consul/website/content/docs/enterprise/upgrades.mdx

---
layout: docs
page_title: Consul Enterprise Automated Upgrades
description: >-
  Consul Enterprise supports an upgrade pattern that allows operators to deploy
  a complete cluster of new servers and then just wait for the upgrade to
  complete.
---

# Automated Upgrades

<EnterpriseAlert>
  This feature requires
  HashiCorp Cloud Platform (HCP) or self-managed Consul Enterprise.
  Refer to the{' '}
  <a href="/docs/enterprise#consul-enterprise-feature-availability">enterprise feature matrix</a>
  {' '}for additional information.
</EnterpriseAlert>

Consul Enterprise enables the capability of automatically upgrading a cluster of Consul servers to a new
version as updated server nodes join the cluster. This automated upgrade will spawn a process which monitors the amount of voting members
currently in a cluster. When an equal amount of new server nodes are joined running the desired version, the lower versioned servers
will be demoted to non voting members. Demotion of legacy server nodes will not occur until the voting members on the new version match.
Once this demotion occurs, the previous versioned servers can be removed from the cluster safely.

You can review more information about this functionality in the [Consul operator autopilot](/commands/operator/autopilot) documentation as well as on the HashiCorp Learn [Automated Upgrade](https://learn.hashicorp.com/tutorials/consul/autopilot-datacenter-operations#upgrade-migrations) tutorial.