Upgrade Path / Migration Checklist
Every deprecation, removal, and breaking change tracked across the version history, plus the operational notes that matter most when planning an upgrade.
Upgrade-path operational notes
3.0 and 3.2 offered no upgrade path from 2.x at all -- new installs only. 3.3.2 specifically (not 3.3.0/3.3.1) is the first 3.x release supporting migration from 2.x, and only from 2.25.4 or later -- a precise version gate. This is a migration with significant component changes, not zero-downtime: requires a proactive support case, complete backup, prerequisite checks, and the rhai-cli migration assessment process. Unconverted ModelMesh/KServe Serverless models return HTTP 503 immediately after upgrade with no grace period; OGX (Llama Stack) data is permanently lost during migration unless backed up beforehand, with no automated migration path. Custom workbench images built against oauth-proxy must be rebuilt for kube-rbac-proxy or they fail with redirect loops. RHOAI 3.3 requires OpenShift 4.19.9 specifically. Release cadence: EA1 (1 month, unsupported) -> EA2 -> GA (7 months full support); EUS releases add 11 more months on top; one EUS release per three GA releases.
At 3.5 GA, a dedicated migration guide ('Assess and plan for migration from 2.25.9+ to 3.5') ships using rhai-cli, covering side-by-side and in-place approaches, Kueue management-state prerequisites, and component-specific rhai-cli migrate actions for Kueue/RHBOK, AI Pipelines, Model Serving, Workbenches, TrustyAI, Training, Llama Stack/OGX, and Ray. After upgrading, move off the support-required-upgrade-3.5 channel onto stable-3.5 / stable-3.x / eus-3.5 per lifecycle needs. New 3.5-specific item: anyone who configured llm-d flow control during the 3.4 TP window must update the API group, metrics prefix, and saturation-detector configuration path before/during the 3.5 upgrade.
Deprecation & removal timeline (40)
Mirrors the flat, one-row-per-feature view: when a feature was introduced, when it was deprecated, and its current removal status.
| Feature | Introduced | Deprecated | Removal status | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Multi-model serving (ModelMesh) | 2.5 (approx.) | 2.19 | Retired from the supported 3.x serving architecture; unmigrated workloads fail after migration to 3.0. | |
| KServe Serverless deployment mode | 2.5 (approx.) | 2.25 | Retired from the supported 3.x serving architecture; unmigrated workloads fail after migration to 3.0. | |
| Accelerator profiles | 2.5 (approx.) | 2.22 | Not yet removed; superseded by Hardware Profiles at 3.0. | |
| OVMS CUDA plugin | 2.5 (approx.) | 2.22 | Not yet removed. | |
| OdhDashboardConfig groupsConfig | 2.5 (approx.) | 2.17 | Superseded by the Auth resource. | |
| Kubeflow Training Operator v1 | 2.5 (approx.) | 2.25 | Not yet removed; specific v1 images deprecated again at 3.4. | |
| CodeFlare Operator | 2.5 (approx.) | 2.24 | Removed at 3.0; folded into KubeRay Operator. | |
| AppWrapper Controller | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed at 3.0. | Not separately deprecated. |
| DataSciencePipelinesApplication v1alpha1 API | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed at 3.0. | Not separately deprecated. |
| Connection Secrets annotation format | 2.5 (approx.) | 3.0 | Not yet removed. | |
| Microsoft SQL Server CLI tools | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed at 2.24. | Not separately deprecated. |
| Anaconda | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed at 2.18. | Not separately deprecated. |
| Pipeline logs for Elyra scripts stored in S3 | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed at 2.11; replaced by pipeline log viewer. | Not separately deprecated. |
| HabanaAI 1.10 workbench image | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed for new installs at 2.14; retained on upgrade. | Not separately deprecated. |
| Beta subscription channel | 2.5 | — | Removed at 2.5. | Not separately deprecated. |
| CodeFlare SDK Ray cluster config parameters | 2.5 (approx.) | version not stated | Not yet removed. | |
