GKE release notes archive

This page contains a historical archive of all release notes for Google Kubernetes Engine prior to 2020. To view more recent release notes, see the Release notes.

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December 23, 2019

Rapid channel
(1.16.x)

Feature

Global access for internal TCP/UDP load balancing Services is now Beta. Global access allows internal load balancing IP addresses to be accessed from any region within a VPC.

December 13, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

No Channel

v.1.12.x
1.12.10-gke.22
v.1.15.x
1.15.4-gke.22
Feature

GKE 1.15 is generally available for new clusters.

Upgrading

Before creating GKE v1.15 clusters, you must review the known issues and urgent upgrade notes.

New features

Feature

By default, firewall rules restrict your cluster master to only initiate TCP connections to your nodes on ports 443 (HTTPS) and 10250 (kubelet). For some Kubernetes features, you might need to add firewall rules to allow access on additional ports. For example, in Kubernetes 1.9 and older, kubectl top accesses heapster, which needs a firewall rule to allow TCP connections on port 8080. To grant such access, you can add firewall rules.

Feature

Node-local DNS caching is now available in beta. This does create a single point of failure. If the node-cache goes down DNS for all Pods on that node will be broken until the cache is up.

Known Issues

Issue

There is a low risk that consumers of the published OpenAPI document that made assumptions about the absence of schema info for a given type (for example, "no schema info means a resource is a custom resource") could have those assumptions broken once custom resources start publishing schema definitions.

Stable channel
and 1.13.x

Stable channel

There are no changes to the Stable channel this week.

No channel
  • 1.13.11-gke.15
  • 1.13.12-gke.16

Regular channel
and 1.14.x

Regular channel

There are no changes to the Regular channel, but 1.15 will be available in this channel in January 2020.

No channel
  • 1.14.7-gke.25
  • 1.14.8-gke.21
  • 1.14.9-gke.2

Rapid channel
(1.16.x)

Rapid channel
1.16.0-gke.20

GKE 1.16.0-gke.20 (alpha) is now available for testing and validation in the Rapid release channel.

Retired APIs

Deprecated

extensions/v1beta1, apps/v1beta1, and apps/v1beta2 won't be served by default.

  • All resources under apps/v1beta1 and apps/v1beta2 - use apps/v1 instead.
  • daemonsets, deployments, replicasets resources under extensions/v1beta1 - use apps/v1 instead.
  • networkpolicies resources under extensions/v1beta1 - use networking.k8s.io/v1 instead.
  • podsecuritypolicies resources under extensions/v1beta1 - use policy/v1beta1 instead.

Changes

Change

New clusters have the cos-metrics-enabled flag enabled by default. This change allows kernel crash logs to be collected. You can disable by adding --metadata cos-metrics-enabled=false when you create clusters.

Fixed

Fixed

All of the versions made available include a fix for the issue where newly created node pools are created successfully but are incorrectly shown as PROVISIONING, as reported on December 6th, 2019.

New features

Feature

Maintenance windows and exclusions, which was previously available in beta, is now generally available.

Changes

Change

The beta version of Stackdriver Kubernetes Engine Monitoring is no longer supported.

Deprecated

Legacy Stackdriver support for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) is deprecated. If you're using Legacy Stackdriver for logging or monitoring, you must migrate to Stackdriver Kubernetes Engine Monitoring before Legacy Stackdriver is decommissioned. For more information, see Legacy Stackdriver support for GKE deprecation.

December 6, 2019

Issue

The December 4, 2019 rollout is paused. Versions that were made available for upgrades and new clusters in that release will no longer be available. This is to address an issue where newly created node pools are created successfully but are incorrectly shown as PROVISIONING.

December 4, 2019

Fixed

We have fixed an issue with cluster upgrade from a version earlier than 1.14.2-gke.10 when gVisor is enabled in the cluster. It's now safe to upgrade to any version greater than 1.14.7-gke.17. This issue was originally noted in the release notes for October 30, 2019.

