Important: If you are using Active Directory Federation Service (AD FS), upgrading to Rancher v2.10.1 or later may cause issues with authentication, requiring manual intervention. These issues are due to the AD FS Relying Party Trust not being able to pick up a signature verification certificate from the metadata. For more information see #48655. These issues can be corrected by either of two methods:
Updating the Relying Party Trust information from federation metadata (Relying Party Trust -> Update from Federation Metadata...)
Directly adding the certificate (Relying Party Trust -> Properties -> Signature tab -> Add -> Select the certificate).
Rancher v2.13.2 is the latest patch release of Rancher. This is a Community version release that introduces maintenance updates and bug fixes.
For more information on new features in the general minor release, see the v2.13.0 release notes.
v2.13.2 - rancher Release Notes | AnnounceHQ
Security Fixes for Rancher Vulnerabilities
This release addresses the following Rancher security issue:
Rancher now provides new versions of the Rancher Backup chart which prevent the leak of secret S3 credentials via the Rancher Backup pod log. For more information, refer to CVE-2025-62879.
Rancher now removes the ability to fetch CA certificates stored in Rancher’s setting cacerts when using the login command. For more information, refer to CVE-2025-67601.
For additional details, see the Security Advisories and CVEs page in Rancher's documentation or in Rancher's GitHub repository.
Rancher App (Global UI)
Major Bug Fixes
Fixed an issue where the selection of pods in the Rancher UI (Workloads > Pods) would reset when the status of a pod changed. See #16094.
Added additional improvements to reduce the amount of failed network requests when fetching resources shown in lists in the Rancher UI by reducing the length of the URL used in the request. This failure was more likely to happen when viewing resources in the local cluster as an administrator. See #16216.
Install/Upgrade Notes
If you’re installing Rancher for the first time, your environment must fulfill the installation requirements.
Important: Chart name change for Rancher Prime. The chart name change introduced in Rancher Prime v2.13.1 has been reverted. The chart name rancher should be used for all installations and upgrades. As an example, the installation command is now helm install rancher rancher-prime/rancher.
Important: Rancher now requires the cluster it runs on to have the Kubernetes API Aggregation Layer enabled. This is because Rancher extends Kubernetes with additional APIs by registering its own extension API server. Please note that all versions of Kubernetes supported in this Rancher versions K8s distributions (RKE2/K3s) will have the aggregation layer configured and enabled by default. Refer to the Extension API Server documentation and #50400 for more information.
Important: Rancher Kubernetes Engine (RKE/RKE1) has reached end of life as of July 31, 2025. Rancher versions 2.12.0 and later no longer support provisioning or managing downstream RKE1 clusters. We recommend replatforming RKE1 clusters to RKE2 to ensure continued support and security updates. Learn more about the transition here.
Important: It is crucial that you review the available disk space on your nodes and plan accordingly before upgrading to Rancher v2.12.0 and later to avoid potential disk pressure and pod eviction issues. For additional information refer to the UI Server Side Pagination - Disk Space documentation.
Important: Rancher now has an enablement option called AUDIT_LOG_ENABLED for API Audit Logs for a Rancher installation. In Rancher versions 2.11.x and earlier, only the AUDIT_LEVEL could be set and the default log level (0) would disable the audit log. In Rancher versions 2.12.x and later, the default log level (0) now only contains the log request and response metadata, and can be set when configuring AUDIT_LOG_ENABLED. If installing or upgrading via Helm you can enable the API Audit Logs and specify the log level by applying the following setting to your Helm command: --set auditLog.enabled=true --set auditLog.level=0. See the Enabling the API Audit Log to Record System Events documentation and #48941.
Changes in Image Artifacts
Image artifact digests are renamed in Rancher v2.12.0, v2.11.4 and v2.10.8. Up until this change, separate image digests files for each operating system and architecture have been maintained for compatibility reasons. With this change, only one file for each operating system is to be provided:
The rancher-images-digests-linux-amd64.txt and rancher-images-digests-linux-arm64.txt files are to be renamed to rancher-images-digests-linux.txt.
The rancher-images-digests-windows-ltsc2019.txt and rancher-images-digests-windows-ltsc2022.txt files are to be renamed to rancher-images-digests-windows.txt.
Upgrade Requirements
Creating backups:Create a backup before you upgrade Rancher. To roll back Rancher after an upgrade, you must first back up and restore Rancher to the previous Rancher version. Because Rancher will be restored to the same state as when the backup was created, any changes post-upgrade will not be included after the restore.
