabled in Kong's configuration. Note that the Go version used to compile any Go plugins needs to match the Go version of the go-pluginserver. You can check the Go version used to build the go-pluginserver binary running go-pluginserver -version.

2. Breaking Changes

Kong 2.0.0 does include a few breaking changes over Kong 1.x, all of them related to the removal of service mesh:

  • Removed Service Mesh support - That has been deprecated in Kong 1.4 and made off-by-default already, and the code is now be gone in 2.0. For Service Mesh, we now have Kuma, which is something designed for Mesh patterns from day one, so we feel at peace with removing Kong's native Service Mesh functionality and focus on its core capabilities as a gateway.
  • As part of service mesh removal, serviceless proxying was removed. You can still set service = null when creating a route for use with serverless plugins such as aws-lambda, or request-termination.
  • Removed the origins property.
  • Removed the transparent property.
  • Removed the Sidecar Injector plugin which was used for service mesh.
  • The Nginx configuration file has changed, which means that you need to update it if you are using a custom template. Changes were made to improve stream mode support and to make the Nginx injections system more powerful so that custom templates are less of a necessity. The changes are detailed in a diff included below.
    • ⚠️ Note that the kong_cache shm was split into two shms: kong_core_cache and kong_cache. If you are using a custom Nginx template, make sure core cache shared dictionaries are defined, including db-less mode shadow definitions. Both cache values rely on the already existent mem_cache_size configuration option to set their size, so when upgrading from a previous Kong version, the cache memory consumption might double if this value is not adjusted.
Click here to see the Nginx configuration changes

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index 5c6c1db03..6b4b4a818 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -5,52 +5,46 @@ server_tokens off;
 > if anonymous_reports then
 ${{SYSLOG_REPORTS}}
 > end
-
 error_log ${{PROXY_ERROR_LOG}} ${{LOG_LEVEL}};

-> if nginx_optimizations then
->-- send_timeout 60s;          # default value
->-- keepalive_timeout 75s;     # default value
->-- client_body_timeout 60s;   # default value
->-- client_header_timeout 60s; # default value
->-- tcp_nopush on;             # disabled until benchmarked
->-- proxy_buffer_size 128k;    # disabled until benchmarked
->-- proxy_buffers 4 256k;      # disabled until benchmarked
->-- proxy_busy_buffers_size 256k; # disabled until benchmarked
->-- reset_timedout_connection on; # disabled until benchmarked
-> end
-
-client_max_body_size ${{CLIENT_MAX_BODY_SIZE}};
-proxy_ssl_server_name on;
-underscores_in_headers on;
-
 lua_package_path       '${{LUA_PACKAGE_PATH}};;';
 lua_package_cpath      '${{LUA_PACKAGE_CPATH}};;';
 lua_socket_pool_size   ${{LUA_SOCKET_POOL_SIZE}};
+lua_socket_log_errors  off;
 lua_max_running_timers 4096;
 lua_max_pending_timers 16384;
+lua_ssl_verify_depth   ${{LUA_SSL_VERIFY_DEPTH}};
+> if lua_ssl_trusted_certificate then
+lua_ssl_trusted_certificate '${{LUA_SSL_TRUSTED_CERTIFICATE}}';
+> end
+
 lua_shared_dict kong                        5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_locks                  8m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_healthchecks           5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_process_events         5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_cluster_events         5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_rate_limiting_counters 12m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_core_db_cache          ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
+lua_shared_dict kong_core_db_cache_miss     12m;
 lua_shared_dict kong_db_cache               ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
-> if database == "off" then
-lua_shared_dict kong_db_cache_2     ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
-> end
 lua_shared_dict kong_db_cache_miss          12m;
 > if database == "off" then
+lua_shared_dict kong_core_db_cache_2        ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
+lua_shared_dict kong_core_db_cache_miss_2   12m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_db_cache_2             ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
 lua_shared_dict kong_db_cache_miss_2        12m;
 > end
-lua_shared_dict kong_locks          8m;
-lua_shared_dict kong_process_events 5m;
-lua_shared_dict kong_cluster_events 5m;
-lua_shared_dict kong_healthchecks   5m;
-lua_shared_dict kong_rate_limiting_counters 12m;
 > if database == "cassandra" then
 lua_shared_dict kong_cassandra              5m;
 > end
-lua_socket_log_errors off;
-> if lua_ssl_trusted_certificate then
-lua_ssl_trusted_certificate '${{LUA_SSL_TRUSTED_CERTIFICATE}}';
+> if role == "control_plane" then
+lua_shared_dict kong_clustering             5m;
+> end
+
+underscores_in_headers on;
+> if ssl_ciphers then
+ssl_ciphers ${{SSL_CIPHERS}};
 > end
-lua_ssl_verify_depth ${{LUA_SSL_VERIFY_DEPTH}};

 # injected nginx_http_* directives
 > for _, el in ipairs(nginx_http_directives) do
@@ -66,61 +60,47 @@ init_worker_by_lua_block {
     Kong.init_worker()
 }

-
-> if #proxy_listeners > 0 then
+> if (role == "traditional" or role == "data_plane") and #proxy_listeners > 0 then
 upstream kong_upstream {
     server 0.0.0.1;
     balancer_by_lua_block {
         Kong.balancer()
     }

-# injected nginx_http_upstream_* directives
-> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_http_upstream_directives) do
+    # injected nginx_upstream_* directives
+> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_upstream_directives) do
     $(el.name) $(el.value);
 > end
 }

 server {
     server_name kong;
-> for i = 1, #proxy_listeners do
-    listen $(proxy_listeners[i].listener);
+> for _, entry in ipairs(proxy_listeners) do
+    listen $(entry.listener);
 > end
+
     error_page 400 404 408 411 412 413 414 417 494 /kong_error_handler;
     error_page 500 502 503 504                     /kong_error_handler;

     access_log ${{PROXY_ACCESS_LOG}};
     error_log  ${{PROXY_ERROR_LOG}} ${{LOG_LEVEL}};

-    client_body_buffer_size ${{CLIENT_BODY_BUFFER_SIZE}};
-
 > if proxy_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate     ${{SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{SSL_CERT_KEY}};
+    ssl_session_cache   shared:SSL:10m;
     ssl_certificate_by_lua_block {
         Kong.ssl_certificate()
     }
-
-    ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
-    ssl_session_timeout 10m;
-    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
-    ssl_ciphers ${{SSL_CIPHERS}};
-> end
-
-> if client_ssl then
-    proxy_ssl_certificate ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT}};
-    proxy_ssl_certificate_key ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-> end
-
-    real_ip_header     ${{REAL_IP_HEADER}};
-    real_ip_recursive  ${{REAL_IP_RECURSIVE}};
-> for i = 1, #trusted_ips do
-    set_real_ip_from   $(trusted_ips[i]);
 > end

     # injected nginx_proxy_* directives
 > for _, el in ipairs(nginx_proxy_directives) do
     $(el.name) $(el.value);
 > end
+> for i = 1, #trusted_ips do
+    set_real_ip_from  $(trusted_ips[i]);
+> end

     rewrite_by_lua_block {
         Kong.rewrite()
@@ -171,43 +151,93 @@ server {
         proxy_pass_header     Server;
         proxy_pass_header     Date;
         proxy_ssl_name        $upstream_host;
+        proxy_ssl_server_name on;
+> if client_ssl then
+        proxy_ssl_certificate ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT}};
+        proxy_ssl_certificate_key ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
+> end
         proxy_pass            $upstream_scheme://kong_upstream$upstream_uri;
     }

     location @grpc {
         internal;
+        default_type         '';
         set $kong_proxy_mode 'grpc';

+        grpc_set_header      TE                $upstream_te;
         grpc_set_header      Host              $upstream_host;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-For   $upstream_x_forwarded_for;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-Proto $upstream_x_forwarded_proto;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-Host  $upstream_x_forwarded_host;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-Port  $upstream_x_forwarded_port;
         grpc_set_header      X-Real-IP         $remote_addr;
-
+        grpc_pass_header     Server;
+        grpc_pass_header     Date;
         grpc_pass            grpc://kong_upstream;
     }

     location @grpcs {
         internal;
+        default_type         '';
         set $kong_proxy_mode 'grpc';

+        grpc_set_header      TE                $upstream_te;
         grpc_set_header      Host              $upstream_host;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-For   $upstream_x_forwarded_for;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-Proto $upstream_x_forwarded_proto;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-Host  $upstream_x_forwarded_host;
         grpc_set_header      X-Forwarded-Port  $upstream_x_forwarded_port;
         grpc_set_header      X-Real-IP         $remote_addr;
-
+        grpc_pass_header     Server;
+        grpc_pass_header     Date;
+        grpc_ssl_name        $upstream_host;
+        grpc_ssl_server_name on;
+> if client_ssl then
+        grpc_ssl_certificate ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT}};
+        grpc_ssl_certificate_key ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
+> end
         grpc_pass            grpcs://kong_upstream;
     }

+    location = /kong_buffered_http {
+        internal;
+        default_type         '';
+        set $kong_proxy_mode 'http';
+
+        rewrite_by_lua_block       {;}
+        access_by_lua_block        {;}
+        header_filter_by_lua_block {;}
+        body_filter_by_lua_block   {;}
+        log_by_lua_block           {;}
+
+        proxy_http_version 1.1;
+        proxy_set_header      TE                $upstream_te;
+        proxy_set_header      Host              $upstream_host;
+        proxy_set_header      Upgrade           $upstream_upgrade;
+        proxy_set_header      Connection        $upstream_connection;
+        proxy_set_header      X-Forwarded-For   $upstream_x_forwarded_for;
+        proxy_set_header      X-Forwarded-Proto $upstream_x_forwarded_proto;
+        proxy_set_header      X-Forwarded-Host  $upstream_x_forwarded_host;
+        proxy_set_header      X-Forwarded-Port  $upstream_x_forwarded_port;
+        proxy_set_header      X-Real-IP         $remote_addr;
+        proxy_pass_header     Server;
+        proxy_pass_header     Date;
+        proxy_ssl_name        $upstream_host;
+        proxy_ssl_server_name on;
+> if client_ssl then
+        proxy_ssl_certificate ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT}};
+        proxy_ssl_certificate_key ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
+> end
+        proxy_pass            $upstream_scheme://kong_upstream$upstream_uri;
+    }
+
     location = /kong_error_handler {
         internal;
+        default_type                 '';
+
         uninitialized_variable_warn  off;

         rewrite_by_lua_block {;}
-
         access_by_lua_block  {;}

         content_by_lua_block {
@@ -215,13 +245,13 @@ server {
         }
     }
 }
-> end
+> end -- (role == "traditional" or role == "data_plane") and #proxy_listeners > 0