Version updates

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

No new v1.12.x versions this week.

Stable channel
and 1.13.x

Stable channel

There are no changes to the Stable channel this week.

No channel
1.13.12-gke.14
Change

This version updates COS to cos-stable-73-11647-348-0 .

Regular channel
and 1.14.x

Regular channel

There are no changes to the Regular channel this week.

No channel
1.14.8-gke.18
Change

This version updates COS to cos-stable-73-11647-348-0 .

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

Rapid channel

There are no changes to the Rapid channel this week.

November 22, 2019

Fixed

Fixed

The known issue in the COS kernel that may cause kernel panic, previously reported on November 5th, 2019, is resolved. The versions available in this release use updated versions of COS. GKE 1.12 uses cos-69-10895-348-0 and versions 1.13 and 1.14 use cos-stable-73-11647-348-0.

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
1.12.10-gke.15 1.12.10-gke.17

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

1.12.10-gke.20
Fixed

This version uses cos-69-10895-348-0 which fixes the known issue that may cause kernel panics, previously reported on November 5th, 2019.

Stable channel
and 1.13.x

Stable channel

There are no changes to the Stable channel this week.

No channel
1.13.12-gke.13
Fixed

This version uses cos-stable-73-11647-348-0 which fixes the known issue that may cause kernel panics, previously reported on November 5th, 2019.

Regular channel
and 1.14.x

Regular channel

There are no changes to the Regular channel this week.

No channel
1.14.8-gke.17
Fixed

This version uses cos-stable-73-11647-348-0 which fixes the known issue that may cause kernel panics, previously reported on November 5th, 2019.

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

Rapid channel

There are no changes to the Rapid channel this week.

Versions no longer available

The following versions are no longer available for new clusters or upgrades.

  • 1.12.10-gke.15
  • 1.13.11-gke.5
  • 1.13.11-gke.9
  • 1.13.11-gke.11
  • 1.13.12-gke.2
  • 1.14.7-gke.10
  • 1.14.7-gke.14
  • 1.14.7-gke.17
  • 1.14.8-gke.2

November 18, 2019

Fixed

Fixed

The known issue in the COS kernel that may cause nodes to crash, previously reported on November 5th, 2019, is resolved. This release downgrades COS to cos-73-11647-293-0.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
1.13.0-gke.0 to 1.13.11-gke.13 1.13.11-gke.14 (Stable channel)
1.13.12-gke.0 to 1.13.12-gke.7 1.13.12-gke.8
1.14.0-gke.0 to 1.14.7-gke.22 1.14.7-gke.23
1.14.8-gke.0 to 1.14.8-gke.11 1.14.8-gke.12 (Regular channel)

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

1.12.10-gke.17

No new v1.12.x versions this week.

Stable channel
and 1.13.x

Stable channel
1.13.11-gke.14
Fixed

This version includes a fix for a known issue in the COS kernel that may have caused nodes to crash.

No channel
1.13.12-gke.8
Fixed

This version includes a fix for a known issue in the COS kernel that may have caused nodes to crash.

Regular channel
and 1.14.x

Regular channel
1.14.8-gke.12
Fixed

This version includes a fix for a known issue in the COS kernel that may have caused nodes to crash.

No channel
1.14.7-gke.23
Fixed

This version includes a fix for a known issue in the COS kernel that may have caused nodes to crash.

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

1.15.4-gke.15

No new v1.15.x versions this week.

November 11, 2019

Changes

Change

After November 11, 2019, new clusters and node pools created with gcloud have node auto-upgrade enabled by default.

November 05, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
v1.12.x 1.12.10-gke.15
v1.13.x 1.13.11-gke.5
v1.14.x 1.14.7-gke.10

Rollouts are phased across multiple weeks, to ensure cluster and fleet stability.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

v1.12.10-gke.17
Fixed

This release includes a patch for the golang vulnerability CVE-2019-17596, fixed in go-boringcrypto 1.13.1 and 1.12.11.

