Version 1.8. This version is supported as outlined in the Anthos version support policy, offering the latest patches and updates for security vulnerabilities, exposures, and issues impacting Anthos clusters on VMware (GKE on-prem). Refer to the release notes for more details. This is not the most recent version.

Available versions:   1.11    1.10    1.9    Earlier versions

Known issues

This document describes known issues for version 1.8 of Anthos clusters on VMware (GKE on-prem).

ClientConfig custom resource

gkectl update reverts any manual changes that you have made to the ClientConfig custom resource. We strongly recommend that you back up the ClientConfig resource after every manual change.

gkectl check-config validation fails: can't find F5 BIG-IP partitions

Symptoms

Validation fails because F5 BIG-IP partitions can't be found, even though they exist.

Potential causes

An issue with the F5 BIG-IP API can cause validation to fail.

Resolution

Try running gkectl check-config again.

Disruption for workloads with PodDisruptionBudgets

Upgrading clusters can cause disruption or downtime for workloads that use PodDisruptionBudgets (PDBs).

Nodes fail to complete their upgrade process

If you have PodDisruptionBudget objects configured that are unable to allow any additional disruptions, node upgrades might fail to upgrade to the control plane version after repeated attempts. To prevent this failure, we recommend that you scale up the Deployment or HorizontalPodAutoscaler to allow the node to drain while still respecting the PodDisruptionBudget configuration.

To see all PodDisruptionBudget objects that do not allow any disruptions:

kubectl get poddisruptionbudget --all-namespaces -o jsonpath='{range .items[?(@.status.disruptionsAllowed==0)]}{.metadata.name}/{.metadata.namespace}{"\n"}{end}'

User cluster installation failed because of cert-manager/ca-injector's leader election issue

You might see an installation failure due to cert-manager-cainjector in crashloop, when the apiserver/etcd is slow:

# These are logs from `cert-manager-cainjector`, from the command
# `kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system cert-manager-cainjector-xxx`

I0923 16:19:27.911174       1 leaderelection.go:278] failed to renew lease kube-system/cert-manager-cainjector-leader-election: timed out waiting for the condition
E0923 16:19:27.911110       1 leaderelection.go:321] error retrieving resource lock kube-system/cert-manager-cainjector-leader-election-core: Get "https://10.96.0.1:443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/configmaps/cert-manager-cainjector-leader-election-core": context deadline exceeded
I0923 16:19:27.911593       1 leaderelection.go:278] failed to renew lease kube-system/cert-manager-cainjector-leader-election-core: timed out waiting for the condition
E0923 16:19:27.911629       1 start.go:163] cert-manager/ca-injector "msg"="error running core-only manager" "error"="leader election lost"

Run the following commands to mitigate the problem.

First Scale down the monitoring-operator so it will not revert the changes to the cert-manager Deployment.

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment monitoring-operator --replicas=0

Second, edit the cert-manager-cainjector Deployment to disable leader election, because we only have one replica running. It is not required for a single replica.

# Add a command line flag for cainjector: `--leader-elect=false`
kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG edit -n kube-system deployment cert-manager-cainjector

The relevant yaml snippet for cert-manager-cainjector deployment should looks like this: ... apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: cert-manager-cainjector namespace: kube-system ... spec: ... template: ... spec: ... containers: - name: cert-manager image: "gcr.io/gke-on-prem-staging/cert-manager-cainjector:v1.0.3-gke.0" args: ... - --leader-elect=false ...

Keep monitoring-operator replicas at 0 as a mitigation until the installation is finished. Otherwise it will revert the change.

After the installation is finished and the cluster is up and running, turn on the monitoring-operator for day-2 operations:

kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment monitoring-operator --replicas=1

After each upgrade, the changes will be reverted. Perform the same steps again to mitigate the issue until this is fixed in a future release.

Renewal of certificates might be required before an admin cluster upgrade

Before you begin the admin cluster upgrade process, you should make sure that your admin cluster certificates are currently valid, and renew these certificates if they are not.

Admin cluster certificate renewal process

  1. Make sure that OpenSSL is installed on the admin workstation before you begin.

  2. Set the KUBECONFIG variable:

    KUBECONFIG=ABSOLUTE_PATH_ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG

    Replace ABSOLUTE_PATH_ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG with the absolute path to the admin cluster kubeconfig file.

