Update rancher-webhook policy to fix drain stuck during workload cluster upgrade

What does this MR do and why?

During workload cluster upgrades, node drain gets stuck due to the following error:

Pod cattle-system/rancher-webhook-xxxx: cannot evict pod as it would violate the pod's disruption budget. The disruption budget rancher-webhook-pdb needs 1 healthy pod and has 1 currently.

Analysis shows that the Rancher webhook Deployment (rancher-webhook) was created with only 1 replica, while its PDB requires 1 minAvailable, blocking eviction during upgrade.

Root cause:

Before upgrade, Rancher webhook (v0.6.4) deployed with replicas: 2.

During upgrade, Rancher webhook (v0.8.3) recreated with replicas: 1.

The Kyverno policy that enforces replicas: 2 was applied after the Deployment was created.

Since the policy did not include mutateExistingOnPolicyUpdate: true, Kyverno’s background controller skipped patching the existing Deployment (seen as “empty resource to patch” in logs).

As a result, replicas remained 1, causing PDB violation and drain loop.

Fix:

Add mutateExistingOnPolicyUpdate: true to the rancher-webhook-replicas rule in the Kyverno policy to ensure mutation applies to existing Deployments when the policy is (re)applied.

Related reference(s)

closes #3191 (closed)

Test coverage

CI configuration

Below you can choose test deployment variants to run in this MR's CI.

Click to open to CI configuration

Legend:

Icon	Meaning	Available values
☁️	Infra Provider	capd, capo, capm3
🚀	Bootstrap Provider	kubeadm (alias kadm), rke2, okd, ck8s
🐧	Node OS	ubuntu, suse, na, leapmicro
🛠️	Deployment Options	light-deploy, dev-sources, ha, misc, maxsurge-0, logging, no-logging, cilium
🎬	Pipeline Scenarios	Available scenario list and description
🟢	Enabled units	Any available units name, by default apply to management and workload cluster. Can be prefixed by mgmt: or wkld: to be applied only to a specific cluster type

• 🎬 preview ☁️ capd 🚀 kadm 🐧 ubuntu

• 🎬 preview ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🐧 suse

• 🎬 preview ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capd 🚀 kadm 🛠️ light-deploy 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capd 🚀 rke2 🛠️ light-deploy 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🐧 leapmicro

• ☁️ capo 🚀 kadm 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capo 🚀 kadm 🐧 ubuntu 🟢 neuvector,mgmt:harbor

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🎬 rolling-update 🛠️ ha 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capo 🚀 kadm 🎬 wkld-k8s-upgrade 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🎬 rolling-update-no-wkld 🛠️ ha 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🎬 sylva-upgrade-from-1.5.x 🛠️ ha 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🎬 sylva-upgrade-from-1.5.x 🛠️ ha,misc 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🛠️ ha,misc 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🛠️ ha,misc,openbao🐧 suse

• ☁️ capo 🚀 rke2 🐧 suse 🎬 upgrade-from-prev-tag

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 kadm 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 ck8s 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 kadm 🎬 rolling-update-no-wkld 🛠️ ha,misc 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🎬 wkld-k8s-upgrade 🛠️ ha 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 kadm 🎬 rolling-update 🛠️ ha 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🎬 sylva-upgrade-from-1.5.x 🛠️ ha 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🛠️ misc,ha 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🎬 sylva-upgrade-from-1.5.x 🛠️ ha,misc 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 kadm 🎬 rolling-update 🛠️ ha 🐧 suse

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 ck8s 🎬 rolling-update 🛠️ ha 🐧 ubuntu

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2|okd 🎬 no-update 🐧 ubuntu|na

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🐧 suse 🎬 upgrade-from-release-1.5

• ☁️ capm3 🚀 rke2 🐧 suse 🎬 upgrade-to-main

Global config for deployment pipelines

• autorun pipelines
• allow failure on pipelines
• record sylvactl events

Notes:

• Enabling autorun will make deployment pipelines to be run automatically without human interaction
• Disabling allow failure will make deployment pipelines mandatory for pipeline success.
• if both autorun and allow failure are disabled, deployment pipelines will need manual triggering but will be blocking the pipeline

Be aware: after configuration change, pipeline is not triggered automatically. Please run it manually (by clicking the run pipeline button in Pipelines tab) or push new code.