# Kubernetes Updates – June

By Zesty Team

In June 2025, Kubernetes services across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud saw major enhancements in **security**, **AI‑assisted development workflows**, **quota enforcement**, **node autoscaling behavior**, and **observability metrics**. These updates reinforce cloud-native management, operational automation, and security monitoring for EKS, AKS, and GKE environments.

## **AWS EKS**

- #### [**GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection adds Amazon EKS support**](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/06/amazon-guardduty-threat-detection-eks/?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

Amazon GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection now supports Amazon EKS clusters, enabling detection of multi-stage attack sequences by correlating Kubernetes audit logs, container runtime behavior, malware execution, and AWS API activity.

- #### [**Launch of Amazon EKS Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server**](https://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2025/06/amazon-guardduty-threat-detection-eks/)

AWS released the open-source **Model Context Protocol (MCP) Server for EKS**, allowing AI assistants to access real-time cluster metadata, best practices, and feature-aware guidance—designed to accelerate Kubernetes application development workflows.

**Source:** AWS Containers Blog and Weekly Roundup (June 2025)

## **Azure AKS**

- #### [**AKS retires Ubuntu 18.04 node image support**](https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/node-images?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

As of **June 17, 2025**, AKS no longer supports provisioning or scaling node pools using **Ubuntu 18.04**, and will no longer issue security updates or new images for that OS. Existing nodes remain unsupported and unscalable.

- #### [**Improved observability and cost-control documentation**](https://github.com/Azure/AKS/releases?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

On **June 17, 2025**, Microsoft updated AKS documentation to include a **CIS Benchmark compliance guide**, **container network observability using Cilium (L3–L7)**, and a comprehensive **cost‑analysis guide** for optimizing AKS workloads.

## **Google Cloud GKE**

- #### [**Sidecar container metrics now exposed**](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/release-notes-new-features?utm_source=chatgpt.com)

As of **June 10, 2025**, GKE began reporting CPU and memory requests and limit metrics for Kubernetes-native sidecar containers, starting with **GKE version 1.32.4‑gke.1106006**.

- #### [**Cluster Autoscaler can evict kube-system Pods for scale-down**](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/release-notes#June_16_2025)

From **June 16, 2025**, in **GKE version 1.32.4‑gke.1236000** or later, the Cluster Autoscaler can scale down nodes by evicting Pods in the kube-system namespace that do not have a Pod Disruption Budget and have been running for at least one hour.