Azure-docs: A double release caused an upgrade to be required within 9 days

[ms-lolo]

I'm finding this documentation very difficult to interpret. Especially when two patch versions are released on the same day.

We were on version 1.16.7 recently and version 1.16.18 and 1.16.9 were both released on the same day (2020-05-18). on 2020-05-27, version 1.16.7 was removed and we were not able to create new nodepools in our cluster. This meant we were expected to upgrade our patch version in less than 9 days if we wanted to resume normal operations but the documentation says:

For new patch versions of Kubernetes
All users are notified of the new patch version being released and to upgrade to the latest patch release.
Users have 30 days to upgrade to a newer, supported patch release before the oldest is removed.

I am interpreting what happened as "we were not given 30 days before the older patch release was removed". Just pointing out that 11 days ago we were on the latest version available. But because two patch versions were released on the same day, we went from the latest, to a completely unavailable version in no time at all. There was no period of time when we were "one release away from being unsupported"

The support agent confirmed that I was expected to upgrade. It would be great to add some of these edge cases to the FAQ section because it currently sounds like the quickest we would ever need to upgrade is 30 days after a release, which does not seem to be true.

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Document Details

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• ID: ec484163-5d73-af3a-3d7b-9e0d421d2824
• Version Independent ID: 42da7aed-a33d-e331-fb7f-4fb4b40e5813
• Content: Supported Kubernetes versions in Azure Kubernetes Service - Azure Kubernetes Service
• Content Source: articles/aks/supported-kubernetes-versions.md
• Service: container-service
• GitHub Login: @sauryadas
• Microsoft Alias: saudas

[Karishma-Tiwari-MSFT]

Thanks for the feedback! We are currently investigating and will update you shortly.

[Karishma-Tiwari-MSFT]

@palma21 Can you please share your thoughts on the customer's concern about releasing two patch versions at the same time. Thanks. :)

[Karishma-Tiwari-MSFT]

@palma21 Did you get a chance to look into the customer's feedback on two patch releases on the same day and the need to update the documentation? Let me know. Thanks :)

[palma21]

We'll issue a PR to clarify the docs as they are bit confusing:

As stated a bit below we sometimes have to jump or cut versions due to security risks or vulnerabilities.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/supported-kubernetes-versions#supported-versions-policy-exceptions

The comment above still applies but is a bit confusing it should read

• Users have 30 days to upgrade to a newer, supported patch release under Azure support. Once this window has passed, patch versions are considered out of support and become a required action to receive further support.
  
  
  
  • When a new patch version is released, the oldest patch release is removed at the same time. (this is already there)
  
  

So the same policy applies here, regardless how how many patch versions are added or removed, you have 30 days where you're still supported to update the patch.

For minor versions these 30 days actually still allow you to create that deprecated version, as documented there, due to API server drifts and to help with the upgrade.

[Karishma-Tiwari-MSFT]

@palma21 Thanks for sharing the details and update on the PR work. :)

@ms-lolo Thanks for bringing this to our attention. We will now close this issue. If there are further questions regarding this matter, please tag me in a comment. I will reopen it and we will gladly continue the discussion.