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Release notes for standard support versions
This topic gives important changes to be aware of for each Kubernetes version in standard support. When upgrading, carefully review the changes that have occurred between the old and new versions for your cluster.
Note
For 1.24
and later clusters, officially published Amazon EKS AMIs include
containerd
as the only runtime. Kubernetes versions earlier than
1.24
use Docker as the default runtime. These versions
have a bootstrap flag option that you can use to test out your workloads on any
supported cluster with containerd
. For more information, see Amazon EKS ended support for
Dockershim.
Kubernetes 1.30
Kubernetes 1.30
is now available in Amazon EKS. For more information about Kubernetes
1.30
, see the official
release announcement
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. Previously, new node groups would default to Amazon Linux 2 (AL2). You can continue to use AL2 by choosing it as the AMI type when creating a new node group.-
For more information about Amazon Linux, see Comparing AL2 and AL2023 in the Amazon Linux User Guide.
-
For more information about specifiying the operating system for a managed node group, see Creating a managed node group.
-
-
With Amazon EKS
1.30
, thetopology.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 thedefault
annotation on thegp2
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 defaultStorageClass
in the cluster. You should reference theStorageClass
by the namegp2
. Alternatively, you can deploy the Amazon EBS recommended default storage class by setting thedefaultStorageClass.enabled
parameter to true when installingv1.31.0
or later of theaws-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.
For the complete Kubernetes 1.30
changelog, see https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/CHANGELOG/CHANGELOG-1.30.md
Kubernetes 1.29
Kubernetes 1.29
is now available in Amazon EKS. For more information about Kubernetes
1.29
, see the official
release announcement
Important
-
The deprecated
flowcontrol.apiserver.k8s.io/v1beta2
API version ofFlowSchema
andPriorityLevelConfiguration
are no longer served in Kubernetesv1.29
. If you have manifests or client software that uses the deprecated beta API group, you should change these before you upgrade tov1.29
.
-
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 bykubelet
- which does not actually know thekube-proxy
version, or even whetherkube-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, theLegacyServiceAccountTokenCleanUp
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 -nkube-system
For the complete Kubernetes 1.29
changelog, see https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/CHANGELOG/CHANGELOG-1.29.md#changelog-since-v1280
Kubernetes 1.28
Kubernetes 1.28
is now available in Amazon EKS. For more information about Kubernetes
1.28
, see the official
release announcement
-
Kubernetes
v1.28
expanded the supported skew between core node and control plane components by one minor version, fromn-2
ton-3
, so that node components (kubelet
andkube-proxy
) for the oldest supported minor version can work with control plane components (kube-apiserver
,kube-scheduler
,kube-controller-manager
,cloud-controller-manager
) for the newest supported minor version. -
Metrics
force_delete_pods_total
andforce_delete_pod_errors_total
in thePod GC Controller
are enhanced to account for all forceful pods deletion. A reason is added to the metric to indicate whether the pod is forcefully deleted because it's terminated, orphaned, terminating with the out-of-service taint, or terminating and unscheduled. -
The
PersistentVolume (PV)
controller has been modified to automatically assign a defaultStorageClass
to any unboundPersistentVolumeClaim
with thestorageClassName
not set. Additionally, thePersistentVolumeClaim
admission validation mechanism within the API server has been adjusted to allow changing values from an unset state to an actualStorageClass
name.
For the complete Kubernetes 1.28
changelog, see https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/CHANGELOG/CHANGELOG-1.28.md#changelog-since-v1270
Kubernetes 1.27
Kubernetes 1.27
is now available in Amazon EKS. For more information about Kubernetes
1.27
, see the official
release announcement
Important
-
The support for the alpha
seccomp
annotationsseccomp.security.alpha.kubernetes.io/pod
andcontainer.seccomp.security.alpha.kubernetes.io
annotations was removed. The alphaseccomp
annotations was deprecated in1.19
, and with their removal in1.27
,seccomp
fields will no longer auto-populate forPods
withseccomp
annotations. Instead, use thesecurityContext.seccompProfile
field forPods
or containers to configureseccomp
profiles. To check whether you are using the deprecated alphaseccomp
annotations in your cluster, run the following command:kubectl get pods --all-namespaces -o json | grep -E 'seccomp.security.alpha.kubernetes.io/pod|container.seccomp.security.alpha.kubernetes.io'
-
The
--container-runtime
command line argument for thekubelet
was removed. The default container runtime for Amazon EKS has beencontainerd
since1.24
, which eliminates the need to specify the container runtime. From1.27
onwards, Amazon EKS will ignore the--container-runtime
argument passed to any bootstrap scripts. It is important that you don't pass this argument to--kubelet-extra-args
in order to prevent errors during the node bootstrap process. You must remove the--container-runtime
argument from all of your node creation workflows and build scripts.
-
The
kubelet
in Kubernetes1.27
increased the defaultkubeAPIQPS
to50
andkubeAPIBurst
to100
. These enhancements allow thekubelet
to handle a higher volume of API queries, improving response times and performance. When the demands forPods
increase, due to scaling requirements, the revised defaults ensure that thekubelet
can efficiently manage the increased workload. As a result,Pod
launches are quicker and cluster operations are more effective. -
You can use more fine grained
Pod
topology to spread policies such asminDomain
. This parameter gives you the ability to specify the minimum number of domains yourPods
should be spread across.nodeAffinityPolicy
andnodeTaintPolicy
allow for an extra level of granularity in governingPod
distribution. This is in accordance to node affinities, taints, and thematchLabelKeys
field in thetopologySpreadConstraints
of yourPod's
specification. This permits the selection ofPods
for spreading calculations following a rolling upgrade. -
Kubernetes
1.27
promoted to beta a new policy mechanism forStatefulSets
that controls the lifetime of theirPersistentVolumeClaims
(PVCs
). The newPVC
retention policy lets you specify if thePVCs
generated from theStatefulSet
spec template will be automatically deleted or retained when theStatefulSet
is deleted or replicas in theStatefulSet
are scaled down. -
The
goaway-chance
option in the Kubernetes API server helps prevent HTTP/2
client connections from being stuck on a single API server instance, by randomly closing a connection. When the connection is closed, the client will try to reconnect, and will likely land on a different API server as a result of load balancing. Amazon EKS version1.27
has enabledgoaway-chance
flag. If your workload running on Amazon EKS cluster uses a client that is not compatible withHTTP GOAWAY
, we recommend that you update your client to handle GOAWAY
by reconnecting on connection termination.
For the complete Kubernetes 1.27
changelog, see https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/blob/master/CHANGELOG/CHANGELOG-1.27.md#changelog-since-v1260