Upgrade Milvus Cluster with Helm Chart

This guide describes how to upgrade your Milvus 2.6.x cluster to v3.0.0 using Helm.

Prerequisites

• Helm 3.14.0 or later
• An existing Milvus 2.6.x deployment managed by Helm
• The Helm values used for the existing deployment
• A current backup of Milvus metadata and persistent data

Message Queue limitations: When upgrading to Milvus v3.0.0, you must maintain your current message queue choice. Switching between different message queue systems during the upgrade is not supported. Support for changing message queue systems will be available in future versions.

Upgrade process

The validated Milvus 2.6.20 deployment created with Helm Chart 5.0.22 used MixCoord and StreamingNode and did not run IndexNode. You do not need a separate coordinator-migration step when your deployment uses the same topology.

Step 1: Confirm the current topology

Save the complete values of the current release and check the running Pods:

helm get values <release-name> \
  --namespace <namespace> \
  --all > milvus-values-before-upgrade.yaml

kubectl get pods --namespace <namespace>

Confirm that the cluster uses MixCoord and StreamingNode and that no IndexNode Pod is running. The upgrade command later in this guide preserves the existing Helm values. If your current values enable IndexNode or use another component topology, do not run this image-only upgrade. Reproduce the topology in a non-production environment and obtain an engineering-approved migration plan first.

Step 2: Update the Helm repository

Add or update the Milvus Helm repository:

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

Step 3: Upgrade Milvus

Check the Chart version installed for your Helm release:

helm list --namespace <namespace>

In the CHART column, remove the milvus- prefix from the value and use the remaining version as <current-chart-version>. Then run the upgrade command:

helm upgrade <release-name> zilliztech/milvus \
  --namespace <namespace> \
  --version <current-chart-version> \
  --set image.all.tag="v3.0.0" \
  --reset-then-reuse-values \
  --wait \
  --timeout 30m

The --reset-then-reuse-values option retains the values from the previous release while applying the explicit image override against the selected Chart defaults.

Verify the upgrade

Check the Helm revision, Pod status, and container images:

helm history <release-name> --namespace <namespace>

kubectl get pods --namespace <namespace>

kubectl get pods --namespace <namespace> \
  -o jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.name}{"\t"}{range .spec.containers[*]}{.image}{" "}{end}{"\n"}{end}'

Verify that all required workloads are ready, all Milvus components use v3.0.0, and your existing collections remain queryable and searchable. Complete these checks before you enable any v3.0.0-specific feature.