-> if #admin_listeners > 0 then
+> if (role == "control_plane" or role == "traditional") and #admin_listeners > 0 then
 server {
     server_name kong_admin;
-> for i = 1, #admin_listeners do
-    listen $(admin_listeners[i].listener);
+> for _, entry in ipairs(admin_listeners) do
+    listen $(entry.listener);
 > end

     access_log ${{ADMIN_ACCESS_LOG}};
@@ -233,11 +263,7 @@ server {
 > if admin_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate     ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-
-    ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
-    ssl_session_timeout 10m;
-    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
-    ssl_ciphers ${{SSL_CIPHERS}};
+    ssl_session_cache   shared:AdminSSL:10m;
 > end

     # injected nginx_admin_* directives
@@ -265,20 +291,20 @@ server {
         return 200 'User-agent: *\nDisallow: /';
     }
 }
-> end
+> end -- (role == "control_plane" or role == "traditional") and #admin_listeners > 0

 > if #status_listeners > 0 then
 server {
     server_name kong_status;
-> for i = 1, #status_listeners do
-    listen $(status_listeners[i].listener);
+> for _, entry in ipairs(status_listeners) do
+    listen $(entry.listener);
 > end

     access_log ${{STATUS_ACCESS_LOG}};
     error_log  ${{STATUS_ERROR_LOG}} ${{LOG_LEVEL}};

-    # injected nginx_http_status_* directives
-> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_http_status_directives) do
+    # injected nginx_status_* directives
+> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_status_directives) do
     $(el.name) $(el.value);
 > end

@@ -303,4 +329,26 @@ server {
     }
 }
 > end
+
+> if role == "control_plane" then
+server {
+    server_name kong_cluster_listener;
+> for _, entry in ipairs(cluster_listeners) do
+    listen $(entry.listener) ssl;
+> end
+
+    access_log off;
+
+    ssl_verify_client   optional_no_ca;
+    ssl_certificate     ${{CLUSTER_CERT}};
+    ssl_certificate_key ${{CLUSTER_CERT_KEY}};
+    ssl_session_cache   shared:ClusterSSL:10m;
+
+    location = /v1/outlet {
+        content_by_lua_block {
+            Kong.serve_cluster_listener()
+        }
+    }
+}
+> end -- role == "control_plane"
 ]]

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 2.0.0

The lowest version that Kong 2.0.0 supports migrating from is 1.0.0. If you are migrating from a version lower than 0.14.1, you need to migrate to 0.14.1 first. Then, once you are migrating from 0.14.1, please migrate to 1.5.0 first.

The steps for upgrading from 0.14.1 to 1.5.0 are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0, with the addition of the kong migrations migrate-apis command, which you can use to migrate legacy apis configurations.

Once you migrated to 1.5.0, you can follow the instructions in the section below to migrate to 2.0.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.0 - 1.5.0 to 2.0.0

Kong 2.0.0 supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that there is no need to fully copy the data, but this also means that they are designed in such a way so that the new version of Kong is able to use the data as it is migrated, and to do it in a way so that the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is finally time to decommission it. For this reason, the full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 2.0.0).

  1. Download 2.0.0, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 1.5) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old and new (2.0.0) clusters can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 2.0.0 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 2.0.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 2.0.0 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 2.0.0 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 2.0.0 nodes.
Installing 2.0.0 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 2.0.0 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrade to 1.5.0

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different on which previous version from which you are migrating. If you are upgrading from 0.x, this is a major upgrade. If you are upgrading from 1.0.x or 1.4.x, this is a minor upgrade. Both scenarios are explained below.

1. Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies are bundled. If you are building your dependencies by hand, since Kong 1.4.0 the only dependency upgraded is lua-resty-healthcheck that must be at least the 1.1.2 version from now on. For any lower version you should check the upgrade path for the correct dependencies.

2. Breaking Changes

Kong 1.5.0 does not include any breaking changes over Kong 1.4, but Kong 1.3 included breaking changes in configuration and for routing in some edge-cases over Kong 1.2, and Kong 1.0 included a number of breaking changes over Kong 0.x. If you are upgrading from 1.2, please read the section on Kong 1.3 Breaking Changes carefully before proceeding. If you are upgrading from 0.14,x, please read the section on Kong 1.0 Breaking Changes carefully before proceeding.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 1.5.0

The lowest version that Kong 1.5.0 supports migrating from is 0.14.1. if you are migrating from a previous 0.x release, please migrate to 0.14.1 first.

For upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.5.0, the steps for upgrading are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 1.4.x to 1.5.0

Kong 1.5.0 supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that there is no need to fully copy the data, but this also means that they are designed in such a way so that the new version of Kong is able to use the data as it is migrated, and to do it in a way so that the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is finally time to decommission it. For this reason, the full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 1.5.0).

  1. Download 1.5.0, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 1.4) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old and new (1.5.0) clusters can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 1.5.0 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 1.5.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 1.5.0 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 1.5.0 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 1.5.0 nodes.
Installing 1.5.0 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 1.5.0 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrade to 1.4.0

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different on which previous version from which you are migrating. If you are upgrading from 0.x, this is a major upgrade. If you are upgrading from 1.0.x or 1.3.x, this is a minor upgrade. Both scenarios are explained below.

1. Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies are bundled. If you are building your dependencies by hand, there are no changes in dependencies from 1.3.0, for any lower version you should check the upgrade path for the correct dependencies.

2. Breaking Changes

Kong 1.4.0 does not include any breaking changes over Kong 1.3, but Kong 1.3 included breaking changes in configuration and for routing in some edge-cases over Kong 1.2, and Kong 1.0 included a number of breaking changes over Kong 0.x. If you are upgrading from 1.2, please read the section on Kong 1.3 Breaking Changes carefully before proceeding. If you are upgrading from 0.14,x, please read the section on Kong 1.0 Breaking Changes carefully before proceeding.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 1.4.0

The lowest version that Kong 1.4.0 supports migrating from is 0.14.1. if you are migrating from a previous 0.x release, please migrate to 0.14.1 first.

For upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.4.0, the steps for upgrading are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 1.3.x to 1.4.0

Kong 1.4.0 supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that there is no need to fully copy the data, but this also means that they are designed in such a way so that the new version of Kong is able to use the data as it is migrated, and to do it in a way so that the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is finally time to decommission it. For this reason, the full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 1.4.0).

  1. Download 1.4.0, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 to 1.3) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old and new (1.4.0) clusters can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 1.4.0 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 1.4.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 1.4.0 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 1.4.0 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 1.4.0 nodes.
Installing 1.4.0 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 1.4.0 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrade to 1.3

1. Breaking Changes

Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies are bundled. If you are building your dependencies by hand, you should be aware of the following changes:

  • The required OpenResty version has been bumped to 1.15.8.1. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change.
  • From this version on, the new lua-kong-nginx-module Nginx module is required to be built into OpenResty for Kong to function properly. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change. openresty-build-tools#26

Note: if you are not using one of our distribution packages and compiling OpenResty from source, you must still apply Kong's OpenResty patches (and, as highlighted above, compile OpenResty with the new lua-kong-nginx-module). Our new openresty-build-tools repository will allow you to do both easily.

Core
  • Bugfixes in the router may, in some edge-cases, result in different Routes being matched. It was reported to us that the router behaved incorrectly in some cases when configuring wildcard Hosts and regex paths (e.g. #3094). It may be so that you are subject to these bugs without realizing it. Please ensure that wildcard Hosts and regex paths Routes you have configured are matching as expected before upgrading. 9ca4dc0 2683b86 6a03e1b
  • Upstream connections are now only kept-alive for 100 requests or 60 seconds (idle) by default. Previously, upstream connections were not actively closed by Kong. This is a (non-breaking) change in behavior inherited from Nginx 1.15, and configurable via new configuration properties.
Configuration
  • The upstream_keepalive configuration property is deprecated, and replaced by the new nginx_http_upstream_keepalive property. Its behavior is almost identical, but the notable difference is that the latter leverages the injected Nginx directives feature added in Kong 0.14.0.
  • The Nginx configuration file has changed, which means that you need to update it if you are using a custom template. Changes were made to address the upstream_keepalive change, the new gRPC support, and to make ssl_protocols load via injected directives. The changes are detailed in a diff included below.
Click here to see the Nginx configuration changes

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index 761376a07..5a957a1b7 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -72,8 +72,10 @@ upstream kong_upstream {
     balancer_by_lua_block {
         Kong.balancer()
     }
-> if upstream_keepalive > 0 then
-    keepalive ${{UPSTREAM_KEEPALIVE}};
+
+# injected nginx_http_upstream_* directives
+> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_http_upstream_directives) do
+    $(el.name) $(el.value);
 > end
 }

@@ -93,7 +95,6 @@ server {
 > if proxy_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
     ssl_certificate_by_lua_block {
         Kong.ssl_certificate()
     }
@@ -120,6 +121,26 @@ server {
     $(el.name) $(el.value);
 > end

+    rewrite_by_lua_block {
+        Kong.rewrite()
+    }
+
+    access_by_lua_block {
+        Kong.access()
+    }
+
+    header_filter_by_lua_block {
+        Kong.header_filter()
+    }
+
+    body_filter_by_lua_block {
+        Kong.body_filter()
+    }
+
+    log_by_lua_block {
+        Kong.log()
+    }
+
     location / {
         default_type                     '';

@@ -134,14 +155,7 @@ server {
         set $upstream_x_forwarded_proto  '';
         set $upstream_x_forwarded_host   '';
         set $upstream_x_forwarded_port   '';
-
-        rewrite_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.rewrite()
-        }
-
-        access_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.access()
-        }
+        set $kong_proxy_mode             'http';

         proxy_http_version 1.1;
         proxy_set_header   TE                $upstream_te;
@@ -157,38 +171,32 @@ server {
         proxy_pass_header  Date;
         proxy_ssl_name     $upstream_host;
         proxy_pass         $upstream_scheme://kong_upstream$upstream_uri;
+    }

-        header_filter_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.header_filter()
-        }
+    location @grpc {
+        internal;

-        body_filter_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.body_filter()
-        }
+        set $kong_proxy_mode       'grpc';
+        grpc_pass grpc://kong_upstream;
+    }

-        log_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.log()
-        }
+    location @grpcs {
+        internal;
+
+        set $kong_proxy_mode       'grpcs';
+        grpc_pass grpcs://kong_upstream;
     }

     location = /kong_error_handler {
         internal;
         uninitialized_variable_warn off;

-        content_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.handle_error()
-        }
-
-        header_filter_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.header_filter()
-        }
+        rewrite_by_lua_block {;}

-        body_filter_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.body_filter()
-        }
+        access_by_lua_block {;}

-        log_by_lua_block {
-            Kong.log()
+        content_by_lua_block {
+            Kong.handle_error()
         }
     }
 }
@@ -210,7 +218,6 @@ server {
 > if admin_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;

     ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
     ssl_session_timeout 10m;

2. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 1.3

The lowest version that Kong 1.3 supports migrating from is 0.14.1. if you are migrating from a previous 0.x release, please migrate to 0.14.1 first.

For upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.3, the steps for upgrading are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.x - 1.2.x to 1.3

Kong 1.3 supports the no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that there is no need to fully copy the data, but this also means that they are designed in such a way so that the new version of Kong is able to use the data as it is migrated, and to do it in a way so that the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is finally time to decommission it. For this reason, the full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 1.2).

  1. Download 1.3, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 - 1.2) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old and new (1.3) clusters can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 1.3 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 1.3 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 1.3 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 1.3 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 1.3 nodes.
Installing 1.3 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 1.3 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrade to 1.2

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different on which previous version from which you are migrating. If you are upgrading from 0.x, this is a major upgrade. If you are upgrading from 1.0.x or 1.1.x, this is a minor upgrade. Both scenarios are explained below.

1. Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies are bundled. If you are building your dependencies by hand, you should be aware of the following changes:

  • The required OpenResty version is 1.13.6.2, but for a full feature set, including stream routing and service mesh abilities with mutual TLS, you need Kong's openresty-patches. Note that the set of patches was updated from 1.0 to 1.2.
  • The minimum required OpenSSL version is 1.1.1. If you are building by hand, make sure all dependencies, including LuaRocks modules, are compiled using the same OpenSSL version. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change.

2. Breaking Changes

Kong 1.2 does not include any breaking changes over Kong 1.0 or 1.1, but Kong 1.0 included a number of breaking changes over Kong 0.x. If you are upgrading from 0.14,x, please read the section on Kong 1.0 Breaking Changes carefully before proceeding.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 1.2

The lowest version that Kong 1.2 supports migrating from is 0.14.1. if you are migrating from a previous 0.x release, please migrate to 0.14.1 first.

For upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.2, the steps for upgrading are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.x or 1.1.x to 1.2

Kong 1.2 supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that there is no need to fully copy the data, but this also means that they are designed in such a way so that the new version of Kong is able to use the data as it is migrated, and to do it in a way so that the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is finally time to decommission it. For this reason, the full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 1.2).

  1. Download 1.2, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your old (1.0 or 1.1) cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both the old and new (1.2) clusters can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 1.2 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to the old cluster's nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your old nodes, and into your 1.2 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 1.2 cluster, decommission your old nodes.
  5. From your 1.2 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start nodes in the old cluster pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 1.2 nodes.
Upgrade Path from 1.2 Release Candidates

The process is the same as for upgrading from 1.0 listed above, but on step 1 you should run kong migrations up --force instead.

Installing 1.2 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 1.2 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrade to 1.1

Kong adheres to semantic versioning, which makes a distinction between "major", "minor", and "patch" versions. The upgrade path will be different on which previous version from which you are migrating. If you are upgrading from 0.x, this is a major upgrade. If you are upgrading from 1.0.x, this is a minor upgrade. Both scenarios are explained below.

1. Dependencies

If you are using the provided binary packages, all necessary dependencies are bundled. If you are building your dependencies by hand, you should be aware of the following changes:

  • The required OpenResty version is 1.13.6.2, but for a full feature set, including stream routing and service mesh abilities with mutual TLS, you need Kong's openresty-patches. Note that the set of patches was updated from 1.0 to 1.1.
  • The minimum required OpenSSL version is 1.1.1. If you are building by hand, make sure all dependencies, including LuaRocks modules, are compiled using the same OpenSSL version. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change.

2. Breaking Changes

Kong 1.1 does not include any breaking changes over Kong 1.0, but Kong 1.0 included a number of breaking changes over Kong 0.x. If you are upgrading from 0.14,x, please read the section on Kong 1.0 Breaking Changes carefully before proceeding.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Upgrade from 0.x to 1.1

The lowest version that Kong 1.1 supports migrating from is 0.14.1. if you are migrating from a previous 0.x release, please migrate to 0.14.1 first.

For upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.1, the steps for upgrading are the same as upgrading from 0.14.1 to Kong 1.0. Please follow the steps described in the "Migration Steps from 0.14" in the Suggested Upgrade Path for Kong 1.0.

Upgrade from 1.0.x to 1.1

Kong 1.1 supports a no-downtime migration model. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. (This is sometimes called the Blue/Green migration model.)

The migrations are designed so that there is no need to fully copy the data, but this also means that they are designed in such a way so that the new version of Kong is able to use the data as it is migrated, and to do it in a way so that the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is finally time to decommission it. For this reason, the full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 1.1).

  1. Download 1.1, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your 1.0 cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Once that finishes running, both 1.0 and 1.1 clusters can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 1.1 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to your 1.0 nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your 1.0 nodes, and into your 1.1 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 1.1 cluster, decommission your 1.0 nodes.
  5. From your 1.1 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start 1.0 nodes pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 1.1 nodes.
Upgrade Path from 1.1 Release Candidates

The process is the same as for upgrading from 1.0 listed above, but on step 1 you should run kong migrations up --force instead.

Installing 1.1 on a Fresh Datastore

The following commands should be used to prepare a new 1.1 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrading 1.0.x patch releases

If you are upgrading from another release in the 1.0.x series (e.g. from 1.0.0 to 1.0.1), there are no migrations. Simply upgrade your Kong installation and reload Kong:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

If you are upgrading from 0.x, then read the following section for detailed migration instructions.

Upgrade from 0.x to 1.0.x

Kong 1.0 is a major upgrade, and includes a number of new features as well as breaking changes.

This version introduces a new schema format for plugins, changes in Admin API endpoints, database migrations, Nginx configuration changes, and removed configuration properties.

In this release, the API entity is removed, along with its related Admin API endpoints.

This section will highlight breaking changes that you need to be aware of before upgrading and will describe the recommended upgrade path. We recommend that you consult the full 1.0.0 Changelog for a complete list of changes and new features.

1. Breaking Changes

Dependencies
  • The required OpenResty version is 1.13.6.2, but for a full feature set, including stream routing and service mesh abilities with mutual TLS, you need Kong's openresty-patches.
  • The minimum required OpenSSL version is 1.1.1. If you are building by hand, make sure all dependencies, including LuaRocks modules, are compiled using the same OpenSSL version. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change.
Configuration
  • The custom_plugins directive is removed (deprecated since 0.14.0). Use plugins instead, which you can use not only to enable custom plugins, but also to disable bundled plugins.
  • The default value for cassandra_lb_policy changed from RoundRobin to RequestRoundRobin.
  • The Nginx configuration file has changed, which means that you need to update it if you are using a custom template. The changes are detailed in a diff included below.
Click here to see the Nginx configuration changes

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index d4e416bc..8f268ffd 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -66,7 +66,9 @@ upstream kong_upstream {
     balancer_by_lua_block {
         Kong.balancer()
     }
+> if upstream_keepalive > 0 then
     keepalive ${{UPSTREAM_KEEPALIVE}};
+> end
 }

 server {
@@ -85,7 +87,7 @@ server {
 > if proxy_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
+    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
     ssl_certificate_by_lua_block {
         Kong.ssl_certificate()
     }
@@ -200,7 +202,7 @@ server {
 > if admin_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
+    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;

     ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
     ssl_session_timeout 10m;

  • Kong generates a new template file for stream routing, nginx-kong-stream.conf, included in the stream block of its top-level Nginx configuration file. If you use a custom Nginx configuration and wish to use stream routing, you can generate this file using kong prepare.
Core
  • The API entity and related concepts such as the /apis endpoint, are removed. These were deprecated since 0.13.0. Instead, use Routes to configure your endpoints and Services to configure your upstream services.
  • The old DAO implementation (kong.dao) is removed, which includes the old schema validation library. This has implications to plugin developers, listed below.
    • The last remaining entities that were converted to the new DAO implementation were Plugins, Upstreams and Targets. This has implications to the Admin API, listed below.
Plugins

Kong 1.0.0 marks the introduction of version 1.0.0 of the Plugin Development Kit (PDK). No major changes are made to the PDK compared to release 0.14, but some older non-PDK functionality which was possibly used by custom plugins is now removed.

  • Plugins now use the new schema format introduced by the new DAO implementation, for both plugin schemas (in schema.lua) and custom DAO entities (daos.lua). To ease the transition of plugins, the plugin loader in 1.0 includes a best-effort schema auto-translator for schema.lua, which should be sufficient for many plugins (in 1.0.0rc1, our bundled plugins used the auto-translator; they now use the new format).
    • If your plugin using the old format in schema.lua fails to load, check the error logs for messages produced by the auto-translator. If a field cannot be auto-translated, you can make a gradual conversion of the schema file by adding a new_type entry to the field table translation of the format. See, for example, the key-auth schema in 1.0.0rc1. The new_type annotation is ignored by Kong 0.x.
    • If your custom plugin uses custom DAO objects (i.e. if it includes a daos.lua file), it needs to be converted to the new format. Their code also needs to be adjusted accordingly, replacing uses of singletons.dao or kong.dao by kong.db (note that this module exposes a different API from the old DAO implementation).
  • Some Kong modules that had their functionality replaced by the PDK in 0.14.0 are now removed:
    • kong.tools.ip: use kong.ip from the PDK instead.
    • kong.tools.public: replaced by various functionalities of the PDK.
    • kong.tools.responses: use kong.response.exit from the PDK instead. You might want to use kong.log.err to log internal server errors as well.
  • The kong.api.crud_helpers module was removed. Use kong.api.endpoints instead if you need to customize the auto-generated endpoints.
Admin API
  • With the removal of the API entity, the /apis endpoint is removed; accordingly, other endpoints that accepted api_id no longer do so. Use Routes and Services instead.
  • All entity endpoints now use the new Admin API implementation. This means their requests and responses now use the same syntax, which was already in use in endpoints such as /routes and /services.
    • All endpoints now use the same syntax for referencing other entities as /routes (for example, "service":{"id":"..."} instead of "service_id":"..."), both in requests and responses.
      • This change affects /plugins as well as plugin-specific endpoints.
    • Array-typed values are not specified as a comma-separated list anymore. It must be specified as a JSON array or using the various formats supported by the url-formencoded array notation of the new Admin API implementation (a[1]=x&a[2]=y, a[]=x&a[]=y, a=x&a=y).
      • This change affects attributes of the /upstreams endpoint.
    • Error responses for the updated endpoints use the new standardized format.
    • As a result of being moved to the new Admin API implementation, all endpoints supporting PUT do so with proper semantics.
    • See the Admin API reference for more details.

2. Deprecation Notices

There are no deprecation notices in this release.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Preliminary Checks

If your cluster is running a version lower than 0.14, you need to upgrade to 0.14.1 first instead. Upgrading from a pre-0.14 cluster straight to Kong 1.0 is not supported.

If you still use the deprecated API entity to configure your endpoints and upstream services (via /apis) instead of using Routes for endpoints (via /routes) and Services for upstream services (via /services), now is the time to do so. Kong 1.0 will refuse to run migrations if you have any entity configured using /apis in your datastore. Create equivalent Routes and Services and delete your APIs. (Note that Kong does not do this automatically because the naive option of creating a Route and Service pair for each API would miss the point of the improvements brought by Routes and Services; the ideal mapping of Routes and Services depends on your microservice architecture.)