  3. Get the IP address and SSH keys for the admin master node:

    kubectl --kubeconfig "${KUBECONFIG}" get secrets -n kube-system sshkeys \
-o jsonpath='{.data.vsphere_tmp}' | base64 -d > \
~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key && chmod 600 ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key

export MASTER_NODE_IP=$(kubectl --kubeconfig "${KUBECONFIG}" get nodes -o \
jsonpath='{.items[*].status.addresses[?(@.type=="ExternalIP")].address}' \
--selector='node-role.kubernetes.io/master')

  4. Check if the certificates are expired:

    ssh -i ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key ubuntu@"${MASTER_NODE_IP}" \
"sudo kubeadm alpha certs check-expiration"

    If the certificates are expired, you must renew them before upgrading the admin cluster.

  5. Back up old certificates:

    This is an optional, but recommended, step.

    # ssh into admin master
ssh -i ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key ubuntu@"${MASTER_NODE_IP}"

# on admin master
sudo tar -czvf backup.tar.gz /etc/kubernetes
logout

# on worker node
sudo scp -i ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key \
ubuntu@"${MASTER_NODE_IP}":/home/ubuntu/backup.tar.gz .

  6. Renew the certificates with kubeadm: 

     # ssh into admin master
 ssh -i ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key ubuntu@"${MASTER_NODE_IP}"
 # on admin master
 sudo kubeadm alpha certs renew all

  7. Restart the admin master node:

      # on admin master
  cd /etc/kubernetes
  sudo mkdir tempdir
  sudo mv manifests/*.yaml tempdir/
  sleep 5
  echo "remove pods"
  # ensure kubelet detect those change remove those pods
  # wait until the result of this command is empty
  sudo docker ps | grep kube-apiserver

  # ensure kubelet start those pods again
  echo "start pods again"
  sudo mv tempdir/*.yaml manifests/
  sleep 30
  # ensure kubelet start those pods again
  # should show some results
  sudo docker ps | grep -e kube-apiserver -e kube-controller-manager -e kube-scheduler -e etcd

  # clean up
  sudo rm -rf tempdir

  logout

  8. Because the admin cluster kubeconfig file also expires if the admin certificates expire, you should back up this file before expiration.

    • Back up the admin cluster kubeconfig file: 

      ssh -i ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key ubuntu@"${MASTER_NODE_IP}" 
      
"sudo cat /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf" > new_admin.conf
vi "${KUBECONFIG}"

    • Replace client-certificate-data and client-key-data in kubeconfig with client-certificate-data and client-key-data in the new_admin.conf file that you created.

  9. Renew the certificates of admin cluster worker nodes

    Check node certificates expiration date 

        kubectl get nodes -o wide
    # find the oldest node, fill NODE_IP with the internal ip of that node
    ssh -i ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key ubuntu@"${NODE_IP}"
    openssl x509 -enddate -noout -in /var/lib/kubelet/pki/kubelet-client-current.pem
    logout

    If the certificate is about to expire, renew node certificates by manual node repair.

  10. You must validate the renewed certificates, and validate the certificate of kube-apiserver.

    • Check certificates expiration: 

      ssh -i ~/.ssh/admin-cluster.key ubuntu@"${MASTER_NODE_IP}" 
      
"sudo kubeadm alpha certs check-expiration"

    • Check certificate of kube-apiserver: 

      # Get the IP address of kube-apiserver
cat $KUBECONFIG | grep server
# Get the current kube-apiserver certificate
openssl s_client -showcerts -connect : 
      
| sed -ne '/-BEGIN CERTIFICATE-/,/-END CERTIFICATE-/p'  
      
> current-kube-apiserver.crt
# check expiration date of this cert
openssl x509 -in current-kube-apiserver.crt -noout -enddate

/etc/cron.daily/aide script uses up all space in /run, causing a crashloop in Pods

Starting from Anthos clusters on VMware 1.7.2, the Ubuntu OS images are hardened with CIS L1 Server Benchmark. . As a result, the cron script /etc/cron.daily/aide has been installed so that an aide check is scheduled to ensure the CIS L1 Server rule "1.4.2 Ensure filesystem integrity is regularly checked".

The script uses /run/aide as a temporary directory to save its cron logs, and over time it could use up all the space in /run. See /etc/cron.daily/aide script uses all space in /run for a workaround.

If you see one or more Pods crashlooping on a node, run df -h /run on the node. If the command output shows 100% space usage, then you are likely experiencing this issue.

