Upgrades

FlexFS provides several upgrade paths depending on which components you are upgrading and your tolerance for downtime.

Upgrade overview

Component	Upgrade method	Downtime
Servers (meta, proxy, admin)	`manage.flexfs upgrade`	Brief restart per service
Mount clients	Auto-update (automatic) or `update.flexfs` (manual)	Seamless FUSE session handoff
CSI driver	Helm upgrade or manifest reapply	Pod restarts

Server upgrades with manage.flexfs

The manage.flexfs upgrade command performs a complete upgrade cycle: download new binaries, install them, stop services, clean state, and restart services.

sudo manage.flexfs upgrade

This will:

Download the latest binaries for all installed flexFS components from get.flexfs.io
Install them to /usr/sbin/
Stop all flexFS systemd services
Clean runtime state
Start all services

Specifying a version

sudo manage.flexfs upgrade --version v1.9.x

Upgrading specific binaries

sudo manage.flexfs upgrade meta proxy

This downloads and upgrades only the specified binaries while still performing the full stop/clean/start cycle.

Specifying architecture

sudo manage.flexfs upgrade --arch aarch64

By default, the host architecture is detected automatically.

Vacuum journal logs

Add --vacuum to also clean system journal logs during the upgrade:

sudo manage.flexfs upgrade --vacuum

Downloading binaries separately

If you prefer more control, use manage.flexfs download to download binaries without installing or restarting:

# Download to /tmp
sudo manage.flexfs download meta proxy mount

# Download and install to /usr/sbin
sudo manage.flexfs download meta proxy mount --install

Flag	Default	Description
`--version`	(build version)	Version branch to download (e.g., `v1.9.x`).
`--arch`	(host arch)	Architecture: `amd64` or `aarch64`.
`--install`	`false`	Install binaries to `/usr/sbin/` after downloading.

Deploying mount client updates

The manage.flexfs deploy command downloads the latest mount.flexfs binary and places it in the admin server’s deploy directory, making it available for auto-update by mount clients.

sudo manage.flexfs deploy

Flag	Default	Description
`--version`	(build version)	Version branch to deploy.
`--channel`	`all`	Deployment channel: `staging`, `production`, or `all`.
`--adminPath`	(auto)	Path to the admin folder.

Channels

The deploy directory has two channels:

Channel	Description
`staging`	Mount clients with `--staging` flag pull from this channel. Use for testing updates before wide rollout.
`production`	Default channel for all mount clients.

Deploy flow:

# Deploy to staging first
sudo manage.flexfs deploy --channel staging

# Test with staging mounts, then promote to production
sudo manage.flexfs deploy --channel production

Or deploy to both at once:

sudo manage.flexfs deploy --channel all

Mount client auto-update

Mount clients automatically check the admin server for new versions and update themselves. When an update is available:

The mount client downloads the new mount.flexfs binary from the admin server’s deploy endpoint.
It performs a FUSE session handoff — the new binary takes over the existing FUSE mount without interrupting running applications.
The old process exits cleanly.

Controlling auto-update

Flag	Effect
`--noUpdate`	Disable auto-update entirely.
`--noRemount`	Download the update but do not perform the FUSE session handoff. The update takes effect on next manual mount.
`--staging`	Pull updates from the staging channel instead of production.

Manual mount client update

Use update.flexfs to manually update the mount client binary:

sudo update.flexfs

This downloads the latest version and replaces the binary at /sbin/mount.flexfs. Running mounts are not affected until they are remounted.

Version compatibility

FlexFS maintains backward compatibility within a major version series. A v1.9.x mount client can connect to v1.9.x servers without issues. When upgrading, update servers first, then mount clients.

Service ordering

When manage.flexfs starts services, it follows the correct dependency order:

Statistics server (stat.flexfs, if installed)
Admin server (admin.flexfs, if installed)
Free server (free.flexfs, if installed)
Proxy server (proxy.flexfs, if installed)
Metadata server (meta.flexfs)

When stopping, the order is reversed.