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Upgrading Overview

Learn about the ways you can upgrade Cribl Edge, as well as general and version-specific upgrade considerations.

Ways to Upgrade Cribl Edge
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You can upgrade Cribl Edge in two ways:

General Upgrade Considerations
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Here are some considerations to review before you upgrade.

  • Upgrading Edge Nodes from the Leader requires a Standard or Enterprise license.

  • Cribl Edge does not support direct upgrades from any pre-GA version (such as a Cribl-provided test candidate) to a GA version. To get the GA version running, you must perform a new install.

  • Before upgrading your Leader to v.4.0 and later, see Persisting Socket Connections to prepare the host to keep communications open from Edge Nodes.

  • Cribl Edge 4.1 and later encrypts TLS certificate private key files when you add or modify them. See instructions just below for backing up your keys from earlier versions.

Leader and Edge Nodes Compatibility
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Leaders on v.4.2.x are compatible with Edge Nodes on v.4.1.2, v.4.1.3, and later. Due to a security update, Edge Nodes running on v.4.0.4 cannot receive configurations from v.4.2.x Leaders.

Upgrading to v.3.5.4
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If you’re planning to upgrade to v.3.5.4, note that any Edge Nodes must be at the same version as the Leader for v.3.5.4. Leaders running v.3.5.4 and later should test whether Edge Nodes are running a compatible version before deploying configs that could break Edge Nodes’ data flow. The Leader will prompt you to upgrade these Nodes as needed.

To prevent Edge Nodes from failing on incompatible configurations, we introduced three new behaviors announced in Cribl Edge 3.5.4 release notes. These will make data throughput more resilient, but might enforce more-frequent (automated or explicit) upgrades to Nodes’ Edge versions:

  • The Edge Leader will block configuration deployments to Edge Nodes running an earlier Edge version that’s incompatible with the new configs. The Leader will prompt you to upgrade these Nodes to a compatible version.
  • If Edge Nodes detect a Source or Destination type for which they have no supporting configuration, they will ignore (skip initializing) that integration, rather than failing.
  • For unsupported Destination types, Nodes will create a temporary placeholder Destination, but will exert Blocking backpressure until the configuration is updated. You will see a warning of the form: Skipping configuring Destination...due to unrecognized type.

Safeguarding Unencrypted Private Keys for Rollback
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Cribl Edge 4.1 and later encrypt TLS certificate private key files when you add or modify them.

Before upgrading from a pre-4.1 version, make a backup copy of all unencrypted TLS certificate private key files. Having access to the unencrypted files is essential if you later find that you need to roll back to your previous version.

To safeguard your unencrypted private keys, make a full backup of all Cribl config files. Files in the auth/certs directory are particularly important, such as those in:

  • groups/default/local/cribl/auth/certs/
  • groups/<groupname>/local/cribl/auth/certs/
  • cribl/local/cribl/auth/certs/
  • Etc.

Take appropriate precautions to prevent unauthorized access to these unencrypted private key files. If you need to roll back to a pre-4.1 version, see Restoring Unencrypted Private Keys.

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