Container Service for Kubernetes:CoreDNS - Container Service for Kubernetes

CoreDNS is the default DNS service discovery plugin for ACK clusters and ACK Edge clusters. ACK serverless clusters also support CoreDNS for service discovery. This topic describes the CoreDNS component, explains how to use it, and lists its change log.

Component description

CoreDNS is a component in Kubernetes clusters responsible for DNS resolution. It resolves both custom service domain names within the cluster and external domain names. The CoreDNS project is hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). For more information about CoreDNS, see CoreDNS: DNS and Service Discovery.

CoreDNS is available in two editions: unmanaged and managed. For more information, see DNS for service discovery.

For more information about the mapping between CoreDNS versions and cluster versions, see CoreDNS version in Kubernetes.

Notes

The DNS configuration of application pods also affects DNS resolution. For more information, see Configure DNS policies and resolve domain names.
Before you upgrade unmanaged CoreDNS, note the following items:
- Review the CoreDNS upgrade instructions. For more information, see Unmanaged CoreDNS automatic upgrade.
- Back up the coredns ConfigMap in the kube-system namespace.
CoreDNS service unavailability can severely affect other services in the cluster.
- Unmanaged CoreDNS: To ensure the availability of CoreDNS, see Suggestions for deploying stable and high-performance unmanaged CoreDNS.
- Managed CoreDNS: Alibaba Cloud Container Service for Kubernetes (ACK) ensures its availability. For more information, see Performance of managed CoreDNS.

