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Kubernetes has a very rapid release cycle. A new minor version is released approximately every 15 weeks (e.g., 1.27, 1.28, 1.29). Understanding version compatibility is critical to prevent your cluster from breaking during upgrades.
The Kubernetes control plane components (kube-apiserver, kube-controller-manager, kube-scheduler) and the node components (kubelet, kube-proxy) have strict compatibility requirements.
kube-apiserver must be at the same or newer version than all other control plane components.kubelet on your worker nodes can be up to two minor versions older than the kube-apiserver. For example, if your API server is at 1.28, your kubelets can be at 1.28, 1.27, or 1.26. This allows you to upgrade your control plane first, and then slowly roll out upgrades to your worker nodes without downtime.kubectl CLI tool is supported within one minor version (older or newer) of kube-apiserver.When Kubernetes introduces a new feature, it usually starts in v1alpha1, moves to v1beta1, and finally becomes v1 (stable).
When an API graduates from beta to stable, the beta version is eventually removed entirely. If you have a Deployment YAML file that explicitly requests apiVersion: apps/v1beta1, and you upgrade your cluster to a version where that API was removed, your deployment will fail!
You must always check the official Kubernetes deprecation warnings and update your YAML manifests before upgrading your cluster.
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