Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Version Support Policies, Feature States, and Kubernetes Support

Due to the fast-moving pace of Kubernetes releases and the need for Tanzu Kubernetes Grid to support the most recent Kubernetes versions, VMware applies different support policies for TKG versions, TKG features, and Kubernetes versions.

Supported Tanzu Kubernetes Grid Versions

From TKG 2.2 onwards the lifecycle of VMware support for TKG versions is as follows.

Minor versions: VMware supports TKG following the N-2 Lifecycle Policy, which applies to the latest and previous two minor versions of TKG. With the release of TKG v2.4.0, TKG v2.1.x is no longer supported, after a minimum period of 12 months has elapsed since the release of v2.1.0. See the VMware Product Lifecycle Matrix for more information. To allow you time to upgrade, documentation for the most recent unsupported version of TKG remains online until support for the next oldest version ends. PDF documentation for older unsupported releases of Tanzu Kubernetes Grid is available for download in a ZIP archive format from the TKG Docs home page.

Patch versions: VMware does not support all previous TKG patch versions. After VMware releases a new patch version of TKG, it retains support for the older patch version for two months. This gives customers a 2-month window to upgrade to new TKG patch versions.

For more information about the support for a specific TKG release, see the Release Notes for the corresponding minor TKG version. For example, for TKG 2.4, see the Tanzu Kubernetes Grid v2.4 Release Notes.

TKG Feature States

The following state definitions describe Tanzu Kubernetes Grid features, ordered by typical lifecycle. The TKG documentation covers features in the Technical Preview, Stable, and Deprecated states:

Experimental:
- Not supported, and use voids support for its environment
- Not for production environments, but can be tried in development environments
- May have listings marked as “Experimental” in the CLI, download sites, etc.
- Not documented publicly, but may have documentation distributed privately
Technical Preview:
- Not supported, but does not void warranty for its environment
- For pre-production environments or production environments without support for the feature
- Documented publicly, labeled as “Technical Preview”
Stable:
- Fully tested and supported for production environments, except as noted in documentation
- Documented publicly without labels
Deprecated:
- Tested and supported, but with end of support expected
- Customers are encouraged to stop using the feature and to deactivate it in their environments
- Documented as “Deprecated”

Kubernetes Version Support Policies

TKG versions support different Kubernetes versions based on policies described in the Release Notes for each minor TKG version: