What Does the End of Dockershim Mean for CloudBees & Jenkins Users?

In this post we will look at what Dockershim is, why Amazon EKS is moving away from it, and what effect this has on CloudBees and Jenkins customers.  

If your organization is not currently running the latest version of Kubernetes on Amazon EKS, you will need to update to version 1.24 or higher before October 2023. Fortunately, you have options, and iTMethods’ team of experts are here to help. 

What is Dockershim?  

Dockershim was a component in Kubernetes that allowed it to use the Docker runtime as the underlying container runtime for running Kubernetes workloads. The primary function of Dockershim was to translate Kubernetes API calls into Docker API calls, and vice versa. 

It was essentially a bridge between Kubernetes and the Docker engine, providing an implementation of the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI) using the Docker API. 

Why is Amazon EKS moving away from Dockershim? 

Amazon EKS is moving away from Dockershim because it has been deprecated upstream by Kubernetes. Overall, Amazon EKS is following the larger Kubernetes community in moving away from Dockershim in favor of the more modern and flexible Containerd CRI. 

What are the advantages of moving away from Dockershim: 

• Improved security  
• Reducing dependency on the Docker engine  
• More flexibility and reduced complexity for managing container workloads 
• Greater compatibility with other container runtimes 

We recommend using a container image build tool in Kubernetes 

There are multiple tools that can build container images in Kubernetes, we’ve found Kaniko to be amongst the best options for our customers, as it creates container images from a Dockerfile. The image is created inside a container or Kubernetes cluster, which allows users to develop Docker images without using Docker or requiring a privileged container. 

Since Kaniko doesn’t depend on the Docker daemon and executes each command in the Dockerfile entirely in the userspace, it enables building container images in environments that can’t run the Docker daemon, such as a standard Kubernetes cluster. 

How iTMethods is helping CloudBees & Jenkins customers: 

We are experts when it comes to leveraging Kubernetes and Amazon EKS. We've helped leading enterprises across the globe to take advantage of the advanced features of orchestration technology to get more value out of their CloudBees or Jenkins implementations. 

Contact us to future proof the way you run Kubernetes.