Version 1.16. This version is no longer supported. For information about how to upgrade to version 1.28, see Upgrade clusters in the latest documentation. For more information about supported and unsupported versions, see the Versioning page in the latest documentation.
Your clusters use a container runtime to create and run Kubernetes Pods and
Google Distributed Cloud requires your container runtime to be containerd.
You must continue to install Docker on your
admin workstation
because bmctl requires Docker for operations, such as cluster creation. You
can still use Docker to create images and build application containers. Those
containers still work inside your cluster.
Check the status of the container runtime
To check the status of the container runtime, run the following command:
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Hard to understand","hardToUnderstand","thumb-down"],["Incorrect information or sample code","incorrectInformationOrSampleCode","thumb-down"],["Missing the information/samples I need","missingTheInformationSamplesINeed","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],["Last updated 2025-08-07 UTC."],[[["\u003cp\u003eGoogle Distributed Cloud requires the \u003ccode\u003econtainerd\u003c/code\u003e container runtime for creating and running Kubernetes Pods.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eThe \u003ccode\u003espec.nodeConfig.containerRuntime\u003c/code\u003e field is no longer used or included in cluster configuration files generated by \u003ccode\u003ebmctl\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eDocker must still be installed on the admin workstation because \u003ccode\u003ebmctl\u003c/code\u003e uses Docker for operations like cluster creation.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eEven with \u003ccode\u003econtainerd\u003c/code\u003e as the cluster runtime, Docker can still be used for tasks such as creating images and building application containers.\u003c/p\u003e\n"],["\u003cp\u003eTo check the container runtime status you can execute \u003ccode\u003esystemctl status containerd\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n"]]],[],null,[]]
