The "It Works on My Machine" Era is Over: Preparing for Kubernetes 1.22

If you have been copy-pasting the same YAML manifests since 2018, you are about to hit a brick wall. While the recent release of Kubernetes 1.21 introduced some nice-to-haves (like CronJobs finally hitting stable), the upcoming 1.22 release—expected later in Q3 2021—is going to be the "Great Filter" for sloppy cluster administration.

I have spent the last week auditing clusters for a client in Oslo, and the amount of technical debt hiding in apiVersion fields is terrifying. Kubernetes is aggressively removing beta APIs that have been deprecated for some time. Unlike previous warnings that just cluttered your terminal logs, 1.22 will simply reject these resources.

If you manage infrastructure for Norwegian enterprises where downtime equals a GDPR violation report to Datatilsynet or lost revenue, you need to act now. Here is the technical breakdown of what is breaking and how to fix it using tools available today.

The Death of Ingress v1beta1

This is the big one. If your manifests start with apiVersion: extensions/v1beta1 or networking.k8s.io/v1beta1, your deployments will fail in 1.22. The networking.k8s.io/v1 API has been generally available since Kubernetes 1.19, so there is no excuse to lag behind.

The schema has changed significantly. You can't just change the version string; you have to restructure the backend definition.

The Old Way (Deprecated)

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: legacy-app
spec:
  rules:
  - host: app.coolvds-test.no
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        backend:
          serviceName: app-service
          servicePort: 80

The New Way (Required for 1.22)

apiVersion: networking.k8s.io/v1
kind: Ingress
metadata:
  name: modern-app
spec:
  rules:
  - host: app.coolvds-test.no
    http:
      paths:
      - path: /
        pathType: Prefix
        backend:
          service:
            name: app-service
            port:
              number: 80

Pro Tip: Don't try to rewrite these manually if you have hundreds of services. Use the kubectl-convert plugin. It's a lifesaver. You can pipe your current manifests through it to generate 1.22-compliant YAMLs.

CustomResourceDefinitions (CRDs) Update

Another major deprecation involves apiextensions.k8s.io/v1beta1. This is critical because it affects almost every third-party operator you likely have installed—Cert-Manager, Prometheus Operator, or your fancy GitOps controllers.

If you are responsible for the platform, you must audit your installed CRDs. Run this command immediately to see what's using the old API versions:

kubectl get crds \
-o jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{.metadata.name}{"\t"}{.status.storedVersions}{"\n"}{end}' \
| grep v1beta1

If that returns output, you need to upgrade those operators before upgrading the control plane. Failing to do this can brick your cluster's ability to reconcile resources.

The Etcd Latency Factor

While we are talking about cluster stability, let's talk about the hardware underneath. Kubernetes is essentially a distributed state machine relying on etcd. Etcd is incredibly sensitive to disk write latency (fsync). If your disk wal_fsync_duration exceeds 10ms, your cluster becomes unstable. If it hits 50ms, you start losing leader elections.

Many VPS providers in Europe oversell their storage I/O. They might give you "SSD," but it's network-attached storage (NAS) sharing IOPS with five hundred other noisy neighbors. In a recent load test, I saw a standard cloud instance spike to 200ms latency during a database backup, causing the Kubernetes API server to timeout.

This is why, for my critical control planes, I stick to CoolVDS. Their NVMe storage isn't just fast; it's consistent. The I/O isolation means that even when I'm pushing heavy write loads, etcd stays happy, and my API server responds instantly. When you are managing a cluster in Oslo, physical proximity to the NIX (Norwegian Internet Exchange) combined with local NVMe is the only way to guarantee sub-millisecond internal latency.

The Docker Shim Warning (Plan Ahead)

We all heard the panic in December 2020 when Kubernetes 1.20 announced the deprecation of Dockershim. To be clear: Docker still works in 1.21 and the upcoming 1.22. However, the clock is ticking. By release 1.24 (likely next year), it will be gone.

If you are spinning up new nodes today, stop using the Docker runtime. Switch to containerd or CRI-O. It removes an unnecessary layer of abstraction and improves resource utilization.

Here is a snippet for configuring containerd as your runtime on a fresh node (standard configuration for 2021):

# Create default config
mkdir -p /etc/containerd
containerd config default | sudo tee /etc/containerd/config.toml

# Set SystemdCgroup to true (Critical for K8s stability)
# Find [plugins."io.containerd.grpc.v1.cri".containerd.runtimes.runc.options]
# and set SystemdCgroup = true

How to Test Without Breaking Prod

You cannot test these API migrations in production. You need a sandbox that mirrors your environment.

1. Spin up a CoolVDS instance: Select a plan with at least 4GB RAM (K8s is hungry).
2. Install the 1.22 Beta (when available): Or use the latest 1.21 to run dry-run upgrades.
3. Deploy your current manifests: Watch the admission controller logs.

kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=192.168.0.0/16 --cri-socket=/run/containerd/containerd.sock

With Schrems II making data transfers to US clouds a legal minefield, hosting your test (and production) clusters on Norwegian soil using a provider like CoolVDS isn't just a technical preference—it's a compliance necessity. Keeping data within the jurisdiction offers safety that a US-based hyperscaler can't guarantee right now.

Don't wait for the upgrade to fail. Audit your APIs today, switch to NVMe storage to keep etcd alive, and ensure your infrastructure is ready for the future.