Release notes for kOps 1.34 series

kOps 1.34.0 introduces major updates to container runtime management, enhanced cloud provider support, and significant networking improvements.

Significant changes

Container Runtime

• crictl and nerdctl are now only installed on demand (#17604)
• Set spec.containerd.installCriCtl=true or spec.containerd.installNerdCtl=true to install
• Update containerd to v2.1.4 (#17532)
• Better systemd integration with dbus dependency fix (#17603)

Networking

• Update Cilium to v1.18.2 (#17601)
• Add support for cilium-etcd with dns=none (#17625)
• Update Calico to v3.30.3 (#17628)
• Update Flannel to v0.27.4 (#17641)
• AWS VPC CNI updated to v1.20.2 (#17629)
• BREAKING: Canal support removed (#17642)

AWS

• Update Karpenter to v1.8.1 (#17624)
• Add support for feature gates configuration
• Important: Older versions must be uninstalled before upgrading (#17567)
• Add CPU and memory resource configuration for AWS Load Balancer Controller
• Update EBS CSI driver to v1.47.0 (#17560)
• Add support for using ECR as pull-through image cache (#16593)

Azure

• Add udev disk rules (#17611)
• Fix rolling-update error (#17538)
• Use internal K8s API endpoint for cloud-node-manager (#17607)
• Remove various VMSS configuration suffixes for cleaner naming
• Use kops as the default admin user

OpenStack

• Update OpenStack CSI images

Etcd

• Update etcd to v3.6.5 for Kubernetes 1.34+ (#17637)
• Update etcd to v3.5.23 for Kubernetes <1.34
• Update etcd-manager to v3.0.20250917 (#17615)
• Use image volumes to mount etcd images (#17539)

Other Components

• Update cluster-autoscaler to v1.34.0 (#17643)
• Update CoreDNS to v1.12.4
• Update Cloud Controller Managers for AWS, Azure, and Hetzner
• Default SSH key changed to ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub (from RSA)
• ebtables, ethtool and socat are no longer installed by default

Breaking changes

• Canal support has been removed (#17642)
• Migrate to Calico or another supported CNI before upgrading
• Legacy addons removed from the kOps repository (#17332)
• Only affects clusters using kOps <1.22
• Karpenter requires manual uninstallation before upgrading (#17567)
• Default SSH key changed from RSA to Ed25519
• Several packages no longer installed by default: crictl, nerdctl, ebtables, ethtool, socat

Other changes of note

• Migrate to control-plane nomenclature in documentation
• Fix IPv6 routes for Kubernetes 1.32
• Fix Azure subscription ID check
• Add nftables package support
• Use ephemeral S3 buckets for E2E tests
• Bump Golang to 1.25
• Update golangci-lint to v2

Known Issues

• Karpenter upgrade requires manual uninstallation of older versions
• Azure naming conventions have changed which may affect existing automation

Deprecations

• Support for Kubernetes version 1.28 is removed in kOps 1.34
• Support for Kubernetes version 1.29 is deprecated and will be removed in kOps 1.35

Installation and Upgrade Notes

Pre-Upgrade Checklist

1. Canal Users: Migrate to another CNI solution
2. Karpenter Users: Uninstall existing Karpenter installations
3. SSH Access: Verify Ed25519 key support
4. Tool Dependencies: Check if you need crictl, nerdctl, ebtables, ethtool, or socat

Upgrade Process

1. Review breaking changes
2. Test in non-production first
3. For Karpenter users, uninstall existing version
4. Run kops update cluster and validate before applying

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This release includes contributions from the kOps community. Thank you to all contributors!