If you use additional plugins other than the ones bundled with Kong, make sure they are compatible with Kong 1.0 prior to upgrading. See the section above on Plugins for information on plugin compatibility.

Migration Steps from 0.14

Kong 1.0 introduces a new, improved migrations framework. It supports a no-downtime, Blue/Green migration model for upgrading from 0.14.x. This means that while the migration is ongoing, you will have two Kong clusters running, sharing the same database. The "Blue" cluster is your existing cluster running 0.14.x, the "Green" cluster is the new one running Kong 1.0.

The migrations are designed so that there is no need to fully copy the data, but this also means that they are designed in such a way so that the new version of Kong is able to use the data as it is migrated, and to do it in a way so that the old Kong cluster keeps working until it is finally time to decommission it. For this reason, the full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up (which does only non-destructive operations) and kong migrations finish (which puts the database in the final expected state for Kong 1.0).

For a no-downtime migration from a 0.14 cluster to a 1.0 cluster, we recommend the following sequence of steps:

  1. Download 1.0, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your 0.14 cluster. Run kong migrations up from a Kong 1.0 node.
  2. Once that finishes running, both 0.14 and 1.0 clusters can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 1.0 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. If you need to perform Admin API requests, these should be made to your 0.14 nodes. The reason is to prevent the new cluster from generating data that is not understood by the old cluster.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your 0.14 nodes, and into your 1.0 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 1.0 cluster, decommission your 0.14 nodes.
  5. From your 1.0 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start 0.14 nodes pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 1.0 nodes.
Upgrade Path from 1.0 Release Candidates

The process is the same as for upgrading for 0.14 listed above, but on step 1 you should run kong migrations up --force instead.

Installing 1.0 on a Fresh Datastore

For installing on a fresh datastore, Kong 1.0 introduces the kong migrations bootstrap command. The following commands can be run to prepare a new 1.0 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrade to 0.15

This is the last release in the 0.x series, giving users one last chance to upgrade while still using some of the options and concepts that were marked as deprecated in Kong 0.x and were removed in Kong 1.0. Still, Kong 0.15 does have a number of breaking changes related to functionality that has changed since version 0.14.

This version introduces a new schema format for plugins, changes in Admin API endpoints, database migrations and Nginx configuration changes.

This section will highlight breaking changes that you need to be aware of before upgrading and will describe the recommended upgrade path. We recommend that you consult the full 0.15 Changelog for a complete list of changes and new features.

1. Breaking Changes

Dependencies
  • The required OpenResty version is 1.13.6.2, but for a full feature set, including stream routing and service mesh abilities with mutual TLS, you need Kong's openresty-patches. The minimum required OpenSSL version is 1.1.1. If you are building by hand, make sure all dependencies, including LuaRocks modules, are compiled using the same OpenSSL version. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change.
Configuration
  • The default value for cassandra_lb_policy changed from RoundRobin to RequestRoundRobin.
  • The Nginx configuration file has changed, which means that you need to update it if you are using a custom template. The changes are detailed in a diff included below.
Click here to see the Nginx configuration changes

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index d4e416bc..8f268ffd 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -66,7 +66,9 @@ upstream kong_upstream {
     balancer_by_lua_block {
         Kong.balancer()
     }
+> if upstream_keepalive > 0 then
     keepalive ${{UPSTREAM_KEEPALIVE}};
+> end
 }

 server {
@@ -85,7 +87,7 @@ server {
 > if proxy_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
+    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;
     ssl_certificate_by_lua_block {
         Kong.ssl_certificate()
     }
@@ -200,7 +202,7 @@ server {
 > if admin_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
-    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
+    ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2 TLSv1.3;

     ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
     ssl_session_timeout 10m;

  • Kong generates a new template file for stream routing, nginx-kong-stream.conf, included in the stream block of its top-level Nginx configuration file. If you use a custom Nginx configuration and wish to use stream routing, you can generate this file using kong prepare.
Core
  • The old DAO implementation (kong.dao) is no longer used by the Kong core, which includes the old schema validation library. This has implications to plugin developers, listed below.
    • The last remaining entities that were converted to the new DAO implementation were Plugins, Upstreams and Targets. This has implications to the Admin API, listed below.
Plugins

Kong 0.15 includes version 1.0.0 of the Plugin Development Kit (PDK). No major changes are made to the PDK compared to release 0.14, but some older non-PDK functionality which was possibly used by custom plugins is now removed.

  • Plugins now use the new schema format introduced by the new DAO implementation, for both plugin schemas (in schema.lua) and custom DAO entities (daos.lua). To ease the transition of plugins, the plugin loader in 0.15 includes a best-effort schema auto-translator for schema.lua, which should be sufficient for many plugins (in 1.0.0rc1, our bundled plugins used the auto-translator; they now use the new format).
    • If your plugin using the old format in schema.lua fails to load, check the error logs for messages produced by the auto-translator. If a field cannot be auto-translated, you can make a gradual conversion of the schema file by adding a new_type entry to the field table translation of the format. See, for example, the key-auth schema in 1.0.0rc1. The new_type annotation is ignored by Kong 0.x.
    • If your custom plugin uses custom DAO objects (i.e. if it includes a daos.lua file), it needs to be converted to the new format. Their code also needs to be adjusted accordingly, replacing uses of singletons.dao or kong.dao by kong.db (note that this module exposes a different API from the old DAO implementation).
Admin API
  • All entity endpoints now use the new Admin API implementation. This means their requests and responses now use the same syntax, which was already in use in endpoints such as /routes and /services.
    • All endpoints now use the same syntax for referencing other entities as /routes (for example, "service":{"id":"..."} instead of "service_id":"..."), both in requests and responses.
      • This change affects /plugins as well as plugin-specific endpoints.
    • Array-typed values are not specified as a comma-separated list anymore. It must be specified as a JSON array or using the various formats supported by the url-formencoded array notation of the new Admin API implementation (a[1]=x&a[2]=y, a[]=x&a[]=y, a=x&a=y).
      • This change affects attributes of the /upstreams endpoint.
    • Error responses for the updated endpoints use the new standardized format.
    • As a result of being moved to the new Admin API implementation, all endpoints supporting PUT do so with proper semantics.
    • See the Admin API reference for more details.

2. Deprecation Notices

Kong 0.15 retains the deprecation notices of previous releases; all modules and concepts that have been marked as deprecated in previous releases are retained in 0.15 but are removed in 1.0. See the Kong 1.0 changelog and upgrade path for a detailed list.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

Preliminary Checks

If your cluster is running a version lower than 0.14, you need to upgrade to 0.14.1 first instead. Upgrading from a pre-0.14 cluster straight to Kong 0.15 is not supported.

If you use additional plugins other than the ones bundled with Kong, make sure they are compatible with Kong 0.15 prior to upgrading. See the section above on Plugins for information on plugin compatibility.

Migration Steps from 0.14

Kong 0.15 introduces a new, improved migrations framework. It supports a no-downtime, Blue/Green migration model for upgrading from 0.14.x. The full migration is now split into two steps, which are performed via commands kong migrations up and kong migrations finish.

For a no-downtime migration from a 0.14 cluster to a 0.15 cluster, we recommend the following sequence of steps:

  1. Download 0.15, and configure it to point to the same datastore as your 0.14 cluster. Run kong migrations up.
  2. Both 0.14 and 0.15 nodes can now run simultaneously on the same datastore. Start provisioning 0.15 nodes, but do not use their Admin API yet. Prefer making Admin API requests to your 0.14 nodes instead.
  3. Gradually divert traffic away from your 0.14 nodes, and into your 0.15 cluster. Monitor your traffic to make sure everything is going smoothly.
  4. When your traffic is fully migrated to the 0.15 cluster, decommission your 0.14 nodes.
  5. From your 0.15 cluster, run: kong migrations finish. From this point on, it will not be possible to start 0.14 nodes pointing to the same datastore anymore. Only run this command when you are confident that your migration was successful. From now on, you can safely make Admin API requests to your 0.15 nodes.
Installing 0.15 on a Fresh Datastore

For installing on a fresh datastore, Kong 0.15 introduces the kong migrations bootstrap command. The following commands can be run to prepare a new 0.15 cluster from a fresh datastore:

$ kong migrations bootstrap [-c config]
$ kong start [-c config]

Upgrade to 0.14.x

This version introduces changes in Admin API endpoints, database migrations, Nginx configuration changes, and removed configuration properties.

In this release, the API entity is still supported, along with its related Admin API endpoints.

This section will highlight breaking changes that you need to be aware of before upgrading and will describe the recommended upgrade path. We recommend that you consult the full 0.14.0 Changelog for a complete list of changes and new features.

1. Breaking Changes

Dependencies
  • The required OpenResty version has been bumped to 1.13.6.2. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change.
  • Support for PostreSQL 9.4 (deprecated in 0.12.0) is now dropped.
  • Support for Cassandra 2.1 (deprecated in 0.12.0) is now dropped.
Configuration
  • The server_tokens and latency_tokens configuration properties have been removed. Instead, a new headers configuration properties replaces them. See the default configuration file or the configuration reference for more details.
  • The Nginx configuration file has changed, which means that you need to update it if you are using a custom template. The changes are detailed in a diff included below.
Plugins
  • The Runscope plugin has been dropped, based on the EoL announcement made by Runscope about their Traffic Inspector product. #3495
Admin API
  • The SSL Certificates and SNI entities have moved to the new DAO implementation. As such, the /certificates and /snis endpoints have received notable usability improvements, but suffer from a few breaking changes. #3386

  • The Consumers entity has moved to the new DAO implementation. As such, the /consumers endpoint has received notable usability improvements, but suffers from a few breaking changes. #3437

Click here to see the Nginx configuration changes

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index a66c230f..d4e416bc 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -29,8 +29,9 @@ lua_socket_pool_size ${{LUA_SOCKET_POOL_SIZE}};
 lua_max_running_timers 4096;
 lua_max_pending_timers 16384;
 lua_shared_dict kong                5m;
-lua_shared_dict kong_cache          ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
+lua_shared_dict kong_db_cache       ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
 lua_shared_dict kong_db_cache_miss 12m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_locks          8m;
 lua_shared_dict kong_process_events 5m;
 lua_shared_dict kong_cluster_events 5m;
 lua_shared_dict kong_healthchecks   5m;
@@ -44,13 +45,18 @@ lua_ssl_trusted_certificate '${{LUA_SSL_TRUSTED_CERTIFICATE}}';
 lua_ssl_verify_depth ${{LUA_SSL_VERIFY_DEPTH}};
 > end

