Migrating from dockershim

• 1: Find Out What Container Runtime is Used on a Node
• 2: Check whether Dockershim deprecation affects you
• 3: Migrating telemetry and security agents from dockershim

1 - Find Out What Container Runtime is Used on a Node

This page outlines steps to find out what container runtime the nodes in your cluster use.

Depending on the way you run your cluster, the container runtime for the nodes may have been pre-configured or you need to configure it. If you're using a managed Kubernetes service, there might be vendor-specific ways to check what container runtime is configured for the nodes. The method described on this page should work whenever the execution of kubectl is allowed.

Before you begin

Install and configure kubectl. See Install Tools section for details.

Find out the container runtime used on a Node

Use kubectl to fetch and show node information:

kubectl get nodes -o wide

The output is similar to the following. The column CONTAINER-RUNTIME outputs the runtime and its version.

# For dockershim
NAME         STATUS   VERSION    CONTAINER-RUNTIME
node-1       Ready    v1.16.15   docker://19.3.1
node-2       Ready    v1.16.15   docker://19.3.1
node-3       Ready    v1.16.15   docker://19.3.1

# For containerd
NAME         STATUS   VERSION   CONTAINER-RUNTIME
node-1       Ready    v1.19.6   containerd://1.4.1
node-2       Ready    v1.19.6   containerd://1.4.1
node-3       Ready    v1.19.6   containerd://1.4.1

Find out more information about container runtimes on Container Runtimes page.

2 - Check whether Dockershim deprecation affects you

The dockershim component of Kubernetes allows to use Docker as a Kubernetes's container runtime. Kubernetes' built-in dockershim component was deprecated in release v1.20.

This page explains how your cluster could be using Docker as a container runtime, provides details on the role that dockershim plays when in use, and shows steps you can take to check whether any workloads could be affected by dockershim deprecation.

Finding if your app has a dependencies on Docker

If you are using Docker for building your application containers, you can still run these containers on any container runtime. This use of Docker does not count as a dependency on Docker as a container runtime.

When alternative container runtime is used, executing Docker commands may either not work or yield unexpected output. This is how you can find whether you have a dependency on Docker:

1. Make sure no privileged Pods execute Docker commands (like docker ps), restart the Docker service (commands such as systemctl restart docker.service), or modify Docker-specific files such as /etc/docker/daemon.json.
2. Check for any private registries or image mirror settings in the Docker configuration file (like /etc/docker/daemon.json). Those typically need to be reconfigured for another container runtime.
3. Check that scripts and apps running on nodes outside of your Kubernetes infrastructure do not execute Docker commands. It might be:
   • SSH to nodes to troubleshoot;
   • Node startup scripts;
   • Monitoring and security agents installed on nodes directly.
4. Third-party tools that perform above mentioned privileged operations. See Migrating telemetry and security agents from dockershim for more information.
5. Make sure there is no indirect dependencies on dockershim behavior. This is an edge case and unlikely to affect your application. Some tooling may be configured to react to Docker-specific behaviors, for example, raise alert on specific metrics or search for a specific log message as part of troubleshooting instructions. If you have such tooling configured, test the behavior on test cluster before migration.

Dependency on Docker explained

A container runtime is software that can execute the containers that make up a Kubernetes pod. Kubernetes is responsible for orchestration and scheduling of Pods; on each node, the kubelet uses the container runtime interface as an abstraction so that you can use any compatible container runtime.

In its earliest releases, Kubernetes offered compatibility with one container runtime: Docker. Later in the Kubernetes project's history, cluster operators wanted to adopt additional container runtimes. The CRI was designed to allow this kind of flexibility - and the kubelet began supporting CRI. However, because Docker existed before the CRI specification was invented, the Kubernetes project created an adapter component, dockershim. The dockershim adapter allows the kubelet to interact with Docker as if Docker were a CRI compatible runtime.

You can read about it in Kubernetes Containerd integration goes GA blog post.

Switching to Containerd as a container runtime eliminates the middleman. All the same containers can be run by container runtimes like Containerd as before. But now, since containers schedule directly with the container runtime, they are not visible to Docker. So any Docker tooling or fancy UI you might have used before to check on these containers is no longer available.

You cannot get container information using docker ps or docker inspect commands. As you cannot list containers, you cannot get logs, stop containers, or execute something inside container using docker exec.

You can still pull images or build them using docker build command. But images built or pulled by Docker would not be visible to container runtime and Kubernetes. They needed to be pushed to some registry to allow them to be used by Kubernetes.

3 - Migrating telemetry and security agents from dockershim

Kubernetes' support for direct integration with Docker Engine is deprecated, and will be removed. Most apps do not have a direct dependency on runtime hosting containers. However, there are still a lot of telemetry and monitoring agents that has a dependency on docker to collect containers metadata, logs and metrics. This document aggregates information on how to detect these dependencies and links on how to migrate these agents to use generic tools or alternative runtimes.

Telemetry and security agents

Within a Kubernetes cluster there are a few different ways to run telemetry or security agents. Some agents have a direct dependency on Docker Engine when they as DaemonSets or directly on nodes.

Why do some telemetry agents communicate with Docker Engine?

Historically, Kubernetes was written to work specifically with Docker Engine. Kubernetes took care of networking and scheduling, relying on Docker Engine for launching and running containers (within Pods) on a node. Some information that is relevant to telemetry, such as a pod name, is only available from Kubernetes components. Other data, such as container metrics, is not the responsibility of the container runtime. Early yelemetry agents needed to query the container runtime and Kubernetes to report an accurate picture. Over time, Kubernetes gained the ability to support multiple runtimes, and now supports any runtime that is compatible with the container runtime interface.

Some telemetry agents rely specifically on Docker Engine tooling. For example, an agent might run a command such as docker ps or docker top to list containers and processes or docker logs to receive streamed logs. If nodes in your existing cluster use Docker Engine, and you switch to a different container runtime, these commands will not work any longer.

Identify DaemonSets that depend on Docker Engine

If a pod wants to make calls to the dockerd running on the node, the pod must either:

• mount the filesystem containing the Docker daemon's privileged socket, as a volume; or
• mount the specific path of the Docker daemon's privileged socket directly, also as a volume.

For example: on COS images, Docker exposes its Unix domain socket at /var/run/docker.sock This means that the pod spec will include a hostPath volume mount of /var/run/docker.sock.

Here's a sample shell script to find Pods that have a mount directly mapping the Docker socket. This script outputs the namespace and name of the pod. You can remove the grep '/var/run/docker.sock' to review other mounts.

kubectl get pods --all-namespaces \
-o=jsonpath='{range .items[*]}{"\n"}{.metadata.namespace}{":\t"}{.metadata.name}{":\t"}{range .spec.volumes[*]}{.hostPath.path}{", "}{end}{end}' \
| sort \
| grep '/var/run/docker.sock'

Detecting Docker dependency from node agents

In case your cluster nodes are customized and install additional security and telemetry agents on the node, make sure to check with the vendor of the agent whether it has dependency on Docker.

Telemetry and security agent vendors

We keep the work in progress version of migration instructions for various telemetry and security agent vendors in Google doc. Please contact the vendor to get up to date instructions for migrating from dockershim.