Helm version requirements:
To manage Rancher 2.12.x and later, you must upgrade your Helm client to version 3.18 or newer.
This change is required to reflect the addition of Kubernetes 1.33 support with this release.
Currently, the official Helm Version Support Policy dictates that only Helm 3.18 supports the proper Kubernetes version range for Rancher 2.12.
CNI requirements:
For Kubernetes v1.19 and later, disable firewalld as it’s incompatible with various CNI plugins. See #28840.
When upgrading or installing a Linux distribution that uses nf_tables as the backend packet filter, such as SLES 15, RHEL 8, Ubuntu 20.10, Debian 10, or later, upgrade to RKE v1.19.2 or later to get Flannel v0.13.0. Flannel v0.13.0 supports nf_tables. See Flannel #1317.
Requirements for air-gapped environments:
When using a proxy in front of an air-gapped Rancher instance, you must pass additional parameters to NO_PROXY. See the documentation and issue #2725.
When installing Rancher with Docker in an air-gapped environment, you must supply a custom registries.yaml file to the docker run command, as shown in the K3s documentation. If the registry has certificates, then you’ll also need to supply those. See #28969.
In Rancher v2.6.0 and later, in the Apps & Marketplace UI, many Rancher Helm charts are named with a major version that starts with 100. This avoids simultaneous upstream changes and Rancher changes from causing conflicting version increments. This also complies with semantic versioning (SemVer), which is a requirement for Helm. You can see the upstream version number of a chart in the build metadata, for example: 100.0.0+up2.1.0. See #32294.
Previous Rancher Behavior Changes
Previous Rancher Behavior Changes - Rancher General
Rancher v2.13.0:
Official support for Kubernetes v1.31 and older versions has been removed. You can no longer provision new RKE2 or K3s clusters using the Kubernetes versions that fall outside of the supported range (v1.32 - v1.34). See #51253.
The Rancher UI for provisioning hosted Kubernetes clusters (AKS, EKS, and GKE) has been updated to align with the new Cluster Provisioning v2 (kev2) framework. This change replaces the reliance on the older kontainerdriver (kev1) resources to determine which hosted providers are available for display. The UI now uses a new setting to manage the visibility of these providers, ensuring consistency and future compatibility. See #15391.
Rancher’s session inactivity logic has been moved from the UI to the backend. A new session TTL setting auth-user-session-idle-ttl-minutes was introduced, and it sets the maximum time a user is allowed to be idle within a browser session before the session expires. To enable the idle timeout feature, you must supply auth-user-session-idle-ttl-minutes and set it to a value lower than the existing absolute session limit, auth-user-session-ttl-minutes. This new backend-driven mechanism, along with its associated TTL setting, replaces the previous session timeout configuration in the UI under Global Settings > Performance. See #12552.
Future Rancher Behavior Changes
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 will be 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.
Not all cluster tools can be installed on a hardened cluster.
Rancher v2.13.0:
Provisioning or importing an Amazon EKS downstream cluster fails when the Rancher Server is running in an IPv6-only or dual-stack environment. See #52154.
Rancher v2.8.1:
When you attempt to register a new etcd/controlplane node in a CAPR-managed cluster after a failed etcd snapshot restoration, the node can become stuck in a perpetual paused state, displaying the error message [ERROR] 000 received while downloading Rancher connection information. Sleeping for 5 seconds and trying again. As a workaround, you can unpause the cluster by running kubectl edit clusters.cluster clustername -n fleet-default and set spec.unpaused to false. See #43735.
Rancher v2.7.2:
If you upgrade or update any hosted cluster, and go to Cluster Management > Clusters while the cluster is still provisioning, the Registration tab is visible. Registering a cluster that is already registered with Rancher can cause data corruption. See #8524.
Long-standing Known Issues - RKE2 Provisioning
Rancher v2.7.7:
Due to the backoff logic in various components, downstream provisioned K3s and RKE2 clusters may take longer to re-achieve Active status after a migration. If you see that a downstream cluster is still updating or in an error state immediately after a migration, please let it attempt to resolve itself. This might take up to an hour to complete. See #34518 and #42834.
Rancher v2.7.6:
Provisioning RKE2/K3s clusters with added (not built-in) custom node drivers causes provisioning to fail. As a workaround, fix the added node drivers after activating. See #37074.
Long-standing Known Issues - K3s Provisioning
Rancher v2.7.6:
Provisioning RKE2/K3s clusters with added (not built-in) custom node drivers causes provisioning to fail. As a workaround, fix the added node drivers after activating. See #37074.