This issue is fixed in version 1.8.1. For the 1.7.2 and 1.8.0 versions, you can resolve this issue manually with either of the following two workarounds:

  1. Periodically remove the log files at /run/aide/cron.daily.old* (recommended).
  2. Follow the steps mentioned in /etc/cron.daily/aide script uses all space in /run. (Note: this workaround could potentially affect the node compliance state).

Upgrading Seesaw load balancer with version 1.8.0

If you use the gkectl upgrade loadbalancer to attempt to update some parameters of the Seesaw load balancer in version 1.8.0, this will not work in either DHCP or IPAM mode. If your setup includes this configuration, do not upgrade to version 1.8.0, but instead to version 1.8.1 or later.

Cannot log in to admin workstation due to password expiry issue

You might experience this issue if you are using one of the following versions of Anthos clusters on VMware.

  • 1.7.2-gke.2
  • 1.7.3-gke.2
  • 1.8.0-gke.21
  • 1.8.0-gke.24
  • 1.8.0-gke.25
  • 1.8.1-gke.7
  • 1.8.2-gke.8

You might get the following error when you attempt to SSH into your Anthos VMs, including the admin workstation, cluster nodes, and Seesaw nodes:

WARNING: Your password has expired.

This error occurs because the ubuntu user password on the VMs has expired. You must manually reset the user password's expiration time to a large value before logging into the VMs.

Prevention of password expiry error

If you are running the affected versions listed above, and the user password hasn't expired yet, you should extend the expiration time before seeing the SSH error.

Run the following command on each Anthos VM:

sudo chage -M 99999 ubuntu

Mitigation of password expiry error

If the user password has already expired and you can't log in to the VMs to extend the expiration time, perform the following mitigation steps for each component.

Admin workstation

Use a temporary VM to perform the following steps. You can create an admin workstation using the 1.7.1-gke.4 version to use as the temporary VM.

  1. Ensure the temporary VM and the admin workstation are in a power off state.

  2. Attach the boot disk of the admin workstation to the temporary VM. The boot disk is the one with the label "Hard disk 1".

  3. Mount the boot disk inside the VM by running these commands. Substitute your own boot disk identifier for dev/sdc1.

    sudo mkdir -p /mnt/boot-disk
sudo mount /dev/sdc1 /mnt/boot-disk

  4. Set the ubuntu user expiration date to a large value such as 99999 days.

    sudo chroot /mnt/boot-disk chage -M 99999 ubuntu

  5. Shut down the temporary VM.

  6. Power on the admin workstation. You should now be able to SSH as usual.

  7. As cleanup, delete the temporary VM.

Admin cluster control plane VM

Follow the instructions to recreate the admin cluster control plane VM.

Admin cluster addon VMs

Run the following command from the admin workstation to recreate the VM:

  kubectl --kubeconfig=ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG patch machinedeployment gke-admin-node --type=json -p="[{'op': 'add', 'path': '/spec/template/spec/metadata/annotations', 'value': {"kubectl.kubernetes.io/restartedAt": "version1"}}]"

After you run this command, wait for the admin cluster addon VMs to finish recreation and to be ready before you continue with the next steps.

User cluster control plane VMs

Run the following command from the admin workstation to recreate the VMs:

usermaster=`kubectl --kubeconfig=ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get machinedeployments -l set=user-master -o name` && kubectl --kubeconfig=ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG patch $usermaster --type=json -p="[{'op': 'add', 'path': '/spec/template/spec/metadata/annotations', 'value': {"kubectl.kubernetes.io/restartedAt": "version1"}}]"

After you run this command, wait for the user cluster control plane VMs to finish recreation and to be ready before you continue with the next steps.

User cluster worker VMs

Run the following command from the admin workstation to recreate the VMs.

for md in `kubectl --kubeconfig=USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG get machinedeployments -l set=node -o name`; do kubectl patch --kubeconfig=USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG $md --type=json -p="[{'op': 'add', 'path': '/spec/template/spec/metadata/annotations', 'value': {"kubectl.kubernetes.io/restartedAt": "version1"}}]"; done

Seesaw VMs

Run the following commands from the admin workstation to recreate the Seesaw VMs. There will be some downtime. If HA is enabled for the load balancer, the maximum down time is two seconds.

gkectl upgrade loadbalancer --kubeconfig ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG --config ADMIN_CLUSTER_CONFIG --admin-cluster --no-diff
gkectl upgrade loadbalancer --kubeconfig ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG --config USER_CLUSTER_CONFIG --no-diff

Restarting or upgrading vCenter for versions lower than 7.0U2

If the vCenter, for versions lower than 7.0U2, is restarted, after an upgrade or otherwise, the network name in VM Information from vCenter is incorrect, and results in the machine being in an Unavailable state. This eventually leads to the nodes being auto-repaired to create new ones.

