What's new in AKS on Azure Local

Applies to: AKS on Azure Local

This article lists the various features and improvements that are available in AKS enabled by Azure Arc on Azure Local.

Features and improvements

This section lists the new features and improvements in AKS Arc in each release of Azure Local.

Release 2507

The following Kubernetes cluster deployment and management capabilities are available:

• Disk space exhaustion: Fixed issues due to disk space exhaustion on control plane VMs due to accumulation of kube-apiserver audit logs.
• Cluster upgrade: Fixed AKS Arc cluster and node pool create, scale, and upgrade issues due to unavailability of AKS Arc VM images.
• AKS Arc Telemetry pod issue: Fixed an issue in which the AKS Arc telemetry pod was consuming excessing CPU and memory.
• New checks: Added new checks during cluster and node pool operations. These improvements allow the system to proactively detect and handle scenarios where there are insufficient IP addresses in the IP pool.
• GPU resource allocation: Additional pre-checks for resource allocation for GPUs during Kubernetes cluster create operation.
• Node pool improvements: Accurate representation of node pool count and status on the Azure portal. This release also includes improvements to node pool creation and update flows to ensure that the Kubernetes cluster status accounts for corresponding node pool status.
• Improvements to autoscaler capabilities:
  • Fixed an issue in which secrets were updated repeatedly when the autoscaler was enabled. The fix ensures that the provider checks for an existing secret and only creates it if it's missing.
  • Fixed an issue in which users were unable to disable the autoscaler at the Kubernetes cluster level.
  • Improved conflict handling logic during cluster delete operations when the autoscaler or cluster controller tried to update or remove resources that were being changed simultaneously by another process.
  • Fixed an issue in which the node pools' minimum and maximum counts didn't get updated when the autoscaler was enabled.

Supported Kubernetes versions for 2507

The Kubernetes versions supported in the 2507 release are: 1.28.12, 1.28.14, 1.29.7, 1.29.9, 1.30.3, and 1.30.4.

Release 2503

The following Kubernetes cluster deployment and management capabilities are available:

• Large VM SKUs for Kubernetes node pools: Added two new VM SKUs - Standard_D32s_v3: 32 vCPU, 128 GiB and Standard_D16s_v3: 16 vCPU, 64 GiB - to support larger node pools on an AKS cluster. For more information about supported VM sizes, see supported scale options.
• Improved log collection experience: Improved log collection for AKS control plane node VMs and node pool VMs, with support for passing multiple IP addresses and SSH key or directory path. For more information, see on-demand log collection and az aksarc get-logs CLI.
• Improved diagnosability: The Diagnostic Checker tool is automatically run if the Kubernetes cluster creation fails, and added new test cases.
• Improved Kubernetes cluster delete: Fixed deletion issues; for example, due to pod disruption budgets.
• Improved AKS Arc image download: Fixed issues with AKS Arc image downloads.
• Improved GPU support: Improved error handling for Kubernetes cluster creation with GPU enabled node pools. Fixed known issues with attaching persistent volumes on GPU enabled node pools.

To get started with these features in the 2503 release, make sure to update your AKSArc CLI extension to version 1.5.37 or higher.

Supported Kubernetes versions for 2503

The Kubernetes versions supported in the 2503 release are: 1.28.12, 1.28.14, 1.29.7, 1.29.9, 1.30.3 and 1.30.4.

Release 2411

The following Kubernetes cluster deployment and management capabilities are available:

• Workload Identity (preview). You can now deploy AKS Arc clusters with workload identity enabled and deploy application pods with the workload identity label to access Microsoft Entra ID protected resources, such as Azure Key Vault. For more information, see Deploy and configure Workload Identity.
• Arc Gateway integration (preview). You can now deploy AKS Arc clusters with pod-level Arc Proxy and communicate with the Arc gateway, reducing the list of outbound URLs to configure in an isolated network environment. For more information, see Simplify network configuration requirements with Azure Arc Gateway.
• Control Plane IP. You can now deploy AKS Arc clusters without specifying the control plane IP. The IP address is assigned automatically. For more information, see this section in the network system requirements article.
• Disable Windows image download. You can now disable Windows image downloads by disabling the Windows node pool after cluster creation, reducing network traffic over HTTP connections and providing better support for low bandwidth environments. For more information, see Disable Windows nodepool feature on Azure Local.
• Terraform (preview). You can now create AKS Arc clusters with Terraform modules and smart defaults. For more information, see Create clusters using Terraform.
• Error handling. Error handling is now improved to prevent logical network deletions with dependent cluster resources, GPU misconfigurations, and more.

To get started with these features in the 2411 release, make sure to update your AKSArc CLI extension to version 1.4.23 or higher.

Supported Kubernetes versions for 2411

The Kubernetes versions supported in the 2411 release are 1.27.7, 1.27.9, 1.28.5, 1.28.9, 1.29.2, and 1.29.4.

Release 2408

The following Kubernetes cluster deployment and management capabilities are available:

• High availability improvements. You can now deploy nodes with anti-affinity on specific physical hosts on Azure Local clusters. For more information, see Availability sets.
• PowerShell. You can now use PowerShell cmdlets to manage your AKS Arc clusters on Azure Local with CRUD support. For more information, see the PowerShell reference documentation.
• Error report improvements. You can now get improved error case reporting with prechecks; for example, a check for incorrect Kubernetes versions and available GPU capacity.
• Support for NVIDIA T4. You can now create node pools in new VM sizes with GPU NVIDIA T4. For more information, see Use GPUs.
• Arc Gateway. You can now use the Arc Gateway to configure a few of the outbound URLs to use AKS clusters on Azure Local.
• Support pod CIDR. You can now create an AKS Arc cluster with a user-specified pod CIDR IP arrange.

Supported component versions for 2408

Release 2405

The following Kubernetes cluster deployment and management capabilities are available:

• Azure RBAC support. You can now enable Azure RBAC for Kubernetes while creating AKS Arc clusters using Azure CLI and Azure Resource Manager templates.
• Taints and labels update. You can now update taints and labels during an AKS Arc node pool update operation using Azure CLI and Azure Resource Manager templates.
• AKS Arc cluster platform metrics and alerts. You can now view AKS Arc cluster metrics (platform metrics) and create metric-based alerts.
• Auto cert repair. You can now automatically repair certificates, managed by cert-tattoo, that expired when the cluster was shut down.
• Download VHDs manually (offline download). This feature, now available only in private preview, enables you to download virtual machine images and upload them to the target center using a manual process. This feature can help in environments in which downloading large files is inconvenient. If you're interested in using it, contact your Microsoft Account representative.

Supported component versions for 2405

The following component versions are supported in release 2405:

Release 2402

The following Kubernetes cluster deployment and management capabilities are available:

• Autoscaling. You can now enable the autoscaling feature when you create or update Kubernetes clusters and node pools.
• Support for NVIDIA A16. You can now create node pools in new VM sizes with GPU NVIDIA A16. For more information, see Use GPUs for compute-intensive workloads.
• Diagnostic settings. You can export audit logs and other control plane logs to one or more destinations. For more information, see Diagnostic settings in Azure Monitor.
• Certificate expiration. You can now shut down Kubernetes clusters for up to 7 days without any certificate expiration issues.
• Update status. You can now view the status of ongoing Kubernetes cluster upgrades.

Next steps

• Review AKS on Azure Local prerequisites