Products > Kubernetes > How-Tos > Enable High Availability

How to Enable High Availability

Validated on 16 Nov 2022 • Posted on 16 Nov 2022

DigitalOcean Kubernetes (DOKS) is a managed Kubernetes service that lets you deploy Kubernetes clusters without the complexities of handling the control plane and containerized infrastructure. Clusters are compatible with standard Kubernetes toolchains and integrate natively with DigitalOcean Load Balancers and volumes.

DigitalOcean Kubernetes provides a high availability (HA) option that provides 99.5% SLA uptime for control planes by creating multiple backup replicas of each control plane component. You can enable high availability for your Kubernetes cluster during cluster creation or on an existing cluster. This guide describes how to enable HA via the control panel; however, you can also do so through command line by using doctl v1.87.0 or later.

To enable high availability on an existing cluster, go to the control panel and click on the cluster you want to enable high availability on. Then, in the Overview tab, scroll down and find the following card.

I can’t find this card.

If you cannot find this card, you first need to upgrade your control plane architecture.

DigitalOcean Kubernetes clusters originally created with version 1.20 or older have an outdated version of our control plane architecture, which does not allow you to enable high availability. However, you can now upgrade your control plane to our new version. This upgrade option is available for Kubernetes versions currently 1.22 and later.

To check whether you can upgrade your cluster to the new control plane, see our guide.

In the card, click Add high availability. This opens a pop-up window where you can confirm your change. Note that, once enabled, you cannot disable high availability in the future.

The upgrade process may disrupt your cluster’s operations for up to approximately 2 minutes. To learn how to minimize these disruptions, see our guide.