+# injected nginx_http_* directives
+> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_http_directives)  do
+$(el.name) $(el.value);
+> end
+
 init_by_lua_block {
-    kong = require 'kong'
-    kong.init()
+    Kong = require 'kong'
+    Kong.init()
 }

 init_worker_by_lua_block {
-    kong.init_worker()
+    Kong.init_worker()
 }


@@ -58,7 +64,7 @@ init_worker_by_lua_block {
 upstream kong_upstream {
     server 0.0.0.1;
     balancer_by_lua_block {
-        kong.balancer()
+        Kong.balancer()
     }
     keepalive ${{UPSTREAM_KEEPALIVE}};
 }
@@ -81,7 +87,7 @@ server {
     ssl_certificate_key ${{SSL_CERT_KEY}};
     ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
     ssl_certificate_by_lua_block {
-        kong.ssl_certificate()
+        Kong.ssl_certificate()
     }

     ssl_session_cache shared:SSL:10m;
@@ -101,7 +107,15 @@ server {
     set_real_ip_from   $(trusted_ips[i]);
 > end

+    # injected nginx_proxy_* directives
+> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_proxy_directives)  do
+    $(el.name) $(el.value);
+> end
+
     location / {
+        default_type                     '';
+
+        set $ctx_ref                     '';
         set $upstream_host               '';
         set $upstream_upgrade            '';
         set $upstream_connection         '';
@@ -113,11 +127,11 @@ server {
         set $upstream_x_forwarded_port   '';

         rewrite_by_lua_block {
-            kong.rewrite()
+            Kong.rewrite()
         }

         access_by_lua_block {
-            kong.access()
+            Kong.access()
         }

         proxy_http_version 1.1;
@@ -135,22 +149,36 @@ server {
         proxy_pass         $upstream_scheme://kong_upstream$upstream_uri;

         header_filter_by_lua_block {
-            kong.header_filter()
+            Kong.header_filter()
         }

         body_filter_by_lua_block {
-            kong.body_filter()
+            Kong.body_filter()
         }

         log_by_lua_block {
-            kong.log()
+            Kong.log()
         }
     }

     location = /kong_error_handler {
         internal;
+        uninitialized_variable_warn off;
+
         content_by_lua_block {
-            kong.handle_error()
+            Kong.handle_error()
+        }
+
+        header_filter_by_lua_block {
+            Kong.header_filter()
+        }
+
+        body_filter_by_lua_block {
+            Kong.body_filter()
+        }
+
+        log_by_lua_block {
+            Kong.log()
         }
     }
 }
@@ -180,10 +208,15 @@ server {
     ssl_ciphers ${{SSL_CIPHERS}};
 > end

+    # injected nginx_admin_* directives
+> for _, el in ipairs(nginx_admin_directives)  do
+    $(el.name) $(el.value);
+> end
+
     location / {
         default_type application/json;
         content_by_lua_block {
-            kong.serve_admin_api()
+            Kong.serve_admin_api()
         }
     }

Core
  • If you are relying on passive health-checks to detect TCP timeouts, you should double-check your health-check configurations. Previously, timeouts were erroneously contributing to the tcp_failures counter. They are now properly contributing to the timeout counter. In order to short-circuit traffic based on timeouts, you must ensure that your timeout settings are properly configured. See the Health Checks reference for more details.
Plugins
  • Custom plugins can now see their header_filter, body_filter, and log phases executed without the rewrite or access phases running first. This can happen when Nginx itself produces an error while parsing the client's request. Similarly, ngx.var values (e.g. ngx.var.request_uri) may be nil. Plugins should be hardened to handle such cases and avoid using uninitialized variables, which could throw Lua errors.
  • The Runscope plugin has been dropped, based on the EoL announcement made by Runscope about their Traffic Inspector product.
Admin API
  • As a result of being moved to the new Admin API implementation (and supporting PUT and named endpoints), the /snis endpoint ssl_certificate_id attribute has been renamed to certificate_id. See the Admin API reference for more details.
  • On the /certificates endpoint, the snis attribute is not specified as a comma-separated list anymore. It must be specified as a JSON array or using the url-formencoded array notation of other recent Admin API endpoints. See the Admin API reference for more details.
  • Filtering by username in the /consumers endpoint is not supported with /consumers?username=.... Instead, use /consumers/{username} to retrieve a Consumer by its username. Filtering with /consumers?custom_id=... is still supported.

2. Deprecation Notices

  • The custom_plugins configuration property is now deprecated in favor of plugins. See the default configuration file or the configuration reference for more details.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

You can now start migrating your cluster from 0.13.x to 0.14. If you are doing this upgrade "in-place", against the datastore of a running 0.13 cluster, then for a short period of time, your database schema won't be fully compatible with your 0.13 nodes anymore. This is why we suggest either performing this upgrade when your 0.13 cluster is warm and most entities are cached, or against a new database, if you can migrate your data. If you wish to temporarily make your APIs unavailable, you can leverage the request-termination plugin.

The path to upgrade a 0.13 datastore is identical to the one of previous major releases:

  1. If you are planning on upgrading Kong while 0.13 nodes are running against the same datastore, make sure those nodes are warm enough (they should have most of your entities cached already), or temporarily disable your APIs.
  2. Provision a 0.14 node and configure it as you wish (environment variables/ configuration file). Make sure to point this new 0.14 node to your current datastore.
  3. Without starting the 0.14 node, run the 0.14 migrations against your current datastore:
$ kong migrations up [-c kong.conf]

As usual, this step should be executed from a single node.

  1. You can now provision a fresh 0.14 cluster pointing to your migrated datastore and start your 0.14 nodes.
  2. Gradually switch your traffic from the 0.13 cluster to the new 0.14 cluster. Remember, once your database is migrated, your 0.13 nodes will rely on their cache and not on the underlying database. Your traffic should switch to the new cluster as quickly as possible.
  3. Once your traffic is fully migrated to the 0.14 cluster, decommission your 0.13 cluster.

You have now successfully upgraded your cluster to run 0.14 nodes exclusively.

Upgrade to 0.13.x

This version comes with new model entities, database migrations, and nginx configuration changes.

This section will only highlight the breaking changes that you need to be aware of, and describe a recommended upgrade path. We recommend that you consult the full 0.13.0 Changelog for a complete list of changes and new features.

See below the breaking changes section for a detailed list of steps recommended to run migrations and upgrade from a previous version of Kong.

1. Breaking Changes

  • Note to Docker users: The latest tag on Docker Hub now points to the alpine image instead of CentOS. This also applies to the 0.13.0 tag.
Dependencies
  • Support for Cassandra 2.1 was deprecated in 0.12.0 and has been dropped starting with 0.13.0.
  • Various dependencies have been bumped. Once again, consult the Changelog for a detailed list.
Configuration
  • The proxy_listen and admin_listen configuration values have a new syntax. See the configuration file or the 0.13.x documentation for insights on the new syntax.
  • The nginx configuration file has changed, which means that you need to update it if you are using a custom template. The changes are detailed in a diff included below.
Click here to see the nginx configuration changes

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index 5639f319..62f5f1ae 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -51,6 +51,8 @@ init_worker_by_lua_block {
     kong.init_worker()
 }

+
+> if #proxy_listeners > 0 then
 upstream kong_upstream {
     server 0.0.0.1;
     balancer_by_lua_block {
@@ -61,7 +63,9 @@ upstream kong_upstream {

 server {
     server_name kong;
-    listen ${{PROXY_LISTEN}}${{PROXY_PROTOCOL}};
+> for i = 1, #proxy_listeners do
+    listen $(proxy_listeners[i].listener);
+> end
     error_page 400 404 408 411 412 413 414 417 /kong_error_handler;
     error_page 500 502 503 504 /kong_error_handler;

@@ -70,8 +74,7 @@ server {

     client_body_buffer_size ${{CLIENT_BODY_BUFFER_SIZE}};

-> if ssl then
-    listen ${{PROXY_LISTEN_SSL}} ssl${{HTTP2}}${{PROXY_PROTOCOL}};
+> if proxy_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{SSL_CERT_KEY}};
     ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
@@ -149,10 +152,14 @@ server {
         }
     }
 }
+> end

+> if #admin_listeners > 0 then
 server {
     server_name kong_admin;
-    listen ${{ADMIN_LISTEN}};
+> for i = 1, #admin_listeners do
+    listen $(admin_listeners[i].listener);
+> end

     access_log ${{ADMIN_ACCESS_LOG}};
     error_log ${{ADMIN_ERROR_LOG}} ${{LOG_LEVEL}};
@@ -160,8 +167,7 @@ server {
     client_max_body_size 10m;
     client_body_buffer_size 10m;

-> if admin_ssl then
-    listen ${{ADMIN_LISTEN_SSL}} ssl${{ADMIN_HTTP2}};
+> if admin_ssl_enabled then
     ssl_certificate ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
     ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
@@ -189,4 +195,5 @@ server {
         return 200 'User-agent: *\nDisallow: /';
     }
 }
+> end

Plugins
  • The galileo plugin is considered deprecated and not enabled by default anymore. It is still shipped with Kong 0.13.0, but you must enable it by specifying it in the custom_plugins configuration property, like so: custom_plugins = galileo (or via the KONG_CUSTOM_PLUGINS environment variable).
  • The migrations will remove and re-create the rate-limiting and response-ratelimiting tables storing counters. This means that your counters will reset.

2. Deprecation Notices

Starting with 0.13.0, the "API" entity is considered deprecated. While still supported, we will eventually remove the entity and its related endpoints from the Admin API. Services and Routes are the new first-class citizen entities that new users (or users upgrading their clusters) should configure.

You can read more about Services and Routes in the Proxy Guide and the Admin API Reference.

3. Suggested Upgrade Path

You can now start migrating your cluster from 0.12.x to 0.13. If you are doing this upgrade "in-place", against the datastore of a running 0.12 cluster, then for a short period of time, your database schema won't be fully compatible with your 0.12 nodes anymore. This is why we suggest either performing this upgrade when your 0.12 cluster is warm and most entities are cached, or against a new database if you can migrate your data. If you wish to temporarily make your APIs unavailable, you can leverage the request-termination plugin.

The path to upgrade a 0.12 datastore is identical to the one of previous major releases:

  1. If you are planning on upgrading Kong while 0.12 nodes are running against the same datastore, make sure those nodes are warm enough (they should have most of your entities cached already) or temporarily disable your APIs.
  2. Provision a 0.13 node and configure it as you wish (environment variables/ configuration file). Make sure to point this new 0.13 node to your current datastore.
  3. Without starting the 0.13 node, run the 0.13 migrations against your current datastore:
$ kong migrations up [-c kong.conf]

As usual, this step should be executed from a single node.

  1. You can now provision a fresh 0.13 cluster pointing to your migrated datastore and start your 0.13 nodes.
  2. Gradually switch your traffic from the 0.12 cluster to the new 0.13 cluster. Remember, once your database is migrated, your 0.12 nodes will rely on their cache and not on the underlying database. Your traffic should switch to the new cluster as quickly as possible.
  3. Once your traffic is fully migrated to the 0.13 cluster, decommission your 0.12 cluster.

You have now successfully upgraded your cluster to run 0.13 nodes exclusively.

Upgrade to 0.12.x

As it is the case most of the time, this new major version of Kong comes with a few database migrations, some breaking changes, databases deprecation notices, and minor updates to the NGINX configuration template.

