Getting support

Google Cloud offers a variety of support packages to accommodate your support needs. All Google Cloud Support packages include support for GKE Enterprise. If you have an existing Google Cloud Support package, you already have support for GKE Enterprise, including GKE and GKE on VMware.

For more information, see the Google Cloud Support documentation.

Support for GKE on VMware

To learn about support for GKE on VMware, refer to the product's support page.

Support for GKE on Bare Metal

To learn about support for GKE on Bare Metal, refer to the product's support page.

Support for Anthos Service Mesh

You can deploy a service mesh to your GKE or GKE on VMware clusters by installing Anthos Service Mesh. To learn more, see the Anthos Service Mesh support page.

Support for Cloud Run for Anthos

To learn about support for Cloud Run for Anthos, refer to the product's support page.

Support for GKE Enterprise attached clusters

Your Google Cloud support includes support for any GKE Enterprise components deployed on GKE Enterprise attached clusters, though not for the clusters themselves.

Giving Google Cloud Support access to your clusters

When troubleshooting a problem, you may sometimes need to give Google Cloud Support temporary read-only access to cluster snapshot data or to the cluster itself to help triage your issue. Find out how to do this in Giving Google Cloud Support access to your clusters or Giving Google Cloud Support access to your snapshots.

Version Support Policy

The objective of this Version Support Policy is to give you the flexibility to schedule upgrades when it meets your business needs, while balancing the rapid evolution of both Kubernetes and GKE Enterprise.

Google publishes a new major (for example, x in version x.y) or minor (for example, y in version x.y) GKE Enterprise release three times a year around the months of April, August, and December, with a monthly patch release (for example, z in version x.y.z) for supported minor versions. The Kubernetes community may revise their version support calendar at times, which may impact the GKE Enterprise release and support schedule.

Starting with GKE Enterprise version 1.14, Google supports each GKE Enterprise minor version for 12 months after the initial release of the minor version, or until the release of the third subsequent minor version, whichever is longer.

We encourage you to maintain your GKE Enterprise environment with the product's latest major or minor release. You can find out about the latest supported versions for each component and how to upgrade in the component's documentation.

This version support policy includes:

  • Break/fix support from Google Cloud Support.
  • CVE security vulnerabilities to Kubernetes and related components.
  • General patches to Kubernetes and related components.
  • CVE security vulnerabilities to Ubuntu or Container-Optimized OS.
  • General patches to Ubuntu or Container-Optimized OS.

GKE Enterprise (Anthos) minor release schedule

The following table shows upcoming minor releases for GKE Enterprise (Anthos) and the earliest end-of-life (EOL) dates:

GKE Enterprise version GKE Enterprise release date End of life date*
1.14 2022-12 2023-12 or 1.28 release date
1.15 2023-04 2024-04 or 1.29 release date
1.16 2023-08 2024-08 or 1.30 release date
1.28 2023-12 2024-12 or 1.31 release date

* The EOL will be the later of these two dates.

† We have aligned our GKE Enterprise version numbering with the GKE version number starting with Anthos 1.17, which is now GKE Enterprise 1.28. This is a numbering change only and upgrades from 1.16 to 1.28 are carried out using the same process as upgrades between prior minor releases.