Change

Updated containerd to 1.2.10

Stable channel
(1.13.x)

v1.13.11-gke.11
Fixed

This release includes a patch for the golang vulnerability CVE-2019-17596, fixed in go-boringcrypto 1.13.1 and 1.12.11.

Change

Updated containerd to 1.2.10

v1.13.12-gke.2
Fixed

This release includes a patch for the golang vulnerability CVE-2019-17596, fixed in go-boringcrypto 1.13.1 and 1.12.11.

Change

Updated containerd to 1.2.10

Regular channel
(1.14.x)

v1.14.7-gke.17
Fixed

This release includes a patch for the golang vulnerability CVE-2019-17596, fixed in go-boringcrypto 1.13.1 and 1.12.11.

v1.14.8-gke.2
Fixed

This release includes a patch for the golang vulnerability CVE-2019-17596, fixed in go-boringcrypto 1.13.1 and 1.12.11.

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

v1.15.4-gke.18

GKE 1.15.4-gke.18 (alpha) is now available for testing and validation in the Rapid release channel. For more details, refer to the release notes for Kubernetes v1.15.

Fixed

This release includes a patch for the golang vulnerability CVE-2019-17596, fixed in go-boringcrypto 1.13.1 and 1.12.11.

Known issues

Issue

We have found an issue in COS that might cause kernel panics on nodes.

This impacts node versions:
  • 1.13.11-gke.9
  • 1.13.11-gke.11
  • 1.13.11-gke.12
  • 1.13.12-gke.1
  • 1.13.12-gke.2
  • 1.13.12-gke.3
  • 1.13.12-gke.4
  • 1.14.7-gke.14
  • 1.14.7-gke.17
  • 1.14.8-gke.1
  • 1.14.8-gke.2
  • 1.14.8-gke.6
  • 1.14.8-gke.7

A patch is being tested and will rollout soon, but we recommend customers avoid these node versions or downgrade to previous, unaffected patches.

New features

Feature

Surge upgrades are now in beta. Surge upgrades allow you to configure speed and disruption of node upgrades

Changes

Change

Node auto-provisioning has reached General Availability. Node auto-provisioning creates or deletes node pools from your cluster based upon resource requests.

October 30, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New default version

The default version for new clusters is now v1.13.11-gke.9 (previously v1.13.10-gke.0). Clusters enrolled in the stable release channel will be auto-upgraded to this version.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
1.12.x versions 1.12.10-gke.17
1.13.x versions 1.13.11-gke.5
1.14.x versions 1.14.7-gke.10

Rollouts are phased across multiple weeks, to ensure cluster and fleet stability.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

No new v1.12.x versions this week.

Stable channel
and 1.13.x

Stable channel
1.13.11-gke.9
Change

Update containerd to 1.2.10.

Change

Update COS to cos-u-73-11647-329-0.

Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-11253. For more information, see the security bulletin for October 16, 2019.

Regular channel
and 1.14.x

Regular channel
1.14.7-gke.10

This version was generally available on October 18, 2019 and is now available in the Regular release channel.

Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-11253. For more information, see the security bulletin for October 16, 2019.

No channel
1.14.7-gke.14
Change

Update COS to cos-u-73-11647-329-0.

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

1.15.4-gke.17

GKE 1.15.4-gke.17 (alpha) is now available for testing and validation in the Rapid release channel.

Fixed

Fixes a known issue reported on October 11, 2019 regarding fdatasync performance regression on COS/Ubuntu. Node image for Container-Optimized OS updated to cos-77-12371-89-0. Node image for Ubuntu updated to ubuntu-gke-1804-d1903-0-v20191011a

Versions no longer available

The following versions are no longer available for new clusters or upgrades.