This document will only highlight the breaking changes that you need to be aware of, and describe a recommended upgrade path. We recommend that you consult the full 0.12.0 Changelog for a complete list of changes and new features.

See below the breaking changes section for a detailed list of steps recommended to run migrations and upgrade from a previous version of Kong.

Deprecation notices

Starting with 0.12.0, we are announcing the deprecation of older versions of our supported databases:

  • Support for PostgreSQL 9.4 is deprecated. Users are advised to upgrade to 9.5+
  • Support for Cassandra 2.1 and below is deprecated. Users are advised to upgrade to 2.2+

Note that the above-deprecated versions are still supported in this release, but will be dropped in subsequent ones.

Breaking changes

Configuration
  • Several updates were made to the NGINX configuration template. If you are using a custom template, you must apply those modifications. See below for a list of changes to apply.
Core
  • The required OpenResty version has been bumped to 1.11.2.5. If you are installing Kong from one of our distribution packages, you are not affected by this change.
  • As Kong now executes subsequent plugins when a request is being short-circuited (e.g. HTTP 401 responses from auth plugins), plugins that run in the header or body filter phases will be run upon such responses from the access phase. It is possible that some of these plugins (e.g. your custom plugins) now run in scenarios where they were not previously expected to run.
Admin API
  • By default, the Admin API now only listens on the local interface. We consider this change to be an improvement in the default security policy of Kong. If you are already using Kong, and your Admin API still binds to all interfaces, consider updating it as well. You can do so by updating the admin_listen configuration value, like so: admin_listen = 127.0.0.1:8001.

    🔴 Note to Docker users: Beware of this change as you may have to ensure that your Admin API is reachable via the host's interface. You can use the -e KONG_ADMIN_LISTEN argument when provisioning your container(s) to update this value; for example, -e KONG_ADMIN_LISTEN=0.0.0.0:8001.

  • The /upstreams/:upstream_name_or_id/targets/ has been updated to not show the full list of Targets anymore, but only the ones that are currently active in the load balancer. To retrieve the full history of Targets, you can now query /upstreams/:upstream_name_or_id/targets/all. The /upstreams/:upstream_name_or_id/targets/active endpoint has been removed.

  • The orderlist property of Upstreams has been removed.

CLI
  • The $ kong compile command which was deprecated in 0.11.0 has been removed.
Plugins
  • In logging plugins, the request.request_uri field has been renamed to request.url.

If you use a custom NGINX configuration template from Kong 0.11, before attempting to run any 0.12 node, make sure to apply the following change to your template:

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index 5ab65ca3..8a6abd64 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -32,6 +32,7 @@ lua_shared_dict kong                5m;
 lua_shared_dict kong_cache          ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
 lua_shared_dict kong_process_events 5m;
 lua_shared_dict kong_cluster_events 5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_healthchecks   5m;
 > if database == "cassandra" then
 lua_shared_dict kong_cassandra      5m;
 > end

You can now start migrating your cluster from 0.11.x to 0.12. If you are doing this upgrade "in-place", against the datastore of a running 0.11 cluster, then for a short period of time, your database schema won't be fully compatible with your 0.11 nodes anymore. This is why we suggest either performing this upgrade when your 0.11 cluster is warm and most entities are cached, or against a new database, if you can migrate your data. If you wish to temporarily make your APIs unavailable, you can leverage the request-termination plugin.

The path to upgrade a 0.11 datastore is identical to the one of previous major releases:

  1. If you are planning on upgrading Kong while 0.11 nodes are running against the same datastore, make sure those nodes are warm enough (they should have most of your entities cached already), or temporarily disable your APIs.
  2. Provision a 0.12 node and configure it as you wish (environment variables/ configuration file). Make sure to point this new 0.12 node to your current datastore.
  3. Without starting the 0.12 node, run the 0.12 migrations against your current datastore:
$ kong migrations up [-c kong.conf]

As usual, this step should be executed from a single node.

  1. You can now provision a fresh 0.12 cluster pointing to your migrated datastore and start your 0.12 nodes.
  2. Gradually switch your traffic from the 0.11 cluster to the new 0.12 cluster. Remember, once your database is migrated, your 0.11 nodes will rely on their cache and not on the underlying database. Your traffic should switch to the new cluster as quickly as possible.
  3. Once your traffic is fully migrated to the 0.12 cluster, decommission your 0.11 cluster.

You have now successfully upgraded your cluster to run 0.12 nodes exclusively.

Upgrade to 0.11.x

Along with the usual database migrations shipped with our major releases, this particular release introduces quite a few changes in behavior and, most notably, the enforced manual migrations process and the removal of the Serf dependency for cache invalidation between Kong nodes of the same cluster.

This document will only highlight the breaking changes that you need to be aware of, and describe a recommended upgrade path. We recommend that you consult the full 0.11.0 Changelog for a complete list of changes and new features.

Breaking changes

Configuration
  • Several updates were made to the Nginx configuration template. If you are using a custom template, you must apply those modifications. See below for a list of changes to apply.
Migrations & Deployment
  • Migrations are not executed automatically by kong start anymore. Migrations are now a manual process, which must be executed via the kong migrations command. In practice, this means that you have to run kong migrations up [-c kong.conf] in one of your nodes before starting your Kong nodes. This command should be run from a single node/container to avoid several nodes running migrations concurrently and potentially corrupting your database. Once the migrations are up-to-date, it is considered safe to start multiple Kong nodes concurrently.
  • Serf is not a dependency anymore. Kong nodes now handle cache invalidation events via a built-in database polling mechanism. See the new "Datastore Cache" section of the configuration file which contains 3 new documented properties: db_update_frequency, db_update_propagation, and db_cache_ttl. If you are using Cassandra, you should pay a particular attention to the db_update_propagation setting, as you should not use the default value of 0.

Note for Docker users: Because of the aforementioned breaking change, if you are running Kong with Docker, you will now need to run the migrations from a single, ephemeral container. You can follow the Docker installation instructions (see "2. Prepare your database") for more details about this process.

Core
  • Kong now requires OpenResty 1.11.2.4. OpenResty's LuaJIT can now be built with Lua 5.2 compatibility, and the --without-luajit-lua52 flag can be omitted.
  • While Kong now correctly proxies downstream X-Forwarded-* headers, the introduction of the new trusted_ips property also means that Kong will only do so when the request comes from a trusted client IP. This is also the condition under which the X-Real-IP header will be trusted by Kong or not. In order to enforce security best practices, we took the stance of not trusting any client IP by default. If you wish to rely on such headers, you will need to configure trusted_ips (see the Kong configuration file) to your needs.
  • The API Object property http_if_terminated is now set to false by default. For Kong to evaluate the client X-Forwarded-Proto header, you must now configure Kong to trust the client IP (see above change), and you must explicitly set this value to true. This affects you if you are doing SSL termination somewhere before your requests hit Kong, and if you have configured https_only on the API, or if you use a plugin that requires HTTPS traffic (e.g. OAuth2).
  • The internal DNS resolver now honours the search and ndots configuration options of your resolv.conf file. Make sure that DNS resolution is still consistent in your environment, and consider eventually not using FQDNs anymore.
Admin API
  • Due to the removal of Serf, Kong is now entirely stateless. As such, the /cluster endpoint has for now disappeared. This endpoint, in previous versions of Kong, retrieved the state of the Serf agent running on other nodes to ensure they were part of the same cluster. Starting from 0.11, all Kong nodes connected to the same datastore are guaranteed to be part of the same cluster without requiring additional channels of communication.
  • The Admin API /status endpoint does not return a count of the database entities anymore. Instead, it now returns a database.reachable boolean value, which reflects the state of the connection between Kong and the underlying database. Please note that this flag does not reflect the health of the database itself.
Plugins development
  • The upstream URI is now determined via the Nginx $upstream_uri variable. Custom plugins using the ngx.req.set_uri() API will not be taken into consideration anymore. One must now set the ngx.var.upstream_uri variable from the Lua land.
  • The hooks.lua module for custom plugins is dropped, along with the database_cache.lua module. Database entities caching and eviction has been greatly improved to simplify and automate most caching use-cases. See the plugins development guide for more details about the new underlying mechanism, or see the below section of this document on how to update your plugin's cache invalidation mechanism for 0.11.0.
  • To ensure that the order of execution of plugins is still the same for vanilla Kong installations, we had to update the PRIORITY field of some of our bundled plugins. If your custom plugin must run after or before a specific bundled plugin, you might have to update your plugin's PRIORITY field as well. The complete list of plugins and their priorities is available on the plugins development guide.

Deprecations

CLI
  • The kong compile command has been deprecated. Instead, prefer using the new kong prepare command.

If you use a custom Nginx configuration template from Kong 0.10, before attempting to run any 0.11 node, make sure to apply the following changes to your template:

diff --git a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
index 3c038595..faa97ffe 100644
--- a/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
+++ b/kong/templates/nginx_kong.lua
@@ -19,25 +19,23 @@ error_log ${{PROXY_ERROR_LOG}} ${{LOG_LEVEL}};
 >-- reset_timedout_connection on; # disabled until benchmarked
 > end

-client_max_body_size 0;
+client_max_body_size ${{CLIENT_MAX_BODY_SIZE}};
 proxy_ssl_server_name on;
 underscores_in_headers on;

-real_ip_header X-Forwarded-For;
-set_real_ip_from 0.0.0.0/0;
-real_ip_recursive on;
-
 lua_package_path '${{LUA_PACKAGE_PATH}};;';
 lua_package_cpath '${{LUA_PACKAGE_CPATH}};;';
 lua_code_cache ${{LUA_CODE_CACHE}};
 lua_socket_pool_size ${{LUA_SOCKET_POOL_SIZE}};
 lua_max_running_timers 4096;
 lua_max_pending_timers 16384;
-lua_shared_dict kong 4m;
-lua_shared_dict cache ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
-lua_shared_dict cache_locks 100k;
-lua_shared_dict process_events 1m;
-lua_shared_dict cassandra 5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong                5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_cache          ${{MEM_CACHE_SIZE}};
+lua_shared_dict kong_process_events 5m;
+lua_shared_dict kong_cluster_events 5m;
+> if database == "cassandra" then
+lua_shared_dict kong_cassandra      5m;
+> end
 lua_socket_log_errors off;
 > if lua_ssl_trusted_certificate then
 lua_ssl_trusted_certificate '${{LUA_SSL_TRUSTED_CERTIFICATE}}';
@@ -45,8 +43,6 @@ lua_ssl_verify_depth ${{LUA_SSL_VERIFY_DEPTH}};
 > end

 init_by_lua_block {
-    require 'luarocks.loader'
-    require 'resty.core'
     kong = require 'kong'
     kong.init()
 }
@@ -65,28 +61,19 @@ upstream kong_upstream {
     keepalive ${{UPSTREAM_KEEPALIVE}};
 }

