Release v2.15.0

Rancher v2.15.0 is the latest minor release of Rancher. This is a Community version release that introduces new features, enhancements, and various updates.

What's New - v2.15.0

• Kubernetes Support and Lifecycle Updates

  • Rancher v2.15 adds support for Kubernetes v1.36 while removing support for Kubernetes v1.33.
  • Rancher App Chart Retention Policy: Enforces a new lifecycle policy preserving chart versions in the "Rancher" repository for the 7 most recent minor releases (approx. 2.5 years). Older chart versions have been removed.

• Cluster Provisioning

  • Cluster API (CAPI) GA: Support for native CAPI infrastructure providers within the V2 provisioning framework (v2prov) has been promoted to General Availability (GA).
  • Updated CAPI support to v1.13.2.

• Authentication

  • Inherited Namespace Rules for GlobalRoles: Administrators can now define inheritedNamespacedRules in GlobalRoles to automatically propagate specific namespace RBAC permissions across all downstream clusters.
  • Azure AD SSO Logout: Added support for Single Logout (SLO) with Azure AD, allowing users to terminate their Azure AD session directly upon logging out of Rancher, with support for custom sovereign-cloud endpoints.
  • Hide Local Auth Provider: Introduced a new hide-local-auth-provider feature flag to restrict local UI authentication once an External Authentication Provider (EAP) is configured.

• Dashboard

  • Workloads Overview UI: Replaces the legacy all-in-one Workloads list in the Rancher Dashboard with a high-performance Workloads Overview UI view designed for large-scale environments.

Rancher General

Features and Enhancements

• Rancher now supports Kubernetes v1.36. See #54303 for information on Rancher support for Kubernetes v1.36. You can view the upstream Kubernetes changelog for v1.36 for a complete list of changes.

• Added a cap on the maximum number of public endpoint annotations (field.cattle.io/publicEndpoints) written for Ingress objects. This prevents workloads with extensive custom domain lists from exceeding Kubernetes’ 256 KB metadata annotation size limit and triggering API validation errors. See #42058.

• Optimized rancher-images.txt to include only the latest patch release per Kubernetes minor version compatible with the target Rancher release. Release Candidate (RC) pre-releases and superseded patch/minor versions are now filtered out, significantly reducing the size of air-gapped image tarballs while ensuring system-agent-installer and auxiliary images remain fully up to date. See #46174.

Behavior Changes

• Rancher v2.15 removes support for Kubernetes v1.33. See #55306.

Retention Policy for Rancher App Charts

To improve repository performance, Rancher is introducing a lifecycle management policy for charts available in the Apps feature of Rancher, specifically in the "Rancher" repository.

• The Policy: Rancher will transition from a cumulative model (retaining all historical versions forever) to a retention model that preserves chart versions for the seven (7) most recent Rancher minor releases (approximately a 2.5-year window).

• Timeline - Rancher v2.13 & v2.14: Legacy chart versions (older than the 7-version window) remain available.

• Rancher v2.15: This release is the first version to enforce the policy. Versions falling outside the 7-version window and older than two years will no longer be available.

Impact: This change is non-destructive for existing Rancher installations. Historical versions will remain accessible but will not be available in newer release branches once they age out of the 7-version window. You are advised to upgrade your applications before upgrading to Rancher v2.15. Uninstallation after v2.15 and replacement with an updated version will still be possible.

Major Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where rancher-save-images.sh failed to pull OCI-based Helm charts when the local Docker daemon was configured to use the overlay2 storage driver. See #55068.

Known Issues

• A known issue exists with Rancher v2.15 and Kubernetes v1.36 clusters where Rancher Backups is not listed under the Cluster Tools due to a Backups chart issue. See #1055.

Rancher App (Global UI)

Features and Enhancements

• The Rancher Dashboard replaces the legacy all-in-one Workloads list with a new Workloads Overview UI view to solve major performance and scalability issues when viewing workload resources. See #11513.