Related govmomi bug: https://github.com/vmware/govmomi/issues/2552

This workaround is provided by VMware support:

1. The issue is fixed in vCenter versions 7.0U2 and above.

2. For lower versions:
Right-click the host, and then select Connection > Disconnect. Next, reconnect, which forces an update of the 
VM's portgroup.

gkectl create-config admin and gkectl create-config cluster panic

In versions 1.8.0-1.8.3, the gkectl create-config admin/cluster command panics with the message panic: invalid version: "latest".

As a workaround, use gkectl create-config admin/cluster --gke-on-prem-version=DESIRED_CLUSTER_VERSION. Replace DESIRED_CLUSTER_VERSION with the desired version, such as 1.8.2-gke.8.

Creating/upgrading admin cluster timeout

This issue affects 1.8.0-1.8.3.

Your admin cluster creation or admin cluster upgrade might time out with the following error:

Error getting kubeconfig: error running remote command 'sudo cat /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf': error: Process exited with status 1, stderr: 'cat: /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf: No such file or directory

In addition, the log at nodes/ADMIN_MASTER_NODE/files/var/log/startup.log in the external cluster snapshot ends with this message:

[preflight] You can also perform this action in beforehand using 'kubeadm config images pull'

This error happens when the network is slow between the admin control-plane VM and the container registry. Make sure to inspect your network or proxy setup to reduce the latency and increase the bandwidth.

SSH connection closed by remote host

For Anthos clusters on VMware version 1.7.2 and above, the Ubuntu OS images are hardened with CIS L1 Server Benchmark. To meet the CIS rule "5.2.16 Ensure SSH Idle Timeout Interval is configured", /etc/ssh/sshd_config has the following settings:

ClientAliveInterval 300
ClientAliveCountMax 0

The purpose of these settings is to terminate a client session after 5 minutes of idle time. However, the ClientAliveCountMax 0 value causes unexpected behavior. When you use the ssh session on the admin workstation, or a cluster node, the SSH connection might be disconnected even your ssh client is not idle, such as when running a time-consuming command, and your command could get terminated with the following message:

Connection to [IP] closed by remote host.
Connection to [IP] closed.

As a workaround, you can either:

  • Use nohup to prevent your command being terminated on SSH disconnection,

    nohup gkectl upgrade admin --config admin-cluster.yaml --kubeconfig kubeconfig

  • Update the sshd_config to use a non-zero ClientAliveCountMax value. The CIS rule recommends to use a value less than 3.

    sudo sed -i 's/ClientAliveCountMax 0/ClientAliveCountMax 1/g' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sudo systemctl restart sshd

    Make sure you reconnect your ssh session.

Conflict with cert-manager when upgrading to version 1.8.2 or above

If you have your own cert-manager installation with Anthos clusters on VMware, you might experience a failure when you attempt to upgrade to versions 1.8.2 or above. This is a result of a conflict between your version of cert-manager, which is likely installed in the cert-manager namespace, and the monitoring-operator version.

If you try to install another copy of cert-manager after upgrading to Anthos clusters on VMware version 1.8.2 or above, the installation might fail due to a conflict with the existing one managed by monitoring-operator.

The metrics-ca cluster issuer, which control-plane and observability components rely on for creation and rotation of cert secrets, requires a metrics-ca cert secret to be stored in the cluster resource namespace. This namespace is kube-system for the monitoring-operator installation, and likely to be cert-manager for your installation.

If you have experienced an installation failure, follow these steps to upgrade successfully to version 1.8.2 or later:

  1. Uninstall your version of cert-manager.

  2. Perform the upgrade.

  3. If you want to restore your own installation of cert-manager, follow these steps:

    • Scale the monitoring-operator deployment to 0. For the admin cluster, run this command: 

      kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment monitoring-operator --replicas=0

      For a user cluster, run this command: 

      kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n USER_CLUSTER_NAME scale deployment monitoring-operator --replicas=0

    • Scale the cert-manager deployments managed by monitoring-operator to 0. For the admin cluster, run this command:

      kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment cert-manager --replicas=0
kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment cert-manager-cainjector --replicas=0
kubectl --kubeconfig ADMIN_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment cert-manager-webhook --replicas=0

      For a user cluster, run this command:

      kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment cert-manager --replicas=0
kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment cert-manager-cainjector --replicas=0
kubectl --kubeconfig USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system scale deployment cert-manager-webhook --replicas=0

    • Reinstall your cert-manager.

