NON-DISRUPTIVE CONTAINER RUNTIME CHANGES

Methods, systems, and apparatus, including computer programs encoded on computer storage media, for migrating from a first container runtime to a second container runtime. One of the methods includes deploying a second control plane virtual machine that is configured to manage containers of a cluster of virtual execution environments using the second container runtime; obtaining, for each container executing workloads hosted by a respective virtual execution environment, a respective container image representing a current state of the container; updating each obtained container image to a format that is compatible with the second container runtime; deploying, for each updated container image, a corresponding container hosted by a virtual execution environment in the cluster, wherein the deployed container is managed by the second control plane virtual machine; decommissioning a first control plane virtual machine and transferring control of the containers of the cluster to the second control plane virtual machine.