Rancher v2.7.2:
Clusters remain in an Updating state even when they contain nodes in an Error state. See #39164.
Long-standing Known Issues - Rancher App (Global UI)
Rancher v2.12.1:
When a standard user with the Cluster Owner role attempts to edit an Azure or AKS cluster, the Machine Pools section shows an error Cannot read properties of undefined…. As a workaround, standard users must manually add their cloud credentials to create, edit, and manage Azure or AKS clusters. See #15241.
Rancher v2.10.0:
After deleting a Namespace or Project in the Rancher UI, the Namespace or Project remains visible. As a workaround, refresh the page. See #12220.
Rancher v2.9.2:
Although system mode node pools must have at least one node, the Rancher UI allows a minimum node count of zero. Inputting a zero minimum node count through the UI can cause cluster creation to fail due to an invalid parameter error. To prevent this error from occurring, enter a minimum node count at least equal to the node count. See #11922.
Rancher v2.7.7:
When creating a cluster in the Rancher UI it does not allow the use of an underscore _ in the Cluster Name field. See #9416.
Long-standing Known Issues - Hosted Rancher
Rancher v2.7.5:
The Cluster page shows the Registration tab when updating or upgrading a hosted cluster. See #8524.
Long-standing Known Issues - EKS
Rancher v2.7.0:
EKS clusters on Kubernetes v1.21 or below on Rancher v2.7 cannot be upgraded. See #39392.
Long-standing Known Issues - Authentication
Rancher v2.9.0:
There are some known issues with the OpenID Connect provider
support:
When the generic OIDC auth provider is enabled, and you attempt to
add auth provider users to a cluster or project, users are not
populated in the dropdown search bar. This is expected behavior as
the OIDC auth provider alone is not searchable. See
#46104.
When the generic OIDC auth provider is enabled, auth provider users that are added to a cluster/project by their username are not able to access resources upon logging in. A user will only have access to resources upon login if the user is added by their userID. See #46105.
When the generic OIDC auth provider is enabled and an auth provider user in a nested group is logged into Rancher, the user will see the following error when they attempt to create a Project: projectroletemplatebindings.management.cattle.io is forbidden: User "u-gcxatwsnku" cannot create resource "projectroletemplatebindings" in API group "management.cattle.io" in the namespace "p-9t5pg". However, the project is still created. See #46106.
Long-standing Known Issues - Rancher Webhook
Rancher v2.7.2:
A webhook is installed in all downstream clusters. There are several issues that users may encounter with this functionality:
If you rollback from a version of Rancher v2.7.2 or later, to a Rancher version earlier than v2.7.2, the webhooks will remain in downstream clusters. Since the webhook is designed to be 1:1 compatible with specific versions of Rancher, this can cause unexpected behaviors to occur downstream. The Rancher team has developed a script which should be used after rollback is complete (meaning after a Rancher version earlier than v2.7.2 is running). This removes the webhook from affected downstream clusters. See #40816.
Long-standing Known Issues - Virtualization Management (Harvester)
Rancher v2.13.1:
When upgrading to Rancher v2.13.1 or higher while using Harvester v1.6.1, users may encounter an issue with their Load Balancers in downstream clusters using the Harvester Cloud Provider, and must perform the following workaround to instruct Calico to not use any of the IP/interface managed by kube-vip. See #9767.
Rancher v2.7.2:
If you’re using Rancher v2.7.2 with Harvester v1.1.1 clusters, you won’t be able to select the Harvester cloud provider when deploying or updating guest clusters. The Harvester release notes contain instructions on how to resolve this. See #3750.
Long-standing Known Issues - Backup/Restore
When migrating to a cluster with the Rancher Backup feature, the
server-url cannot be changed to a different location. It must continue to use the same URL.
Rancher v2.13.0:
When performing a rollback from Rancher v2.13.0 to v2.12.3 using the backup and restore operator (BRO), the restore does not complete successfully. See #844. To work around this issue, you must scale down your Rancher deployment and uninstall the Webhook chart before performing the restore. For details, refer to this Knowledge Base article.
Rancher v2.7.7:
Due to the backoff logic in various components, downstream provisioned K3s and RKE2 clusters may take longer to re-achieve Active status after a migration. If you see that a downstream cluster is still updating or in an error state immediately after a migration, please let it attempt to resolve itself. This might take up to an hour to complete. See #34518 and #42834.