Since Kubernetes 1.20 deprecated Dockershim (and removed it entirely in Kubernetes 1.24), containerd has become the de facto container runtime for Kubernetes environments. HCL Connections Component Pack runs on Kubernetes, making containerd a critical dependency for Connections deployments.
Although HCL generally follows the Kubernetes release lifecycle in its Component Pack (CR) releases, containerd 1.7 remained the highest supported version for a long time. This changed with HCL Connections 8 CR14, which introduced support for Kubernetes 1.35 and, consequently, containerd 2.2.x. At the same time, support for containerd 1.7.x was dropped for Kubernetes 1.35 deployments.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://blog.martdj.nl/2026/07/09/upgrading-containerd-from-1-7-to-2-x-read-this-first/