Review release notes for Kubernetes versions on extended support

The beta VolumeAttributesClass feature gate and API resource is enabled in Amazon EKS version 1.31. This feature allows cluster operators to modify mutable properties of Persistent Volumes (PVs) managed by compatible CSI Drivers, including the Amazon EBS CSI Driver. To leverage this feature, ensure that your CSI Driver supports the VolumeAttributesClass feature (for the Amazon EBS CSI Driver, upgrade to version 1.35.0 or later to automatically enable the feature). You will be able to create VolumeAttributesClass objects to define the desired volume attributes, such as volume type and throughput, and associate them with your Persistent Volume Claims (PVCs). See the official Kubernetes documentation as well as the documentation of your CSI driver for more information.

Kubernetes support for AppArmor has graduated to stable and is now generally available for public use. This feature allows you to protect your containers with AppArmor by setting the appArmorProfile.type field in the container’s securityContext. Prior to Kubernetes version 1.30, AppArmor was controlled by annotations. Starting with version 1.30, it is controlled using fields. To leverage this feature, we recommend migrating away from annotations and using the appArmorProfile.type field to ensure that your workloads are compatible.

The PersistentVolume last phase transition time feature has graduated to stable and is now generally available for public use in Kubernetes version 1.31. This feature introduces a new field, .status.lastTransitionTime, in the PersistentVolumeStatus, which provides a timestamp of when a PersistentVolume last transitioned to a different phase. This enhancement allows for better tracking and management of PersistentVolumes, particularly in scenarios where understanding the lifecycle of volumes is important.

Starting with Amazon EKS version 1.30 or newer, any newly created managed node groups will automatically default to using Amazon Linux 2023 (AL2023) as the node operating system. For more information about specifiying the operating system for a managed node group, see Create a managed node group for your cluster.

With Amazon EKS 1.30, the topology.k8s.aws/zone-id label is added to worker nodes. You can use Availability Zone IDs (AZ IDs) to determine the location of resources in one account relative to the resources in another account. For more information, see Availability Zone IDs for your Amazon resources in the Amazon RAM User Guide.

Starting with 1.30, Amazon EKS no longer includes the default annotation on the gp2 StorageClass resource applied to newly created clusters. This has no impact if you are referencing this storage class by name. You must take action if you were relying on having a default StorageClass in the cluster. You should reference the StorageClass by the name gp2. Alternatively, you can deploy the Amazon EBS recommended default storage class by setting the defaultStorageClass.enabled parameter to true when installing version 1.31.0 or later of the aws-ebs-csi-driver add-on.

The minimum required IAM policy for the Amazon EKS cluster IAM role has changed. The action ec2:DescribeAvailabilityZones is required. For more information, see Amazon EKS cluster IAM role.

The .status.kubeProxyVersion field for node objects is now deprecated, and the Kubernetes project is proposing to remove that field in a future release. The deprecated field is not accurate and has historically been managed by kubelet - which does not actually know the kube-proxy version, or even whether kube-proxy is running. If you’ve been using this field in client software, stop - the information isn’t reliable and the field is now deprecated.

In Kubernetes 1.29 to reduce potential attack surface, the LegacyServiceAccountTokenCleanUp feature labels legacy auto-generated secret-based tokens as invalid if they have not been used for a long time (1 year by default), and automatically removes them if use is not attempted for a long time after being marked as invalid (1 additional year by default). To identify such tokens, a you can run:

kubectl get cm kube-apiserver-legacy-service-account-token-tracking -n kube-system