Uploaded April 2026 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
Stop Reading Changelogs: Safer Kubernetes Upgrades with Simulation
David R. Morrison, Applied Computing Research Labs
Kubernetes has an extremely aggressive release cycle, with a new Kubernetes version released 3 times per year. Keeping up with this release schedule is a difficult and thankless task, exacerbated by the fact that there is no safe rollback path for Kubernetes upgrades. In this talk, we present SimKube, an open-source Kubernetes simulation environment that be used to “shift left” the Kubernetes upgrade process. We will provide an overview of SimKube’s capabilities, which enable platform engineers to record a “trace” (i.e., a timestamped stream of events) collected from a production cluster, and replay it in a simulated setting. We will show how users can use this capability to identify components of their infrastructure that are incompatible with a new Kubernetes version before any live clusters are upgraded. Lastly, we will present a demonstration of SimKube, showing how it can detect upgrade issues in an example drawn from real-world experience.
View the full SREcon26 Americas program at usenix.org/conference/srecon26americas/program
Stop Reading Changelogs: Safer Kubernetes Upgrades with Simulation
David R. Morrison, Applied Computing Research Labs
Kubernetes has an extremely aggressive release cycle, with a new Kubernetes version released 3 times per year. Keeping up with this release schedule is a difficult and thankless task, exacerbated by the fact that there is no safe rollback path for Kubernetes upgrades. In this talk, we present SimKube, an open-source Kubernetes simulation environment that be used to “shift left” the Kubernetes upgrade process. We will provide an overview of SimKube’s capabilities, which enable platform engineers to record a “trace” (i.e., a timestamped stream of events) collected from a production cluster, and replay it in a simulated setting. We will show how users can use this capability to identify components of their infrastructure that are incompatible with a new Kubernetes version before any live clusters are upgraded. Lastly, we will present a demonstration of SimKube, showing how it can detect upgrade issues in an example drawn from real-world experience.
View the full SREcon26 Americas program at usenix.org/conference/srecon26americas/program