    • Copy the metrics-ca cert-manager.io/v1 Certificate and the metrics-pki.cluster.local Issuer resources from kube-system to the cluster resource namespace of your installed cert-manager. This namespace might be cert-manager if using the upstream cert-manager release, such as v1.0.3, but that depends on your installation.

False positives in docker, containerd, and runc vulnerability scanning

The docker, containerd, and runc in the Ubuntu OS images shipped with Anthos clusters on VMware are pinned to special versions using Ubuntu PPA. This ensures that any container runtime changes will be qualified by Anthos clusters on VMware before each release.

However, the special versions are unknown to the Ubuntu CVE Tracker, which is used as the vulnerability feeds by various CVE scanning tools. Therefore, you will see false positives in docker, containerd, and runc vulnerability scanning results.

For example, you might see the following false positives from your CVE scanning results. These CVEs are already fixed in the latest patch versions of Anthos clusters on VMware.

Refer to the release notes for any CVE fixes.

Canonical is aware of this issue, and the fix is tracked at https://github.com/canonical/sec-cvescan/issues/73.

/etc/cron.daily/aide CPU and memory spike issue

Starting from Anthos clusters on VMware version 1.7.2, the Ubuntu OS images are hardened with CIS L1 Server Benchmark.

As a result, the cron script /etc/cron.daily/aide has been installed so that an aide check is scheduled so as to ensure that the CIS L1 Server rule "1.4.2 Ensure filesystem integrity is regularly checked" is followed.

The cron job runs daily at 6:00 AM UTC. Depending on the number of files on the filesystem, you may experience CPU and memory usage spikes around that time that are caused by this aide process.

If the spikes are affecting your workload, you can disable the daily cron job:

`sudo chmod -x /etc/cron.daily/aide`.

Cisco ACI doesn't work with Direct Server Return (DSR)

Seesaw runs in DSR mode, and by default it doesn't work in Cisco ACI because of data-plane IP learning. A possible workaround is to disable IP learning by adding the Seesaw IP address as a L4-L7 Virtual IP in the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC).

You can configure the L4-L7 Virtual IP option by going to Tenant > Application Profiles > Application EPGs or uSeg EPGs. Failure to disable IP learning will result in IP endpoint flapping between different locations in the Cisco API fabric.

A service account bearer token that is too long can break Seesaw load balancer logs

If your logging-monitoring service account bearer token is larger than 512 KB, it can break the Seesaw load balancer logs. To fix this issue, upgrade to version 1.9 or later.

Connectivity issues between Pods due to anetd daemons in software deadlock

Clusters with enableDataplaneV2 set to true can experience connectivity issues between Pods due to anetd daemons (running as a Daemonset) entering a software deadlock. While in this state, anetd daemons will see stale nodes (previously deleted nodes) as peers and miss newly added nodes as new peers.

If you have experienced this issue, complete the following steps to restart the anetd daemons to refresh the peer nodes, and connectivity should be restored.

  1. Find all anetd daemons in the cluster:

    kubectl --kubeconfig=USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system get pods -o wide | grep anetd

  2. Check whether anetd daemons currently see stale peers:

    kubectl --kubeconfig=USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system exec -it ANETD_XYZ -- cilium-health status

    Replace ANETD_XYZ with the name of an anetd Pod.

  3. Restart all affected Pods:

    kubectl --kubeconfig=USER_CLUSTER_KUBECONFIG -n kube-system delete pod ANETD_XYZ

gkectl diagnose checking certificates failure

If your work station does not have access to user cluster worker nodes, it will get the following failures when running gkectl diagnose, it is safe to ignore them.

Checking user cluster certificates...FAILURE
    Reason: 3 user cluster certificates error(s).
    Unhealthy Resources:
    Node kubelet CA and certificate on node xxx: failed to verify kubelet certificate on node xxx: dial tcp xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:10250: connect: connection timed out
    Node kubelet CA and certificate on node xxx: failed to verify kubelet certificate on node xxx: dial tcp xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:10250: connect: connection timed out
    Node kubelet CA and certificate on node xxx: failed to verify kubelet certificate on node xxx: dial tcp xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:10250: connect: connection timed out