Rancher Monitoring Dashboards

The rancher-monitoring-dashboards chart provides Grafana dashboards and Rancher UI integration for external Prometheus monitoring stacks, such as kube-prometheus-stack.

• No bundled runtime: Operates without depending on Rancher-shipped kube-prometheus-stack images or components. It operates independently and does not require installing the legacy rancher-monitoring chart. It installs a dashboard-only version of rancher-monitoring.
• Prerequisites: Requires uninstalling the rancher-monitoring chart and using a Prometheus infrastructure. Although several configurations are supported, installing kube-prometheus-stack is the simplest method.

For more detailed information regarding installation and migrations check the Monitoring and Dashboards documentation, and refer to the evolution of SUSE Rancher Observability blog post for further context. See #221 and #265.

Behavior Changes

• The option to disable the feature flag ui-sql-cache / Vai / Server-Side Pagination (SSP) in the Rancher UI has been removed in preparation for Rancher v2.16, where the feature will always be enabled. See #16822.

• Removal: Support for Ember-based UI plugins for cluster and node drivers (deprecated since Rancher v2.11.0) is removed in Rancher v2.15.0. Migrate your plugins to the UI Extensions Framework. For details, see #14005.

Major Bug Fixes

• Fixed an issue where selecting Enable Dual-Stack with Stack Preference set to IPv6 omitted the required UI warning. Dual-stack clusters require the Stack Preference option to be set to Dual. For details, see #16788.

Authentication

Features and Enhancements

• Azure AD SSO Logout: Rancher now supports Single Logout (SLO) for the Azure AD auth provider. When enabled, logging out of Rancher also terminates the user’s Azure AD session by redirecting to Azure AD’s end-session endpoint. A LogoutEndpoint override field is available for sovereign-cloud deployments (Azure US Government, China). An optional LogoutAllForced flag can prevent users from bypassing SSO logout. See #54566.

• Added the hide-local-auth-provider feature flag (disabled by default) to restrict local authentication usage once an External Authentication Provider (EAP) is active. When enabled, the flag hides the local login interface and removes the ability to create, edit, or delete local users from the UI. Note that password rotation for required administrative local accounts remains allowed to support emergency fallback workflows. See #46078.

Cluster Provisioning

Features and Enhancements

• Rancher v2.15 adds support for Cluster API (CAPI) v1.13.2. See #54304.

• Users with the clusters-create role can now view the CAPIprovider resource. See #55167.

K3s and RKE2 Provisioning

Features and Enhancements

• General Availability: Promoted support for native Cluster API (CAPI) infrastructure providers within Rancher’s V2 provisioning framework (v2prov) from Tech Preview to General Availab...

Images with -rc

rancher/rancher-agent:v2.15.0-rc5
rancher/rancher:v2.15.0-rc5

Components with -rc

CLI_VERSION v2.15.0-rc.1
DASHBOARD_UI_VERSION v2.15.0-rc1
ALI-OPERATOR v1.15.0-rc.3

Min version components with -rc

Chart/KDM sources

• CHART_DEFAULT_BRANCH: release-v2.15 (scripts/package-env)
• CHART_DEFAULT_BRANCH: release-v2.15 (package/Dockerfile)
• CATTLE_KDM_BRANCH: release-v2.15 (package/Dockerfile)
• CATTLE_KDM_BRANCH: release-v2.15 (Dockerfile.runtime)
• KDMBranch: release-v2.15 (pkg/settings/setting.go)
• ChartDefaultBranch: release-v2.15 (pkg/settings/setting.go)

Please refer to our Prime Documentation for release notes about the Rancher Prime build.

Please refer to our Prime Documentation for release notes about the Rancher Prime build.

Please refer to our Prime Documentation for release notes about the Rancher Prime build.

Please refer to our Prime Documentation for release notes about the Rancher Prime build.