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update version of MariaDB Cluster

This guide will show you how to use KubeDB Enterprise operator to update the version of MariaDB Cluster.

Before You Begin

• At first, you need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using kind.

• Install KubeDB Community and Enterprise operator in your cluster following the steps here.

• You should be familiar with the following KubeDB concepts:

  • MariaDB
  • Cluster
  • MariaDBOpsRequest
  • Updating Overview

To keep everything isolated, we are going to use a separate namespace called demo throughout this tutorial.

$ kubectl create ns demo
namespace/demo created

Prepare MariaDB Cluster

Now, we are going to deploy a MariaDB cluster database with version 10.4.32.

Deploy MariaDB cluster

In this section, we are going to deploy a MariaDB Cluster. Then, in the next section we will update the version of the database using MariaDBOpsRequest CRD. Below is the YAML of the MariaDB CR that we are going to create,

If you want to update MariaDB Standalone, Just remove the spec.Replicas from the below yaml and rest of the steps are same.

apiVersion: kubedb.com/v1
kind: MariaDB
metadata:
  name: sample-mariadb
  namespace: demo
spec:
  version: "10.4.32"
  replicas: 3
  storageType: Durable
  storage:
    storageClassName: "standard"
    accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: 1Gi
  deletionPolicy: WipeOut

Let’s create the MariaDB CR we have shown above,

$ kubectl create -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2025.5.30/docs/guides/mariadb/update-version/cluster/examples/sample-mariadb.yaml
mariadb.kubedb.com/sample-mariadb created

Now, wait until sample-mariadb created has status Ready. i.e,

$ kubectl get mariadb -n demo                                                                                                                                             
NAME             VERSION    STATUS     AGE
sample-mariadb   10.4.32    Ready     3m15s

We are now ready to apply the MariaDBOpsRequest CR to update this database.

update MariaDB Version

Here, we are going to update MariaDB cluster from 10.4.32 to 10.5.23.

Create MariaDBOpsRequest:

In order to update the database cluster, we have to create a MariaDBOpsRequest CR with your desired version that is supported by KubeDB. Below is the YAML of the MariaDBOpsRequest CR that we are going to create,

apiVersion: ops.kubedb.com/v1alpha1
kind: MariaDBOpsRequest
metadata:
  name: mdops-update
  namespace: demo
spec:
  type: UpdateVersion
  databaseRef:
    name: sample-mariadb
  updateVersion:
    targetVersion: "10.5.23"

Here,

• spec.databaseRef.name specifies that we are performing operation on sample-mariadb MariaDB database.
• spec.type specifies that we are going to perform UpdateVersion on our database.
• spec.updateVersion.targetVersion specifies the expected version of the database 10.5.23.

Let’s create the MariaDBOpsRequest CR we have shown above,

$ kubectl apply -f https://github.com/kubedb/docs/raw/v2025.5.30/docs/guides/mariadb/update-version/cluster/examples/mdops-update.yaml
mariadbopsrequest.ops.kubedb.com/mdops-update created

Verify MariaDB version updated successfully

If everything goes well, KubeDB Enterprise operator will update the image of MariaDB object and related PetSets and Pods.

Let’s wait for MariaDBOpsRequest to be Successful. Run the following command to watch MariaDBOpsRequest CR,

$ kubectl get mariadbopsrequest -n demo
Every 2.0s: kubectl get mariadbopsrequest -n demo
NAME              TYPE            STATUS       AGE
mdops-update      UpdateVersion   Successful    84s

We can see from the above output that the MariaDBOpsRequest has succeeded.

Now, we are going to verify whether the MariaDB and the related PetSets and their Pods have the new version image. Let’s check,

$ kubectl get mariadb -n demo sample-mariadb -o=jsonpath='{.spec.version}{"\n"}'
10.5.23

$ kubectl get sts -n demo sample-mariadb -o=jsonpath='{.spec.template.spec.containers[0].image}{"\n"}'
mariadb:10.5.23

$ kubectl get pods -n demo sample-mariadb-0 -o=jsonpath='{.spec.containers[0].image}{"\n"}'
mariadb:10.5.23

You can see from above, our MariaDB cluster database has been updated with the new version. So, the update process is successfully completed.

Cleaning Up

To clean up the Kubernetes resources created by this tutorial, run:

$ kubectl delete mariadb -n demo sample-mariadb
$ kubectl delete mariadbopsrequest -n demo mdops-update