Upgrade the operator on Red Hat OpenShift v1.4.3 (LTS)

Role: Infrastructure engineer / OpenShift administrator

The EDB Postgres AI operator is a Kubernetes operator that manages the full lifecycle of Hybrid Manager (HM) on your cluster. It defines and reconciles the HybridControlPlane custom resource, which controls all HM components. Operator 2.0.0 is a prerequisite for both fresh installations of HM 1.4.0 and upgrades to HM 1.4.0 or later (including subsequent LTS and Innovation Releases). If your operator is still on the innovation or lts-v1.3 channel, you must complete this upgrade before proceeding with any HM 1.4.0 install or upgrade.

Starting with 2.0.0, the EDB Postgres AI operator is decoupled from the HM release cadence: a single 2.x operator covers the HM 1.4 LTS line and future Innovation Releases. As part of this change, the operator is published to a single stable channel that replaces the previous per-lineage channels (innovation for 2026.x.x, lts-v1.3 for 1.3.x).

On Red Hat OpenShift (RHOS), the operator is installed and upgraded through OperatorHub, using the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM). Operators are distributed on named update channels — separate release streams you subscribe to for upgrades. This page describes how to move an operator subscribed to the innovation channel (2026.x.x) or the lts-v1.3 channel (1.3.x) onto the stable channel. Switching channels upgrades the operator to whatever 2.x release is latest on stable at the time. Check the operator release notes to see which version that is. A 2.x version number is lower than the 2026.x.x Innovation versions, but OLM doesn't compare version numbers across channels, so it still presents this move as an upgrade rather than flagging it as a downgrade.

Prerequisites

• The EDB Postgres AI operator already installed on RHOS from OperatorHub, on either the innovation channel (a 2026.x.x version) or the lts-v1.3 channel (a 1.3.x version).
• Permissions to manage the operator subscription (typically cluster-admin).

Upgrading the operator (switching to the stable channel)

This is the recommended path. You change the operator subscription's channel to stable; OLM detects the latest 2.x release in that channel as the upgrade target and installs it in place, keeping the existing HybridControlPlane and its workloads running.

# 1. Switch the subscription channel to stable
oc patch subscription edb-hcp-operator -n edb-hcp-operator-system \
  --type merge -p '{"spec":{"channel":"stable"}}'

# 2. OLM creates a new InstallPlan targeting the latest 2.x release
oc get installplan -n edb-hcp-operator-system

# 3. If the subscription uses Manual approval, approve the new InstallPlan
oc patch installplan <install-plan-name> -n edb-hcp-operator-system \
  --type merge -p '{"spec":{"approved":true}}'

Verifying the upgrade

oc get subscription edb-hcp-operator -n edb-hcp-operator-system \
  -o jsonpath='channel={.spec.channel}{"\n"}installed={.status.installedCSV}{"\n"}state={.status.state}{"\n"}'

Once the operator is on the stable channel, you're ready to upgrade the HM deployment itself — either to HM 1.4.x (LTS) or to the next Innovation Release. See Upgrading HM for the upgrade path that applies to you.

Fallback: reinstalling on the stable channel

If the channel switch doesn't surface the upgrade, you can remove the operator and reinstall it on stable. This removes the running operator only — the HybridControlPlane and its workloads keep running, and the new operator adopts the existing resources.

# Record the currently installed CSV
oc get subscription edb-hcp-operator -n edb-hcp-operator-system -o jsonpath='{.status.installedCSV}'

# Remove the subscription (stops channel tracking) and the CSV (removes the operator)
oc delete subscription edb-hcp-operator -n edb-hcp-operator-system
oc delete csv <installed-csv-from-above> -n edb-hcp-operator-system

# Recreate the subscription on the stable channel (Manual approval shown; use Automatic to apply immediately)
oc apply -f - <<'EOF'
apiVersion: operators.coreos.com/v1alpha1
kind: Subscription
metadata:
  name: edb-hcp-operator
  namespace: edb-hcp-operator-system
spec:
  channel: stable
  installPlanApproval: Manual
  name: edb-hcp-operator
  source: certified-operators
  sourceNamespace: openshift-marketplace
EOF

# Approve the InstallPlan OLM generates for the latest 2.x release
oc get installplan -n edb-hcp-operator-system
oc patch installplan <install-plan-name> -n edb-hcp-operator-system \
  --type merge -p '{"spec":{"approved":true}}'

You can do the same from the web console: uninstall the operator, then install it again from OperatorHub on the stable channel — rather than editing the channel on the installed operator.

Once the operator is on the stable channel, you're ready to upgrade the HM deployment itself — either to HM 1.4.x (LTS) or to the next Innovation Release. See Upgrading HM for the upgrade path that applies to you.