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Upgrading Tyk

Last updated: 8 minutes read.

Introduction

Before proceeding with any Tyk component upgrades, please read this guide thoroughly.

This page provides guidance for upgrading your Tyk installation. When upgrading Tyk, you need to consider each component (e.g. Gateway, Pump, Dashboard) separately, taking into account the deployment style you’ve implemented. We have structured this guide by deployment type (e.g. Cloud, Self-Managed, etc.) to keep all the information you need in one place.

Important to know

All our components adhere to a few common standards:

Upgrade Tyk components in Tyk Cloud

Tyk Cloud users manage Tyk deployments via the Tyk Cloud Console. You can upgrade Tyk Dashboard and the gateways in the Cloud Data Planes using this console. Please read about upgrading control planes to see the exact upgrade steps!

Tyk Gateway Upgrade - Used in Licensed and Open Source Deployments

This section applies to all self-managed components, including licensed and open-source.

All our components share a few common standards:

  • Upgrades do not overwrite your configuration files. However, it is a good practice to back up these files routinely (using git or another tool). We strongly recommend taking a backup before upgrading Tyk. The upgrade will deploy new copies of startup scripts, so any customizations should be saved in advance
  • You do not need to migrate or run migration scripts for your APIs, policies or other assets created in Tyk unless specifically stated in the release (and it rarely happens).
  • Upgrading is trivial and similar to any other product upgrade done in Linux, Docker, Kubernetes, or Helm. It essentially means pulling the new images from public directories. You can find the list of all our releases in the following links:
  • The above repositories will be updated when new versions are released

Production Environment Upgrade

Regardless of your deployment choice (Linux, Docker, Kubernetes), we recommend the following upgrade process:

  1. Backup your gateway config file (tyk.conf or the name you chose for it)
  2. Get/update the latest binary (i.e. update the docker image name in the command, Kubernetes manifest or values.yaml of Helm chart or get the latest packages with apt get)
  3. Use deployment’s best practices for a rolling update (in local, non-shared, non-production environments simply restart the gateway)
  4. Check the log to see that the new version is used and that the gateway is up and running
  5. Check that the gateway is healthy using the open /hello API.

Docker Upgrade

Development environment

In a development environment where you can simply restart your gateways, follow these steps:

  1. Backup your gateway config file (tyk.conf or the name you chose for it)
  2. Update the image version in the docker command or script
  3. Restart the gateway. For example, update the following command to v5.1 and run it as follows:
$ docker run \
  --name tyk_gateway \
  --network tyk \
  -p 8080:8080 \
  -v $(pwd)/tyk.standalone.conf:/opt/tyk-gateway/tyk.conf \
  -v $(pwd)/apps:/opt/tyk-gateway/apps \
  docker.tyk.io/tyk-gateway/tyk-gateway:v5.1

For full details, check the usual installation page under Docker standalone tab.

Docker compose upgrade in a simple environment

When upgrading a non-production environment where it’s okay to have a brief downtime and you can simply restart your gateways, follow these steps:

  1. Backup your gateway config file (tyk.conf or the name you chose for it)
  2. Update the image version in the docker-compose.yaml file.
    For example, this docker-compose.yaml has this line image: docker.tyk.io/tyk-gateway/tyk-gateway:v4.3.3. Change 4.3.3 to the version you want to use.
  3. Restart the gateway (or stop and start it)
$ docker compose restart
  1. Check the log to see that the new version is used and if the gateway is up and running
  2. Check that the gateway is healthy
$ curl  localhost:8080/hello | jq .
{
  "status": "pass",
  "version": "5.1.0",
  "description": "Tyk GW",
  "details": {
    "redis": {
      "status": "pass",
      "componentType": "datastore",
      "time": "2023-07-17T21:07:27Z"
    }
  }
}

Production Environment Upgrade

  1. Backup your gateway config file
  2. Use Docker’s best practices for a rolling update
  3. Check the log to see that the new version is used and if the gateway is up and running
  4. Check that the gateway is healthy

Kubernetes Upgrade

Simple Kubernetes environment upgrade

When upgrading a non-production environment where it’s okay to have a brief downtime and you can simply restart your gateways, the upgrade is trivial as with any other image you want to upgrade in Kubernetes:

In a similar way to docker:

  1. Backup your gateway config file (tyk.conf or the name you chose for it)
  2. Update the image version in the manifest file.
  3. Apply the file/s using kubectl
$ kubectl apply -f .

You will see that the deployment has changed.

