For those container admins and developers who are still depending on Dockershim to use the Docker runtime engine with Kubernetes, that time has come to an end. With the latest release, Kubernetes fully removes Dockershim support, so anyone using the platform will have to migrate to a different runtime engine, such as Podman or containerd.

Along with that deprecation, Kubernetes 1.24 (aka "Stargazer") also adds a few new features and enhancements to the platform, such as support for storage capacity tracking, the ability to resize persistent volumes, and the new PriorityClasses option that is used to enable or disable pod preemption.

There is also the addition of some new beta features such as support for dynamic credential retrieval for a container image registry, contextual logging, and an opt-in feature that enables teams to soft-reserve a range of static IP address assignments. Do note, that the new beta APIs will not be enabled by defaults in clusters.

Those teams that want to continue using DockerEngine can use the open-source instance of Dockershim that is maintained by Mirantis.

According to James Laverack, release lead for Kubernetes 1.24, it will probably take months (or even years) for the majority of earlier releases to be upgraded to 1.24 or higher.