  • 1.12.10-gke.15
  • 1.13.7-gke.24
  • 1.13.9-gke.3
  • 1.13.9-gke.11
  • 1.13.10-gke.0
  • 1.13.10-gke.7
  • 1.14.6-gke.1
  • 1.14.6-gke.2
  • 1.14.6-gke.13

Known Issues

Issue

If you use Sandbox Pods in your GKE cluster and plan to upgrade from a version less than 1.14.2-gke.10 to a version greater than 1.14.2-gke.10, you need to manually run kubectl delete mutatingwebhookconfiguration gvisor-admission-webhook-config after the upgrade.

October 18, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
1.12.x versions 1.13.7-gke.24
1.14.x versions 1.14.6-gke.0 and older 1.14.6-gke.1

Rollouts are phased across multiple weeks, to ensure cluster and fleet stability.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

1.12.10-gke.15
Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-11253. For more information, see the security bulletin for October 16, 2019.

Stable channel
and 1.13.x

Stable channel

There are no changes to the Stable channel this week.

No channel
1.13.11-gke.5
Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-11253. For more information, see the security bulletin for October 16, 2019.

Regular channel
and 1.14.x

Regular channel

There are no changes to the Regular channel this week.

No channel
1.14.7-gke.10
Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-11253. For more information, see the security bulletin for October 16, 2019.

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

1.15.4-gke.15

GKE 1.15.4-gke.15 (alpha) is now available for testing and validation in the Rapid release channel.

Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-11253. For more information, see the security bulletin for October 16, 2019.

Versions no longer available

The following versions are no longer available for new clusters or upgrades.

  • 1.12.9-gke.15
  • 1.12.9-gke.16
  • 1.12.10-gke.5
  • 1.12.10-gke.11

Security bulletin

Issue

A vulnerability was recently discovered in Kubernetes, described in CVE-2019-11253, which allows any user authorized to make POST requests to execute a remote Denial-of-Service attack on a Kubernetes API server. For more information, see the security bulletin.

October 11, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New default version

The default version for new clusters is now v1.13.10-gke.0 (previously v1.13.7-gke.24). Clusters enrolled in the stable release channel will be auto-upgraded to this version.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
versions older than 1.12.9-gke.13 1.12.9-gke.15
1.13.x versions older than 1.13.7-gke.19 1.13.7-gke.24
1.14.x versions older than 1.14.6-gke.0 1.14.6-gke.1

Rollouts are phased across multiple weeks, to ensure cluster and fleet stability.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

1.12.10-gke.11

Change

Upgrade containerd to 1.2.9

Change

Node image for Container-Optimized OS updated to cos-69-10895-348-0.

Change

Node image for Ubuntu updated to ubuntu-gke-1804-d1703-0-v20190917).

Stable channel
(1.13.x)

Stable channel
1.13.10-gke.0

This version was generally available on September 16, 2019 and is now available in the Stable release channel.

Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-9512 and CVE-2019-9514. For more information, see the security bulletin for September 16, 2019.

No channel
1.13.10-gke.7

Change

Upgrade containerd to 1.2.9

Change

Node image for Container-Optimized OS updated to cos-u-73-11647-293-0.

Change

Node image for Ubuntu updated to ubuntu-gke-1804-d1809-0-v20190918. Upgrades Nvidia GPU driver to 418 driver, adds Vulkan ICD for graphical workloads, and fixes nvidia-uvm installation order.

Regular channel
(1.14.x)

Regular channel
1.14.6-gke.1

This version was generally available on September 9, 2019 and is now available in the Regular release channel.

No channel
1.14.6-gke.13

Feature

Enable SecureBoot on master VMs.

Change

Node image for Container-Optimized OS updated to cos-u-73-11647-293-0.

Change

Node image for Ubuntu updated to ubuntu-gke-1804-d1809-0-v20190918. Upgrades Nvidia GPU driver to 418 driver, adds Vulkan ICD for graphical workloads, and fixes nvidia-uvm installation order.

Change

Upgrades GPU device plugin to the latest version with Vulkan support.

Issue

Do not upgrade to this version if you use Workload Identity. There is a known issue where the gke-metadata-server Pods crashloop if you create or uprade a cluster to 1.14.6-gke.13.

Fixed

Fixes an issue where cronjobs cannot be scheduled when the total number of existing jobs exceeds 500.

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

1.15.3-gke.18

GKE 1.15.3-gke.18 (alpha) is now available for testing and validation in the Rapid release channel.

Change

Upgraded Istio to 1.2.5.

Change

Improvements to gVisor.

Change

Node image for Container-Optimized OS updated to cos-rc-77-12371-44-0. This update includes upgrading the kernel to 4.19 from 4.14 and upgrading Docker to 19.03 from 18.09.

Change

Node image for Ubuntu updated to ubuntu-gke-1804-d1903-0-v20190917a. This update includes upgrading the kernel to 5 from 4.15 and upgrading Docker to 19.03 from 18.09.

Issue

Do not update to this version if you have clusters with hundreds of nodes per cluster or with I/O intensive workloads. Clusters with these characteristics may be impacted by a known issue in versions 4.19 and 5.0 of the Linux kernel that introduces performance regressions in the fdatasync system call.

Versions no longer available

v1.14.3-gke.11 is no longer available for new clusters or upgrades.

Features

Feature

Node auto-provisioning is now generally available.

Feature

Vertical Pod Autoscaler is now generally available.

Changes

Change

Upgrade Cloud Run on GKE to 0.9.0.

Fixed issues

Fixed

Fixed a bug with fluentd that would prevent new nodes from starting on large clusters with over 1000 nodes on v1.12.6.

October 2, 2019

Feature

Maintenance windows and exclusions now give you granular control over when automatic maintenance occurs on your clusters. You can specify the start time, duration, and recurrence of a cluster's maintenance window. You can also designate specific periods of time when non-essential automatic maintenance should not occur.

September 26, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New default version

The default version for new clusters is now v1.13.7-gke.24 (previously v1.13.7-gke.8). Clusters enrolled in the stable release channel will be auto-upgraded to this version.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
versions older than 1.12.9-gke.13 1.12.9-gke.15
1.13.x versions older than 1.13.7-gke.19 1.13.7-gke.24

Auto-upgrades are currently occurring two days behind the rollout schedule. Some 1.11 clusters will be upgraded to 1.12 in the week of October 7th.

Rollouts are phased across multiple weeks, to ensure cluster and fleet stability.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

1.12.x

No new v1.12.x versions this week.

Stable channel
(1.13.x)

No new v1.13.x versions this week.

Change

v1.13.7-gke.24 is now available in the Stable release channel.

Regular channel
(1.14.x)

There are no changes to the Regular channel in this release.

1.14.6-gke.2
Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-9512 and CVE-2019-9514.

Change

Reduces startup time for GPU nodes running Container-Optimized OS.

Rapid channel
(1.15.x)

GKE 1.15.3-gke.1 (alpha) is now available for testing and validation in the Rapid release channel.

For more details, refer to the release notes for Kubernetes v1.15.

Change

Starting with GKE v1.15, the open source Kubernetes Dashboard is no longer natively supported in GKE as a managed add-on. To deploy it manually, follow the deployment instructions in the Kubernetes Dashboard documentation.

Change

Resizing PersistentVolumes is now a beta feature. As part of this change, resizing a PersisntentVolume no longer requires you to restart the Pod.

Versions no longer available

The following versions are no longer available for new clusters or upgrades.

  • 1.12.7-gke.25
  • 1.12.7-gke.26
  • 1.12.8-gke.10
  • 1.12.8-gke.12
  • 1.12.9-gke.7
  • 1.12.9-gke.13
  • 1.13.6-gke.13
  • 1.13.7-gke.8
  • 1.13.7-gke.19

September 20, 2019

Feature

Ingress Controller v1.6, which was previously available in beta, is generally available for clusters running v1.13.7-gke.5 and higher.

