Feature blog 1.33: Image volumes graduate to beta

Signed-off-by: Sascha Grunert <[email protected]>

Author: saschagrunert

content/en/blog/_posts/2025-MM-DD-image-volume-beta/index.md

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+---
+layout: blog
+title: "Kubernetes 1.33: Image Volumes graduate to beta!"
+date: 2025-MM-DD
+slug: image-voume-beta
+author: Sascha Grunert (Red Hat)
+---
+
+[Image Volumes](/blog/2024/08/16/kubernetes-1-31-image-volume-source) were
+introduced as an Alpha feature with the Kubernetes v1.31 release. The recent
+release of Kubernetes v1.33 moved that support to **beta**.
+
+Please note that the feature is still _disabled_ by default, because not all
+[container runtimes](/docs/setup/production-environment/container-runtimes) have
+full support for it. [CRI-O](https://cri-o.io) supports the initial feature since version v1.31 and
+will add support for Image Volumes as beta in v1.33.
+[containerd](https://containerd.io) merged support for the alpha feature, but
+has not released it yet.
+
+### What's new
+
+The major change for the beta graduation of Image Volumes is the support for
+[`subPath`](/docs/concepts/storage/volumes/#using-subpath) and
+[`subPathExpr`](/docs/concepts/storage/volumes/#using-subpath-expanded-environment) mounts
+for containers via `spec.containers[*].volumeMounts.[subPath,subPathExpr]`. This
+allows end-users to mount a certain sub directory of an image volume, which is
+still mounted as readonly (`noexec`). This means that non-existing
+subdirectories cannot be mounted by default. As for other `subPath` and
+`subPathExpr` values, Kubernetes will ensure that there are no absolute path or
+relative path components part of the specified sub path.