-map $http_upgrade $upstream_connection {
-    default keep-alive;
-    websocket upgrade;
-}
-
-map $http_upgrade $upstream_upgrade {
-    default '';
-    websocket websocket;
-}
-
 server {
     server_name kong;
-    listen ${{PROXY_LISTEN}};
-    error_page 404 408 411 412 413 414 417 /kong_error_handler;
+    listen ${{PROXY_LISTEN}}${{PROXY_PROTOCOL}};
+    error_page 400 404 408 411 412 413 414 417 /kong_error_handler;
     error_page 500 502 503 504 /kong_error_handler;

     access_log ${{PROXY_ACCESS_LOG}};
     error_log ${{PROXY_ERROR_LOG}} ${{LOG_LEVEL}};

+    client_body_buffer_size ${{CLIENT_BODY_BUFFER_SIZE}};

 > if ssl then
-    listen ${{PROXY_LISTEN_SSL}} ssl;
+    listen ${{PROXY_LISTEN_SSL}} ssl${{HTTP2}}${{PROXY_PROTOCOL}};
     ssl_certificate ${{SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{SSL_CERT_KEY}};
     ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
@@ -105,9 +92,22 @@ server {
     proxy_ssl_certificate_key ${{CLIENT_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
 > end

+    real_ip_header     ${{REAL_IP_HEADER}};
+    real_ip_recursive  ${{REAL_IP_RECURSIVE}};
+> for i = 1, #trusted_ips do
+    set_real_ip_from   $(trusted_ips[i]);
+> end
+
     location / {
-        set $upstream_host nil;
-        set $upstream_scheme nil;
+        set $upstream_host               '';
+        set $upstream_upgrade            '';
+        set $upstream_connection         '';
+        set $upstream_scheme             '';
+        set $upstream_uri                '';
+        set $upstream_x_forwarded_for    '';
+        set $upstream_x_forwarded_proto  '';
+        set $upstream_x_forwarded_host   '';
+        set $upstream_x_forwarded_port   '';

         rewrite_by_lua_block {
             kong.rewrite()
@@ -118,17 +118,18 @@ server {
         }

         proxy_http_version 1.1;
-        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
-        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
-        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
-        proxy_set_header Host $upstream_host;
-        proxy_set_header Upgrade $upstream_upgrade;
-        proxy_set_header Connection $upstream_connection;
-        proxy_pass_header Server;
-
-        proxy_ssl_name $upstream_host;
-
-        proxy_pass $upstream_scheme://kong_upstream;
+        proxy_set_header   Host              $upstream_host;
+        proxy_set_header   Upgrade           $upstream_upgrade;
+        proxy_set_header   Connection        $upstream_connection;
+        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-For   $upstream_x_forwarded_for;
+        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Proto $upstream_x_forwarded_proto;
+        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Host  $upstream_x_forwarded_host;
+        proxy_set_header   X-Forwarded-Port  $upstream_x_forwarded_port;
+        proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP         $remote_addr;
+        proxy_pass_header  Server;
+        proxy_pass_header  Date;
+        proxy_ssl_name     $upstream_host;
+        proxy_pass         $upstream_scheme://kong_upstream$upstream_uri;

         header_filter_by_lua_block {
             kong.header_filter()
@@ -146,7 +147,7 @@ server {
     location = /kong_error_handler {
         internal;
         content_by_lua_block {
-            require('kong.core.error_handlers')(ngx)
+            kong.handle_error()
         }
     }
 }
@@ -162,7 +163,7 @@ server {
     client_body_buffer_size 10m;

 > if admin_ssl then
-    listen ${{ADMIN_LISTEN_SSL}} ssl;
+    listen ${{ADMIN_LISTEN_SSL}} ssl${{ADMIN_HTTP2}};
     ssl_certificate ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT}};
     ssl_certificate_key ${{ADMIN_SSL_CERT_KEY}};
     ssl_protocols TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2;
@@ -176,15 +177,7 @@ server {
     location / {
         default_type application/json;
         content_by_lua_block {
-            ngx.header['Access-Control-Allow-Origin'] = '*'
-
-            if ngx.req.get_method() == 'OPTIONS' then
-                ngx.header['Access-Control-Allow-Methods'] = 'GET,HEAD,PUT,PATCH,POST,DELETE'
-                ngx.header['Access-Control-Allow-Headers'] = 'Content-Type'
-                ngx.exit(204)
-            end
-
-            require('lapis').serve('kong.api')
+            kong.serve_admin_api()
         }
     }

Once those changes have been applied, you will be able to benefit from the new configuration properties and bug fixes that 0.11 introduces.


If you are maintaining your own plugin, and if you are using the 0.10.x database_cache.lua module to cache your datastore entities, you probably included a hooks.lua module in your plugin as well.

In 0.11, most of the clutter surrounding cache invalidation is now gone, and handled automatically by Kong for most use-cases.

  • The hooks.lua module is now ignored by Kong. You can safely remove it from your plugins.
  • The database_cache.lua module is replaced with singletons.cache. You should not require database_cache anymore in your plugin's code.

To update your plugin's caching mechanism to 0.11, you must implement automatic or manual invalidation.

Automatic cache invalidation

Let's assume your plugin had the following code that we wish to update for 0.11 compatibility:

local credential, err = cache.get_or_set(cache.keyauth_credential_key(key),
                                         nil, load_credential, key)
if err then
  return responses.send_HTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR(err)
end

Along with the following hooks.lua file:

local events = require "kong.core.events"
local cache = require "kong.tools.database_cache"

local function invalidate(message_t)
  if message_t.collection == "keyauth_credentials" then
    cache.delete(cache.keyauth_credential_key(message_t.old_entity     and
                                              message_t.old_entity.key or
                                              message_t.entity.key))
  end
end

return {
  [events.TYPES.ENTITY_UPDATED] = function(message_t)
    invalidate(message_t)
  end,
  [events.TYPES.ENTITY_DELETED] = function(message_t)
    invalidate(message_t)
  end
}

By adding the following cache_key property to your custom entity's schema:

local SCHEMA = {
  primary_key = { "id" },
  table = "keyauth_credentials",
  cache_key = { "key" }, -- cache key for this entity
  fields = {
    id = { type = "id" },
    consumer_id = { type = "id", required = true, foreign = "consumers:id"},
    key = { type = "string", required = false, unique = true }
  }
}

return { keyauth_credentials = SCHEMA }

You can now generate a unique cache key for that entity and cache it like so in your business logic and hot code paths:

local singletons = require "kong.singletons"

local apikey = request.get_uri_args().apikey
local cache_key = singletons.dao.keyauth_credentials:cache_key(apikey)

local credential, err = singletons.cache:get(cache_key, nil, load_entity_key,
                                             apikey)
if err then
  return response.HTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR(err)
end

-- do something with the retrieved credential

Now, cache invalidation will be an automatic process: every CRUD operation that affects this API key will make Kong auto-generate the affected cache_key, and send broadcast it to all of the other nodes on the cluster so they can evict that particular value from their cache, and fetch the fresh value from the datastore on the next request.

When a parent entity is receiving a CRUD operation (e.g. the Consumer owning this API key, as per our schema's consumer_id attribute), Kong performs the cache invalidation mechanism for both the parent and the child entity.

Thanks to this new property, the hooks.lua module is not required anymore and your plugins can perform datastore caching much more easily.

Manual cache invalidation

In some cases, the cache_key property of an entity's schema is not flexible enough, and one must manually invalidate its cache. Reasons for this could be that the plugin is not defining a relationship with another entity via the traditional foreign = "parent_entity:parent_attribute" syntax, or because it is not using the cache_key method from its DAO, or even because it is somehow abusing the caching mechanism.

In those cases, you can manually set up your own subscriber to the same invalidation channels Kong is listening to, and perform your own, custom invalidation work. This process is similar to the old hooks.lua module.

To listen on invalidation channels inside of Kong, implement the following in your plugin's init_worker handler:

local singletons = require "kong.singletons"

function MyCustomHandler:init_worker()
  local worker_events = singletons.worker_events

  -- listen to all CRUD operations made on Consumers
  worker_events.register(function(data)

  end, "crud", "consumers")

  -- or, listen to a specific CRUD operation only
  worker_events.register(function(data)
    print(data.operation)  -- "update"
    print(data.old_entity) -- old entity table (only for "update")
    print(data.entity)     -- new entity table
    print(data.schema)     -- entity's schema
  end, "crud", "consumers:update")
end

Once the above listeners are in place for the desired entities, you can perform manual invalidations of any entity that your plugin has cached as you wish so. For instance:

singletons.worker_events.register(function(data)
  if data.operation == "delete" then
    local cache_key = data.entity.id
    singletons.cache:invalidate("prefix:" .. cache_key)
  end
end, "crud", "consumers")

You can now start migrating your cluster from 0.10.x to 0.11. If you are doing this upgrade "in-place", against the datastore of a running 0.10 cluster, then for a short period of time, your database schema won't be fully compatible with your 0.10 nodes anymore. This is why we suggest either performing this upgrade when your 0.10 cluster is warm and most entities are cached, or against a new database, if you can migrate your data. If you wish to temporarily make your APIs unavailable, you can leverage the new request-termination plugin.

The path to upgrade a 0.10 datastore is identical to the one of previous major releases:

  1. If you are planning on upgrading Kong while 0.10 nodes are running against the same datastore, make sure those nodes are warm enough (they should have most of your entities cached already), or temporarily disable your APIs.
  2. Provision a 0.11 node and configure it as you wish (environment variables/ configuration file). Make sure to point this new 0.11 node to your current datastore.
  3. Without starting the 0.11 node, run the 0.11 migrations against your current datastore:
$ kong migrations up [-c kong.conf]

As usual, this step should be executed from a single node.

  1. You can now provision a fresh 0.11 cluster pointing to your migrated datastore and start your 0.11 nodes.
  2. Gradually switch your traffic from the 0.10 cluster to the new 0.11 cluster. Remember, once your database is migrated, your 0.10 nodes will rely on their cache and not on the underlying database. Your traffic should switch to the new cluster as quickly as possible.
  3. Once your traffic is fully migrated to the 0.11 cluster, decommission your 0.10 cluster.

Once all of your 0.10 nodes are fully decommissioned, you can consider removing the Serf executable from your environment as well, since Kong 0.11 does not depend on it anymore.

Upgrade to 0.10.x

Due to the breaking changes introduced in this version, we recommend that you carefully test your cluster deployment.

