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For existing Terraform-based deployments only. This guide is for customers running the legacy Terraform-based Amazon EKS deployment. New deployments should use the Helm-based path directly.

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Overview

Starting with the April 2026 Poolside release, application deployments use Helm directly. Customers running the Terraform-based deployment migrate by upgrading to the April release bundle, which includes a final Terraform run that transitions the existing deployment to direct-Helm management. Subsequent upgrades use helm upgrade and do not require Terraform.

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What changes

  • Before: deployment and application upgrades run through the Poolside Terraform deployment bundle.
  • After: AWS infrastructure and other dependencies are managed by your team, using existing infrastructure-as-code, by migrating to the reference architecture), or manually, while the Poolside platform will be upgraded with helm upgrade.
  • The April release is a mandatory step. Subsequent releases will be helm-only and assume the migration has been completed and cannot be installed directly on a Terraform-managed deployment.

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Prerequisites

  • Your existing Terraform-based deployment is on the release immediately preceding the April 2026 release.
  • You have admin access to the AWS account that hosts the deployment.

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Migrate

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Step 1: Take a backup of your deployment

For backup and restore guidance, see Backup and restore.

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Step 2: Upgrade to the April 2026 release

Run the Poolside-provided Terraform migration. This upgrade is mandatory and includes the transition from Terraform-managed deployment to Helm-managed deployment.

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Step 3: Verify the Helm-managed deployment

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Step 4: Adopt the new upgrade flow

After the migration completes, future Poolside releases will be upgraded with: 
# upgrade the poolside platform
helm upgrade poolside-deployment <chart-source> -f values.yaml

# upgrade the poolside inference stack
helm upgrade inference-stack <chart-source> -f values.yaml
After the successful migration, you no longer need the Poolside Terraform deployment bundle for application upgrades. You can keep your existing infrastructure Terraform (VPC, EKS cluster, RDS, etc.) under your team’s management. Keep your existing Terraform state and modules for reference.

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After migration

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Get help

If you encounter issues during the migration, contact your Poolside account team before retrying. The migration step is designed to be idempotent within a release, but cross-release retries require coordination.