This question was asked on YouTube during a recent K8ssandra certification workshop:
kubernetes will be dropping docker as its runtime engine soon. How could that affect cassandra k8s?
The short answer is “not much will change for end-users”. In fact, it will be business as usual.
The workshop participant is likely asking the question in response to the announcement that Docker support in kubelet is deprecated. But this only applies to the container runtime, not the images themselves – Docker images will still run in Kubernetes and will continue to be supported.
The Docker runtime engine is responsible for pulling down images and running Docker containers. However, it isn’t designed for running inside a Kubernetes cluster so requires Dockershim as a temporary solution in place of a compliant container runtime.
K8ssandra already uses containerd. Users need to make sure their Kubernetes worker nodes on GKE, EKS or AKS are using a supported container runtime.
For more info, see the following references:
- Blog - Don’t Panic: Kubernetes and Docker
- Blog - Dockershim Deprecation FAQ