In the world of platform engineering, we often come across “weekend upgrade” scenarios. Such upgrades usually involve the presence of various team members during off-business hours for testing pre and post upgrades. It often requires downtime in business-critical applications. In this talk, the speakers will go through the traditional sidecar-based service mesh upgrade experience and the challenges associated with it. Then compare the same with the sidecar-less Ambient mesh upgrade experience. Discuss the best practices, and share guidance on how to set up a near-zero downtime upgrade process.