Google Container-Optimized OS (COS) is an operating system image for GCP Compute Engine VMs which is optimized for running Docker containers. It is maintained by Google and is based on the open source Chromium OS project.
| Release | Released | Support Status | Latest |
|---|---|---|---|
| m101 (LTS) |
3 months ago (15 Sep 2022)
|
Ends
in 1 year and 8 months (01 Sep 2024)
|
cos-101-17162-40-42
(12 Dec 2022)
|
| m97 (LTS) |
8 months and 3 weeks ago (29 Mar 2022)
|
Ends
in 1 year and 2 months (01 Mar 2024)
|
cos-97-16919-189-20
(12 Dec 2022)
|
| m93 (LTS) |
1 year and 2 months ago (18 Oct 2021)
|
Ends
in 9 months (01 Oct 2023)
|
cos-93-16623-295-22
(12 Dec 2022)
|
| m89 (LTS) |
1 year and 8 months ago (07 Apr 2021)
|
Ends
in 2 months and 1 week (01 Mar 2023)
|
cos-89-16108-766-19
(12 Dec 2022)
|
| m85 (LTS) |
2 years and 2 months ago (24 Sep 2020)
|
Ended
3 months and 2 weeks ago (01 Sep 2022)
|
cos-85-13310-1498-13 |
| m81 (LTS) |
2 years and 8 months ago (27 Mar 2020)
|
Ended
1 year and 3 months ago (01 Sep 2021)
|
cos-81-12871-1317-8 |
| m77 (LTS) |
3 years ago (27 Sep 2019)
|
Ended
1 year and 8 months ago (01 Apr 2021)
|
cos-77-12371-1109-0 |
| m73 (LTS) |
3 years and 9 months ago (25 Mar 2019)
|
Ended
2 years and 6 months ago (01 Jun 2020)
|
cos-73-11647-656-0 |
| m69 (LTS) |
4 years ago (18 Sep 2018)
|
Ended
3 years ago (01 Dec 2019)
|
cos-69-10895-385-0 |
Support policy
Container-Optimized OS is tested and qualified for running various container workloads on Google Cloud. It is actively patched with security updates (CVEs) and bug-fixes to address issues that impact Google Cloud users. Users get access to these fixes via image releases in the cos-cloud project.
Container-Optimized OS image support is available for Long Term Supported (LTS) family of images in the cos-cloud project. A description of available image families is available at the Versioning Scheme doc. The following support commitment applies only to the LTS family of images.
Support duration
Approximately twice each year, the Container-Optimized OS team releases a Long Term Supported (LTS) milestone on its cos-[MILESTONE]-lts and cos-arm64-[MILESTONE]-lts image families. Once a milestone is introduced on the LTS families, it is supported for 2 years.
During this support window:
- The milestone is actively patched for any critical bugs.
- The milestone is actively scanned for security vulnerabilities, and security fixes are applied on regular basis.
- New releases containing high priority bug and security fixes are released on-demand.
- New releases containing medium and low priority bug and security fixes are released every 3 months.
- To maintain stability, no new breaking features are introduced.
- All changes in the image are documented on a dedicated release notes page.
Deprecation
At the end of a milestone’s support window, the corresponding cos-[MILESTONE]-lts and cos-arm64-[MILESTONE]-lts families are deprecated. Specifically, the DEPRECATED flag is set on images in that milestone and those images stop appearing in the active list of images in the cos-cloud project.
Warning: Any Image Family API references to the deprecated image family will return errors and break any workflows depending on it. You should not use this API to create production instances.
Deprecated images are still accessible and usable when accessed directly by name using the images get API. However, any issues with those images might not be fixed or will only be fixed in newer milestones. Issues reported against deprecated images may be fixed only in newer image milestones.
More information is available on the Google Container-Optimized OS (COS) website.
You should be running one of the supported release numbers listed above in the rightmost column.
cat /etc/os-release /etc/lsb-release
You can submit an improvement to this page
on GitHub
. This page has a corresponding Talk Page.
A JSON version of this page is available at /api/cos.json. See the API Documentation for more.
This page was last updated on 15 December 2022. Latest releases are automatically updated.