SAS Viya 4 Upgrade Issue on Azure Kubernetes Service

[Vedanttj]

Hello,

We currently have a SAS Viya 4 deployment on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with the following setup:

AKS Kubernetes version: 1.30

SAS Viya version: LTS 2024.09

We are planning to upgrade our SAS Viya environment to 2025.03. However, we have encountered a compatibility issue:

SAS Viya 2025.03 officially supports up to Kubernetes version 1.31, but Azure has deprecated support for AKS versions 1.30 and 1.31.

This means we cannot upgrade the existing cluster to the required Kubernetes version for Viya 2025.03.

Upgrading to the latest AKS-supported Kubernetes version (1.32+) is not officially supported by Viya 2025.03 yet.

We would like guidance on the best approach to proceed with the Viya upgrade in this situation:

Can Viya 2025.03 run on AKS Kubernetes 1.32+ with any patches or workarounds?

Should we consider creating a new AKS cluster with the latest Kubernetes version and migrating Viya workloads?

Are there any recommended temporary solutions to stay on Viya 2024.09 while planning for the upgrade?

Any guidance, best practices, or experiences with similar scenarios would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you!

[JackMcGuire]

I recommend waiting for the next Long Term Stable (LTS) release, 2025.09, which is expected later this month. It should be based on the 2025.09 Stable release which supports Kubernetes versions 1.31 to 1.33.

Alternatively, you could consider switching to the Stable release cadence, but this requires careful planning. The SAS documentation below outlines key considerations, including constraints for switching back to LTS:

https://documentation.sas.com/doc/en/itopscdc/default/itopsup/p1lam22gz8zj8gn1b51yczorenun.htm#p1hag... 

[sasefj]

Please see the LTS Versions section of https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/supported-kubernetes-versions?tabs=azure-cli.  You will see that in a table in that section that there are 1.30 and 1.31 supported LTS Releases:

K8s version	Upstream release	AKS preview	AKS GA	End of life	LTS End of life
1.27	Apr 2023	Jun 2023	Jul 2023	Jul 2024	Jul 2025
1.28	Aug 2023	Sep 2023	Nov 2023	Jan 2025	Feb 2026
1.29	Dec 2023	Feb 2024	Mar 2024	Mar 2025	Apr 2026
1.30	Apr 2024	Jun 2024	Jul 2024	Aug 22nd, 2025	Jul 2026
1.31	Aug 2024	Oct 2024	Nov 2024	Nov 1st, 2025	Nov 2026

AKS Long-Term Support (LTS) Kubernetes versions require use of the Premium tier.  See https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/long-term-support for information about how to Enable long-term support.

When you have updated your AKS cluster where LTS 2024.09 is running to Premium tier 1.30, then you can update to LTS 2025.03 and then upgrade your version of AKS to 1.31 on the premium tier.  

Then if you want to get your AKS cluster off the Premium tier when LTS 2025.09 becomes available this month (Nov 2025), update to LTS 2025.09, and then upgrade AKS to 1.32./1.33.  

You cannot update directly from LTS 2024.09 to LTS 2025.09.  See the LTS 2025.03 Viya documentation at https://go.documentation.sas.com/doc/en/itopscdc/v_062/itopsup/p1lam22gz8zj8gn1b51yczorenun.htm which says:

"Skipping a Long-Term Support version is not supported."