Along with Ingress Controller, the following are also generally available:

This note has been corrected. Using Google-managed SSL certificates is currently in Beta.

September 16, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

The release notes for September 16, 2019 were incorrectly published early, on September 9. The incorrect release notes included an announcement of the availability of a security patch that was not actually made available on that date. For more information about the security patch, see the security bulletin for September 16, 2019.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version Upgrade version
v1.11 v1.12

Rollouts are phased across multiple weeks, to ensure cluster and fleet stability.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

v1.12.10-gke.5
Fixed

Fixes an issue where Vertical Pod Autoscaler would reject valid Pod patches.

Stable channel
(1.13.x)

1.13.10-gke.0
Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-9512 and CVE-2019-9514. For more information, see the security bulletin for September 16, 2019.

Change

Reduces startup time for GPU nodes running Container-Optimized OS.

v1.13.7-gke.8

This version was generally available on June 27, 2019 and is now available in the Stable release channel.

Regular channel
(1.14.x)

v1.14.6-gke.1
Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-9512 and CVE-2019-9514. For more information, see the security bulletin for September 16, 2019.

Change

Reduces startup time for GPU nodes running Container-Optimized OS.

v1.14.3-gke.11

This version was generally available on September 5, 2019 and is now available in the Regular release channel.

Rapid channel
(1.14.x)

v1.14.6-gke.1

GKE v1.14.6-gke.1 (alpha) is now available for testing and validation in the Rapid release channel. For more details, refer to the release notes for Kubernetes v1.14.6.

Fixed

This release includes a patch for CVE-2019-9512 and CVE-2019-9514. For more information, see the security bulletin for September 16, 2019.

Change

Reduces startup time for GPU nodes running Container-Optimized OS.

New features

Feature

Ingress Controller v1.6, which was previously available in beta, is generally available for clusters running v1.13.7-gke.5 and higher.

Feature

Network Endpoint Groups, which allow HTTP(S) load balancers to target Pods directly, are now generally available.

Feature

Release channels, which provide more control over which automatic upgrades your cluster receives, are generally available. In addition to the Rapid channel, you can now enroll your clusters in the Regular or Stable channel.

September 9, 2019

Correction

The release notes for September 16, 2019 were incorrectly published early, on September 9. The incorrect release notes included an announcement of the availability of a security patch that was not actually made available until the week of September 16, 2019. For more information avbout the patch, see the security bulletin for September 16, 2019.

No GKE releases occurred the week of September 9, 2019.

September 5, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

New default version

The default version for new clusters is now 1.13.7-gke.8 (previously 1.12.8-gke.10).

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Auto-upgrades are no longer paused.

Masters and nodes with auto-upgrade enabled will be upgraded:

Current version upgrade version
1.11.x 1.12.7-gke.25

Rollouts are phased across multiple weeks, to ensure cluster and fleet stability.

Versions no longer available

The following versions are no longer available for new clusters or cluster upgrades:

  • 1.11.10-gke.6

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.12.x

1.12.9-gke.16

Minor bug fixes and performance improvements.

v1.13.x

1.13.9-gke.3

Bug fixes and performance improvements.

v1.14.x

1.14.3-gke.11
Feature

GKE 1.14 is generally available.

Upgrading

Before upgrading clusters to GKE v1.14, you must review the known issues and urgent upgrade notes.

For example, the default RBAC policy no longer grants access to discovery and permission-checking APIs, and you must take specific action to preserve the old behavior for newly-created cluster users.

Differences between GKE v1.14.x and Kubernetes 1.14

GKE v1.14.x has the following differences from Kubernetes 1.14.x:

  • Storage Migrator is not supported on GKE v1.14.x.

  • CSI Inline Volumes (Alpha) are not supported on GKE v1.14.x.

  • Huge Pages is not supported on GKE 1.14.x. If you are interested in support for Huge Pages, register your interest.