| JupyterHub | Predates RHODS 1.15 | — | Removed at 1.16 (RHODS era); replaced by Kubeflow Notebook Controller. | Not separately deprecated. |
| Data Science Pipelines on Kubeflow Pipelines v1 | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed at 2.9; rebuilt on KFP v2 (2.8 was last v1 release). | Not separately deprecated. |
| TrustyAI bias detection functionality | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed at 2.7 (TrustyAI notebook image itself retained). | Not separately deprecated. |
| Notebook container image v1.2 | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed from new-workbench selection at 2.5. | Not separately deprecated. |
| tf2onnx package (TensorFlow images) | 2.5 (approx.) | — | Removed 3.4 with no prior deprecation notice -- the only such instance identified in this review. | Not previously deprecated. |
| TrustyAI service CRD v1alpha1 | Undetermined | 2.25 | Not yet removed. | |
| Model registry API v1alpha1 | Undetermined | 2.24 | Not yet removed; v1beta1 current. | |
| Model registry ML Metadata (MLMD) server | Undetermined | — | Removed at 2.23. | Not separately deprecated. |
| Text Generation Inference Server (TGIS) | Undetermined | 2.19 | Removed at 3.0. | |
| LAB-tuning | Undetermined | 2.25 | Removed at 3.0. | |
| Embedded Kueue component | Undetermined | 2.24 | Removed at 3.0; replaced by Red Hat build of Kueue Operator. | |
| Caikit-NLP component | Undetermined | — | Removed at 3.0. | Not separately deprecated. |
| Default group creation for model registry | 3.4 | 3.4 | Not yet removed. | |
| SQLite as production Llama Stack/OGX metadata store | 3.0 | 3.2 | Not removed; permitted for local dev/test only. | |
| Ray-based multi-node vLLM template | 3.3 (TP) | 3.4 | Removed at 3.4; native vLLM multiprocessing used instead. | |
| Llama Stack -> OGX rename | 3.0 (as Llama Stack) | 3.5 EA1 (renamed, breaking) | API group llamastack.io -> ogx.io; API version v1alpha1 -> v1beta1; kind LlamaStackDistribution -> OGXServer; activation field spec.components.llamastackoperator.managementState -> spec.components.ogx.managementState. Manual migration required. | Amber preview-adoption risk: source path was Technology Preview, so this is not a broken GA compatibility promise -- but it is still a mandatory manual migration for anyone on the Llama Stack preview path. |
| FMS-Guardrails Orchestrator | 2.19 (as TP) | 3.5 (formal, directly confirmed) | DEPRECATED, will be removed in a future release (undated). NeMo Guardrails is now the single recommended framework for all LLM safety guardrailing. Remains functional in 3.5. | |
| LM-Eval standalone evaluation service (LMEvalJob CRD, LM-Eval UI) | Pre-3.4 | 3.5 (formal) | DEPRECATED, will be removed in a future release. Migrate to EvalHub. | |
| RStudio Server / CUDA - RStudio Server workbench images | Pre-2.25 | 3.5 (formal) | REMOVED at 3.5 for AGPL licensing-compliance reasons. Remains available (supported) on 2.25 (EOL 5 Oct 2026) and 3.3 (EOL 26 Apr 2027) only. Self-build recipes exist for an unsupported 3.5+ image. | Compliance-driven removal, not a product-direction one -- different risk profile from the vLLM/OGX/MaaS architectural changes elsewhere. |
| OGX Evaluation REST API and providers | 3.0 (as Llama Stack) | 3.5 EA1 | REMOVED from the OGX Operator in the same EA1 milestone as its deprecation. | |
| Safety and Shields APIs (OGX) | 3.0 (as Llama Stack) | 3.5 EA1 | DEPRECATED. | |
| Evaluation Stack UI / DP orchestration layer (3.4) | 3.4 (TP/DP) | — | Superseded at 3.5 by EvalHub. 3.5 release notes label EvalHub GA/full support, while the current Supported Configurations matrix lists EvalHub 0.3.0 as TP on x86_64. | Superseded, not formally deprecated. |
| 2025.2-generation workbench and pipeline runtime images | Pre-3.5 | — | Retained through 3.5 GA for transition; selectable but marked outdated/not recommended in the dashboard. No removal date stated. | Not formally deprecated. |
| Distributed Inference with llm-d flow control API (inference.networking.x-k8s.io) | 3.4 (TP) | 3.5 (breaking rename on GA promotion, not a deprecation) | API group moves to llm-d.ai, metrics prefix to llm_d_epp_. Anyone on the 3.4 TP must migrate resources and dashboards. |