harvester-upgradelisted

Plan and run a controlled, COMMUNITY-edition Harvester HCI upgrade off an EOL line up to latest stable — the no-skip minor ladder (1.5→1.6→1.7→1.8; embedded RKE2/KubeVirt/Longhorn/SLE-Micro ride along), gated at each hop on first upgrading the EXTERNAL Rancher + a matching Harvester UI-extension (1.6↔Rancher 2.12, 1.7↔2.13, 1.8↔2.14). Covers air-gapped version detection, why node-upgrade order is NOT operator-choosable (forced serial; the pause knob is v1.7.0+ only) and how to protect VM-hosted control planes anyway via anti-affinity spread + N+1 live-migration, making self-managed RKE2 guests Harvester-aware (cloud-provider, CSI, qemu-guest-agent), per-hop breaking changes (wicked→NetworkManager, Intel NIC rename, DHCP IP churn), the enforced pre-flight health gates, and the no-downgrade backup/rollback reality. Companion to k8s-components-checker and rancher-upgrade.
air-gapped/skills · ★ 3 · AI & Automation · score 79

Install: claude install-skill air-gapped/skills

# harvester-upgrade Plan, sequence, and de-risk a **community-edition Harvester HCI** upgrade across a real fleet — typically off an **EOL line** (1.5.x) up to the latest *settled* stable. The hard part is almost never the ISO/UI upgrade click. It is the **coordination**: Harvester is one bundle whose embedded RKE2, KubeVirt, Longhorn, SLE Micro, and Rancher pairing all move together, the upgrade controller **picks its own node order**, and the workloads that matter most — VM-hosted Kubernetes control planes — must stay quorate while each host reboots underneath them. **Community editions only.** SUSE sells "SUSE Virtualization" (Prime) as a paid *support subscription on the same bits* — it is **not** a different artifact set, and **patch releases are community-downloadable** (House Rule #1). Flag Prime-only support claims; never build a plan on them. ## Companion to k8s-components-checker and rancher-upgrade — who owns what This skill is the Harvester-side upgrade-methodology companion in the same trio (`rancher-upgrade` SKILL.md explicitly defers Harvester host→guest coordination here). Respect the boundary to avoid drift: | Question | Skill | |----------|-------| | Harvester↔RKE2↔Rancher *pairing numbers*, Node-Driver ranges, per-minor compat | **k8s-components-checker** — `references/compat/harvester.md` is the source of truth. **Cite it; don't restate.** | | Is a component (Cilium, Rook, …) OK on k8s 1.NN on one cluster? | **k8s-components-checker** (per-cluster ver