New features
Feature

Pod Ready++ is generally available and supported on GKE v1.14.x.

Feature

Pod priority and preemption is generally available and supported on GKE v1.14.x.

Feature

The RunAsGroup feature has been promoted to beta and enabled by default. PodSpec and PodSecurityPolicy objects can be used to control the primary GID of containers on Docker and containerd runtimes.

Feature

Early-access to test Windows containers is now available. If you are interested in testing Windows containers, fill out this form.

Other changes
Change

The node.k8s.io API group and runtimeclasses.node.k8s.io resource have been migrated to a built-in API. If you were using RuntimeClasses, you must recreate each of them after upgrading, and also delete the runtimeclasses.node.k8s.io CRD. RuntimeClasses can no longer be created without a defined handler.

Change

When creating a new GKE cluster, Stackdriver Kubernetes Engine Monitoring is now the default Stackdriver support option. This is a change from prior versions where Stackdriver Logging and Stackdriver Monitoring were the default Stackdriver support option. For more information, see Overview of Stackdriver support for GKE.

Deprecated

OS and Arch information is now recorded in kubernetes.io/os and kubernetes.io/arch labels on Node objects. The previous labels (beta.kubernetes.io/os and beta.kubernetes.io/arch) are still recorded, but are deprecated and targeted for removal in Kubernetes 1.18.

Known Issues
Issue

Users with the Quobyte Volume plugin are advised not to upgrade between GKE 1.13.x and 1.14.x due to an issue with Kubernetes 1.14. This will be fixed in an upcoming release.

Bug fixes and performance improvements.

Rapid

The following versions are available to clusters enrolled in the Rapid release channel.

1.14.5-gke.5

GKE 1.14.5-gke.5 is now available in the Rapid release channel. It includes bug fixes and performance improvements. For more details, refer to the release notes for Kubernetes v1.14.

New features

Feature

Intranode visibility is generally available.

Feature

You can now use Customer-managed encryption keys (beta) to control the encryption used for attached persistent disks in your clusters. This is available as a dynamically provisioned PersistentVolume.

Rollout schedule

The rollout schedule is now included in Upgrades.

August 22, 2019

Version updates

GKE cluster versions have been updated.

Scheduled automatic upgrades

Auto-upgrades are currently paused.

New versions available for upgrades and new clusters

The following Kubernetes versions are now available for new clusters and for opt-in master upgrades and node upgrades for existing clusters. See these instructions for more information on the Kubernetes versioning scheme.

v1.11.x

1.11.10-gke.6
Fixed

This version was previously released and is available again. It mitigates against the vulnerability described in the security bulletin published on August 5, 2019.

v1.12.x

Multiple v1.12.x versions are available this week:

1.12.9-gke.13

Fixed

This version mitigates against the vulnerability described in the security bulletin published on August 5, 2019.

1.12.9-gke.15
Fixed

Fixes an issue that can cause Horizontal Pod Autoscaler to increase the replica count to the maximum, regardless of other autoscaling factors.

Fixed

Upgrade Istio to 1.1.13, to address address two vulnerabilities announced by the Istio project. These vulnerabilities can be used to mount a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against services using Istio.

Change

The node image for Container-Optimized OS (COS) is now cos-69-10895-329-0.

v1.13.x

Multiple v1.13.x versions are available this week:

1.13.7-gke.19
Fixed

This version mitigates against the vulnerability described in the security bulletin published on August 5, 2019.

1.13.7-gke.24
Fixed

Fixes an issue that can cause Horizontal Pod Autoscaler to increase the replica count to the maximum during a rolling update, regardless of other autoscaling factors.

Fixed

Upgrade Istio to 1.1.13, to address address two vulnerabilities announced by the Istio project. These vulnerabilities can be used to mount a Denial of Service (DoS) attack against services using Istio.

Change

The node image for Container-Optimized OS (COS) is now cos-73-11647-267-0.