Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware includes the following feature enhancements:

Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware includes the following feature enhancements:

• Updated the Kubernetes version to 1.36.
• Upgraded containerd from 2.1 to 2.2
• Updates vSphere support to vSphere version 9.0 and 9.1 and removes support for vSphere version 7.0.
• Updated gkectl to perform an empty reconciliation health check prior to running the gkectl update or gkectl upgrade commands. The health check prevents starting cluster lifecycle updates when a cluster is in an unhealthy state.
• Improved the status and conditions fields in OnPrem custom resources to provide clearer visibility into cluster reconciliation phases and state transitions during cluster management operations.
• Updated gkectl to provide more specific error messages and actionable troubleshooting recommendations when operations encounter failures.
• Expanded pre-upgrade validation checks to proactively identify potential configuration or cluster health blockers prior to upgrade initiation.
• This release supports resilient, idempotent migrations to advanced clusters, enabling interrupted upgrades to safely resume without risking cluster degradation or state loss. This update also introduces preflight health checks, improves gkectl error diagnostics, and resolves key behavioral discrepancies in workload scheduling, proxy parsing, and logging.