Kong 0.10 introduced the following breaking changes:

  • API Objects (as configured via the Admin API) do not support the request_host and request_uri fields anymore. The 0.10 migrations should upgrade your current API Objects, but make sure to read the new 0.10 Proxy Guide to learn the new routing capabilities of Kong. This means that Kong can now route incoming requests according to a combination of Host headers, URIs, and HTTP methods.
  • The upstream_url field of API Objects does not accept trailing slashes anymore.
  • Dynamic SSL certificates serving is now handled by the core and not through the ssl plugin anymore. This version introduced the /certificates and /snis endpoints. See the new 0.10 Proxy Guide to learn more about how to configure your SSL certificates on your APIs. The ssl plugin has been removed.
  • The preferred version of OpenResty is now 1.11.2.2. However, this version requires that you compiled OpenResty with the --without-luajit-lua52 flag. Make sure to do so if you install OpenResty and Kong from source.
  • Dnsmasq is not a dependency anymore (However, be careful before removing it if you configured it to be your DNS name server via Kong's resolver property)
  • The cassandra_contact_points property does not allow specifying a port anymore. All Cassandra nodes must listen on the same port, which can be tweaked via the cassandra_port property.
  • If you are upgrading to 0.10.1 or 0.10.2 and using the CORS plugin, pay extra attention to a regression that was introduced in 0.10.1: Previously, the plugin would send the * wildcard when config.origin was not specified. With this change, the plugin does not send the * wildcard by default anymore. You will need to specify it manually when configuring the plugin, with config.origins=*. This behavior is to be fixed in a future release.

We recommend that you consult the full 0.10.0 Changelog for a full list of changes and new features, including load balancing capabilities, support for Cassandra 3.x, SRV records resolution, and much more.

Here is how to ensure a smooth upgrade from a Kong 0.9.x cluster to 0.10:

  1. Make sure your 0.9 cluster is warm because your datastore will be incompatible with your 0.9 Kong nodes once migrated. Most of your entities should be cached by the running Kong nodes already (APIs, Consumers, Plugins).
  2. Provision a 0.10 node and configure it as you wish (environment variables/ configuration file). Make sure to point this new 0.10 node to your current datastore.
  3. Without starting the 0.10 node, run the 0.10 migrations against your current datastore:
$ kong migrations up <-c kong.conf>

As usual, this step should be executed from a single node.

  1. You can now provision a fresh 0.10 cluster pointing to your migrated datastore and start your 0.10 nodes.
  2. Gradually switch your traffic from the 0.9 cluster to the new 0.10 cluster. Remember, once your database is migrated, your 0.9 nodes will rely on their cache and not on the underlying database. Your traffic should switch to the new cluster as quickly as possible.
  3. Once your traffic is fully migrated to the 0.10 cluster, decommission your 0.9 cluster.

Upgrade to 0.9.x

PostgreSQL is the new default datastore for Kong. If you were using Cassandra and you are upgrading, you must explicitly set cassandra as your database.

This release introduces a new CLI, which uses the lua-resty-cli interpreter. As such, the resty executable (shipped in the OpenResty bundle) must be available in your $PATH. Additionally, the bin/kong executable is not installed through Luarocks anymore, and must be placed in your $PATH as well. This change of behavior is taken care of if you are using one of the official Kong packages.

Once Kong updated, familiarize yourself with its new configuration format, and consider setting some of its properties via environment variables if the need arises. This behavior, as well as all available settings, are documented in the kong.conf.default file shipped with this version.

Once your nodes configured, we recommend that you seemingly redirect your traffic through the new Kong 0.9 nodes before decommissioning your old nodes.

Upgrade to 0.8.x

No important breaking changes for this release, just be careful to not use the long deprecated routes /consumers/:consumer/keyauth/ and /consumers/:consumer/basicauth/ as instructed in the Changelog. As always, also make sure to check the configuration file for new properties (this release allows you to configure the read/write consistency of Cassandra).

Let's talk about PostgreSQL. To use it instead of Cassandra, follow those steps:

  • Get your hands on a 9.4+ server (being compatible with Postgres 9.4 allows you to use Amazon RDS)
  • Create a database, (maybe a user too?), let's say kong
  • Update your Kong configuration:
# as always, be careful about your YAML formatting
database: postgres
postgres:
  host: "127.0.0.1"
  port: 5432
  user: kong
  password: kong
  database: kong

As usual, migrations should run from kong start, but as a reminder and just in case, here are some tips:

Reset the database with (careful, you'll lose all data):

$ kong migrations reset --config kong.yml

Run the migrations manually with:

$ kong migrations up --config kong.yml

If needed, list your migrations for debug purposes with:

$ kong migrations list --config kong.yml

Note: This release does not provide a mean to migrate from Cassandra to PostgreSQL. Additionally, we recommend that you do not use kong reload if you switch your cluster from Cassandra to PostgreSQL. Instead, we recommend that you migrate by spawning a new cluster and gradually redirect your traffic before decommissioning your old nodes.

Upgrade to 0.7.x

If you are running a source installation, you will need to upgrade OpenResty to its 1.9.7.* version. The good news is that this family of releases does not need to patch the NGINX core anymore to enable SSL support. If you install Kong from one of the distribution packages, they already include the appropriate OpenResty, simply download and install the appropriate package for your platform.

As described in the Changelog, this upgrade has benefits, such as the SSL support and fixes for critical NGINX vulnerabilities, but also requires that you upgrade the nginx property of your Kong config because it is not backwards compatible.

  • We advise that you retrieve the nginx property from the 0.7.x configuration file, and use it in yours with the changes you feel are appropriate.

  • Finally, you can reload Kong as usual:

$ kong reload [-c configuration_file]

Note: We expose the underlying NGINX configuration as a way for Kong to be as flexible as possible and allow you to bend your NGINX instance to your needs. We are aware that many of you do not need to customize it and such changes should not affect you. Plans are to embed the NGINX configuration in Kong, while still allowing customization for the most demanding users. #217 is the place to discuss this and share thoughts/needs.

Upgrade to 0.6.x

Note: if you are using Kong 0.4.x or earlier, you must first upgrade to Kong 0.5.x.

The configuration file changed in this release. Make sure to check out the new default one and update it to your needs. In particular, make sure that:

plugins_available:
  - key-auth
  - ...
  - custom-plugin
proxy_port: ...
proxy_ssl_port: ...
admin_api_port: ...
databases_available:
  cassandra:
    properties:
      contact_points:
        - ...

becomes:

custom_plugins:
  - only-custom-plugins
proxy_listen: ...
proxy_listen_ssl: ...
admin_api_listen: ...
cassandra:
  contact_points:
    - ...

Secondly, if you installed Kong from source or maintain a development installation, you will need to have Serf installed on your system and available in your $PATH. Serf is included with all the distribution packages and images available at getkong.org/install.

The same way, this should already be the case but make sure that LuaJIT is in your $PATH too as the CLI interpreter switched from Lua 5.1 to LuaJIT. Distribution packages also include LuaJIT.

In order to start Kong with its new clustering and cache invalidation capabilities, you will need to restart your node(s) (and not reload):

$ kong restart [-c configuration_file]

Read more about the new clustering capabilities of Kong 0.6.0 and its configurations in the Clustering documentation.

Upgrade to 0.5.x

Migrating to 0.5.x can be done without downtime by following those instructions. It is important that you be running Kong 0.4.2 and have the latest release of Python 2.7 on your system when executing those steps.

Several changes were introduced in this version: some plugins and properties were renamed and the database schema slightly changed to introduce "plugins migrations". Now, each plugin can have its own migration if it needs to store data in your cluster. This is not a regular migration since the schema of the table handling the migrations itself changed.

1. Configuration file

You will need to update your configuration file. Replace the plugins_available values with:

plugins_available:
  - ssl
  - jwt
  - acl
  - cors
  - oauth2
  - tcp-log
  - udp-log
  - file-log
  - http-log
  - key-auth
  - hmac-auth
  - basic-auth
  - ip-restriction
  - mashape-analytics
  - request-transformer
  - response-transformer
  - request-size-limiting
  - rate-limiting
  - response-ratelimiting

You can still remove plugins you don't use for a lighter Kong.

Also replace the Cassandra hosts property with contact_points:

properties:
  contact_points:
    - "..."
    - "..."
  timeout: 1000
  keyspace: kong
  keepalive: 60000
2. Migration script

This Python script will take care of migrating your database schema should you execute the following instructions:

# First, make sure you are already running Kong 0.4.2

# Clone the Kong git repository if you don't already have it:
$ git clone https://github.com/Kong/kong.git

# Go to the 'scripts/' folder:
$ cd kong/scripts

# Install the Python script dependencies:
$ pip install cassandra-driver==2.7.2 pyyaml

# The script will use the first Cassandra contact point in your Kong configuration file
# (the first of the 'contact_points' property) so make sure it is valid and has the format 'host:port'.

# Run the migration script:
$ python migration.py -c /path/to/kong/config

If everything went well the script should print a success message. At this point, your database is compatible with both Kong 0.4.2 and 0.5.x. If you are running more than one Kong node, you simply have to follow step 3. for each one of them now.

3. Upgrade without downtime

You can now upgrade Kong to 0.5.x. Proceed as a regular upgrade and follow the suggested upgrade path, in particular, the kong reload command.

4. Purge your Cassandra cluster

Finally, once Kong has restarted in 0.5.x, run the migration script again, with the --purge flag:

$ python migration.py -c /path/to/kong/config --purge

Your cluster is now fully migrated to 0.5.x.

Other changes to acknowledge

Some entities and properties were renamed to avoid confusion:

  • Properties belonging to APIs entities have been renamed for clarity:
    • public_dns -> request_host
    • path -> request_path
    • strip_path -> strip_request_path
    • target_url -> upstream_url
  • plugins_configurations have been renamed to plugins, and their value property has been renamed to config to avoid confusions.
  • The Key authentication and Basic authentication plugins routes have changed:
Old route                             New route
/consumers/:consumer/keyauth       -> /consumers/:consumer/key-auth
/consumers/:consumer/keyauth/:id   -> /consumers/:consumer/key-auth/:id
/consumers/:consumer/basicauth     -> /consumers/:consumer/basic-auth
/consumers/:consumer/basicauth/:id -> /consumers/:consumer/basic-auth/:id

The old routes are still maintained but will be removed in upcoming versions. Consider them deprecated.

  • Admin API:
    • The route to retrieve enabled plugins is now under /plugins/enabled.
    • The route to retrieve a plugin's configuration schema is now under /plugins/schema/{plugin name}.

Upgrade to Kong 0.4.2

The configuration format for specifying the port of your Cassandra instance changed. Replace:

cassandra:
  properties:
    hosts: "localhost"
    port: 9042

by:

cassandra:
  properties:
    hosts:
      - "localhost:9042"

Upgrade to 0.3.x

Kong now requires a patch on OpenResty for SSL support. On Homebrew you will need to reinstall OpenResty.

Homebrew

$ brew update
$ brew reinstall mashape/kong/ngx_openresty
$ brew upgrade kong

Troubleshoot

If you are seeing a similar error on kong start:

nginx: [error] [lua] init_by_lua:5: Startup error: Cassandra error: Failed to
prepare statement: "SELECT id FROM apis WHERE path = ?;". Cassandra returned
error (Invalid): "Undefined name path in where clause ('path = ?')"

You can run the following command to update your schema:

$ kong migrations up

Please consider updating to 0.3.1 or greater which automatically handles the schema migration.