Upgrade Milvus Cluster with Helm Chart

This guide describes how to upgrade your Milvus cluster from v2.5.x to v2.6.0 using Helm Chart.

Before you start

What’s new in v2.6.0

Upgrading from Milvus 2.5.x to 2.6.0 involves significant architectural changes:

• Coordinator consolidation: Legacy separate coordinators (dataCoord, queryCoord, indexCoord) have been consolidated into a single mixCoord
• New components: Introduction of Streaming Node for enhanced data processing
• Component removal: indexNode removed and consolidated

This upgrade process ensures proper migration to the new architecture. For more information on architecture changes, refer to Milvus Architecture Overview.

Requirements

System requirements:

• Helm version >= 3.14.0
• Kubernetes version >= 1.20.0
• Milvus cluster deployed via Helm Chart

Compatibility requirements:

• Milvus v2.6.0-rc1 is not compatible with v2.6.0. Direct upgrades from release candidates are not supported.
• If you are currently running v2.6.0-rc1 and need to preserve your data, please refer to this community guide for migration assistance.
• You must upgrade to v2.5.16 or later with mixCoordinator enabled before upgrading to v2.6.0.

Upgrade process

Step 1: Upgrade Helm Chart

First, upgrade your Milvus Helm chart to version 5.0.0:

helm repo add zilliztech https://zilliztech.github.io/milvus-helm
helm repo update zilliztech

To check Helm chart version compatibility with Milvus versions:

helm search repo zilliztech/milvus --versions

This guide assumes you are installing the latest version. If you need to install a specific version, specify the --version parameter accordingly.

Step 2: Upgrade to v2.5.16 with mixCoordinator

Check if your cluster currently uses separate coordinators:

kubectl get pods

If you see separate coordinator pods (datacoord, querycoord, indexcoord), upgrade to v2.5.16 and enable mixCoordinator:

helm upgrade my-release zilliztech/milvus \
  --set image.all.tag="v2.5.16" \
  --set mixCoordinator.enabled=true \
  --set rootCoordinator.enabled=false \
  --set indexCoordinator.enabled=false \
  --set queryCoordinator.enabled=false \
  --set dataCoordinator.enabled=false \
  --reset-then-reuse-values \
  --version=4.2.58

helm upgrade my-release zilliztech/milvus \
  --set image.all.tag="v2.5.16" \
  --reset-then-reuse-values \
  --version=4.2.58

Wait for the upgrade to complete:

# Verify all pods are ready
kubectl get pods

Step 3: Upgrade to v2.6.0

Once v2.5.16 is running successfully with mixCoordinator, upgrade to v2.6.0:

helm upgrade my-release zilliztech/milvus \
  --set image.all.tag="v2.6.0" \
  --set streaming.enabled=true \
  --set indexNode.enabled=false \
  --reset-then-reuse-values \
  --version=5.0.0

Verify the upgrade

Confirm your cluster is running the new version:

# Check pod status
kubectl get pods

# Verify Helm release
helm list

For additional support, consult the Milvus documentation or community forum.