Now you can check the gateway pod to see the latest events (do kubectl get pods to get the pod name):

$ kubectl describe pods <gateway pod name>

You should see that the image was pulled, the container got created and the gateway started running again, similar to the following output:

Events:
  Type    Reason     Age   From               Message
  ----    ------     ----  ----               -------
  Normal  Scheduled  118s  default-scheduler  Successfully assigned tyk/tyk-gtw-89dc9f554-5487c to docker-desktop
  Normal  Pulling    117s  kubelet            Pulling image "tykio/tyk-gateway:v5.0"
  Normal  Pulled     70s   kubelet            Successfully pulled image "tykio/tyk-gateway:v5.0" in 47.245940479s
  Normal  Created    70s   kubelet            Created container tyk-gtw
  Normal  Started    70s   kubelet            Started container tyk-gtw
  1. Check the log to see that the new version is used and if the gateway is up and running
$ kubectl logs service/gateway-svc-tyk-gateway-tyk-headless --tail=100 --follow 
Defaulted container "gateway-tyk-headless" out of: gateway-tyk-headless, setup-directories (init)
time="Jul 17 20:58:27" level=info msg="Tyk API Gateway 5.1.0" prefix=main
...
  1. Check the gateway is healthy
$ curl  localhost:8080/hello | jq .
{
  "status": "pass",
  "version": "5.1.0",
  "description": "Tyk GW",
  "details": {
    "redis": {
      "status": "pass",
      "componentType": "datastore",
      "time": "2023-07-17T21:07:27Z"
    }
  }
}

Upgrade Tyk K8S Demo deployment

  1. In the Tyk k8s Demo repo, change the version in .env file, GATEWAY_VERSION=v5.1 to the version you want
  2. Restart the deployment
  3. Check the log file

Helm charts

Instructions for upgrading Tyk gateway. You should follow the same flow for Tyk Dashboard, Tyk Pump and MDCB.

  1. Backup your gateway config file (tyk.conf or the name you chose for it).
  2. Update the image version in your values.yaml
    For example, in this values.yaml change the version of the tag tag: v5.1 to the version you want.
  3. Run Helm upgrade with your relevant values.yaml file/s.
    Check the helm upgrade docs for more details on the upgrade command.

Other installation choices

When upgrading Linux distributions, it’s essential to use the exact version to avoid upgrading other unrelated packages unintentionally. You can find the package you want in the Packagecloud repository. For example, if you are looking for Tyk Gateway’s packages for version v5.0, you can use the following search query: https://packagecloud.io/app/tyk/tyk-gateway/search?q=tyk-gateway-5.0

To identify your specific installation type, refer to the installation options page. Then, follow the same steps explained above for the production environment upgrade based on your chosen installation method.

Tyk Hybrid Gateway Upgrade

This gateway serves as your gateway data plane and is used to connect to the Tyk Cloud Control Plane or to your self-managed control plane, (MDCB). The Tyk Hybrid Gateway is the same binary as Tyk Gateway but with a different setting in the config file. Follow the above instructions based on your installation type.

Tyk Self-Managed

Components installation order in a production environment

In a production environment, where we recommend installing the Dashboard, Gateway and Pump on separate machines, you should upgrade components in the following sequence:

  1. Tyk Dashboard
  2. Tyk Gateway
  3. Tyk Pump

Tyk is compatible with a blue-green or rolling update strategy.

For a single-machine installation, follow the instructions below for your operating system.

Ubuntu Upgrade

Use apt to update and upgrade as you would normally do with other apps.

RHEL Upgrade

Example for release v5.0.0

sudo yum upgrade tyk-dashboard-5.0.0

Use the exact version to avoid upgrading other unrelated packages. You can find the package you want in the Packagecloud. For example, to find the Tyk Dashboard’s packages for v5.0 you can use the following search query https://packagecloud.io/app/tyk/tyk-dashboard/search?q=5.0

Tyk Self-Managed Multi Data Centre Bridge (MDCB) Upgrade

Our recommended sequence for upgrading an MDCB installation is as follows:

First, install the components of the Tyk Control Plane in the following order:

  1. MDCB
  2. Tyk Pump (if in use)
  3. Tyk Dashboard
  4. Tyk Gateway

Then the components in Tyk Data Planes, in the following order:

  1. Tyk Pump (if in use)
  2. Tyk Gateway

We do this to be backwards compatible and upgrade the MDCB component first, followed by the other component in the control plane and then the data plane to ensure that:

  1. It’s extremely fast to see if there are connectivity issues, but the way Gateways in Hybrid mode work means they keep working even if disconnected
  2. It ensures that we don’t have forward compatibility issues (new Gateway -> old MDCB)

Tyk is compatible with a blue-green or rolling update strategy.

Tyk Go Plugins

We release a new version of our Tyk Go plugin compiler binary with each release. You will need to rebuild your Go plugins when updating to a new release. See Rebuilding Go Plugins for more details.

Migrating from MongoDB to SQL

We have a migration tool to help you manage the switch from MongoDB to SQL.

Don’t Have Tyk Yet?

Get started now, for free, or contact us with any questions.

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