Change log

Unmanaged edition

Version number	Applicable clusters	Registry Address	Change time	Changes	Impact
v1.12.1.3	For clusters of v1.27 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.12.1.3	November 5, 2025	Optimization: Added matchLabelKeys to topologySpreadConstraints. This prevents CoreDNS pods from being concentrated in a single zone after a rolling upgrade of the component, which is not the expected behavior. For more information, see Use scheduling policies to achieve high availability for CoreDNS.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.12.1.2	For clusters of v1.21 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.12.1.2	October 10, 2025	Optimization: Removed the `aliyun` suffix from the component version number. Optimized the default `serve_stale` configuration of the `cache` plugin to `serve_stale 30s verify`.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.12.1.1-4035d7a99-aliyun	For clusters of v1.21 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.12.1.1-4035d7a99-aliyun	July 22, 2025	Updated to community v1.12.1. Added the multisocket plugin. Increased the canonical name (CNAME) lookup limit from 7 to 10. plugin/kubernetes: Fixed an issue where deleted pods were resolved due to DeletionTimestamp (#7119) (#7131). plugin/kubernetes: Reverted "Only create pointer (PTR) records for endpoints with a defined hostname ( #6898 )". plugin/forward: Added the `failfast_all_unhealthy_upstreams` option. This returns `servfail` when all upstream servers are down. The `serve_stale` configuration is enabled by default for the `cache` plugin. When an upstream DNS server is unavailable, CoreDNS can respond with an expired cache (the time to live (TTL) of this response is 0) and asynchronously try to get the latest address for the domain name.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.11.3.5-5321daf49-aliyun	For clusters of v1.21 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.11.3.5-5321daf49-aliyun	March 19, 2025	Updated the base image to fix related security vulnerabilities. Added support for Lingjun node pools. CoreDNS pods are not scheduled to Lingjun nodes.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.11.3.2-f57ea7ed6-aliyun	For clusters of v1.21 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.11.3.2-f57ea7ed6-aliyun	October 21, 2024	CoreDNS now supports the Firewall plugin, and the Forward plugin can execute the next plugin based on the return code. You can now customize the topology constraint options for CoreDNS component deployments on the Operations > Add-ons page of the console.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.9.3.16-4341f22f-aliyun	For ACK serverless clusters of v1.20.4 and later only.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.9.3.16-4341f22f-aliyun	May 9, 2023	The default memory request for CoreDNS container scheduling is increased to 4 GiB to prevent CoreDNS from being scheduled to shared instances. You can customize the memory size in the component configuration.	The upgrade may result in the use of higher Elastic Container Instance (ECI) specifications when creating CoreDNS.
v1.9.3.10-7dfca203-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.9.3.10-7dfca203-aliyun	April 3, 2023	Optimized zone-level anti-affinity scheduling. Reduced the possibility of pod eviction in elastic node scenarios.	Due to scheduling policy adjustments, if all schedulable nodes in the cluster are in a single zone, CoreDNS replicas may fail to be scheduled and the component upgrade may fail. To ensure DNS availability, scale out your cluster and distribute the schedulable nodes across multiple zones to ensure that CoreDNS replicas can be scheduled and run.
v1.9.3.6-32932850-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.9.3.6-32932850-aliyun	August 25, 2022	Supports delivering Kubernetes events. In ACK serverless clusters, the default CPU request is changed to 2 cores.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.9.3.2-8850b5e7-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.9.3.2-8850b5e7-aliyun	August 3, 2022	Supports one-click enabling of CoreDNS log collection in the log center.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.9.3.1-5e7ba42d-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.9.3.1-5e7ba42d-aliyun	July 11, 2022	Fixed several issues and added some features. For more information, see CoreDNS-1.9.3 Release. Supports ACK One multi-cluster services.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.8.4.5-2ce07fd2-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.8.4.5-2ce07fd2-aliyun	April 8, 2022	Optimized the CoreDNS scheduling affinity configuration to allow all cluster nodes to be elastic scaling nodes.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.8.4.3-644f4735-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.8.4.3-644f4735-aliyun	February 22, 2022	Disabled caching for resolution results of the ServError type. Changed the anti-affinity scheduling by hostname from preferred to required. This enforces node-level anti-affinity scheduling.	Because replica anti-affinity is enforced at the node level, some CoreDNS replicas will be in the Pending state if the number of CoreDNS replicas is greater than the number of nodes. Before you upgrade to this version, scale out the cluster nodes or scale in the CoreDNS replicas.
v1.8.4.2-7d597cff-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.8.4.2-3a376cc-aliyun	January 10, 2022	Added support for custom parameters. Enabled resolution logs by default.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.8.4.1-3a376cc-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.8.4.1-3a376cc-aliyun	October 26, 2021	Supports watching EndpointSlices resources. Supports DNS queries using IPv6 addresses.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.7.0.0-f59c03d-aliyun	For clusters of v1.14.8 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.7.0.0-f59c03d-aliyun	July 8, 2021	Modified the default graceful shutdown time for CoreDNS and the container memory limit in the CoreDNS deployment. Updated metric names. If your monitoring system depends on CoreDNS metrics, make sure to modify them. For more information, see Metric Changes. Fixed an issue where the Forward plugin used only the first upstream DNS server. Removed compatibility for the deprecated Upstream plugin. If the Corefile configuration contains the Upstream plugin, it is safely and automatically deleted during the upgrade.	If you have modified the /etc/resolv.conf DNS configuration file on an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance, upgrading or recreating a CoreDNS pod will cause it to use the modified /etc/resolv.conf file. Before you upgrade, make sure that all DNS servers in the configuration are working correctly.
1.6.7.edge (Discontinued)	-	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:1.6.7.edge	April 23, 2021	Built based on community version 1.6.7. For more information, see CoreDNS-1.6.7 Release.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.7.0	-	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:1.7.0	March 18, 2021	Removed compatibility for the deprecated Upstream plugin. If the Corefile configuration contains the Upstream plugin, it is safely and automatically deleted during the upgrade. Updated metric names. If your monitoring system depends on CoreDNS metrics, make sure to modify them. For more information, see Metric Changes. Fixed an issue where the Forward plugin used only the first upstream DNS server.	If you have modified the /etc/resolv.conf DNS configuration file on an ECS instance, upgrading or recreating a CoreDNS pod will cause it to use the modified /etc/resolv.conf file. Before you upgrade, make sure that all DNS servers in the configuration are working correctly.
v1.6.7 (Discontinued)	-	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:1.6.7	November 28, 2018	Built based on community version 1.6.7. For more information, see CoreDNS-1.6.7 Release.	This upgrade does not affect your services.

Managed edition

Version number	Applicable clusters	Registry Address	Change time	Changes	Impact
v1.12.1.2	For clusters of v1.21 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.12.1.2	October 10, 2025	Optimization: Updated to community v1.12.1. In clusters where the IPv6 dual-stack feature is not enabled, queries for AAAA records directly return `nodata`. The multisocket plugin is enabled by default to enhance performance.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.11.3.2-f57ea7ed6-aliyun	For clusters of v1.21 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.11.3.2-f57ea7ed6-aliyun	October 21, 2024	CoreDNS now supports the Firewall plugin, and the Forward plugin can execute the next plugin based on the return code. You can now customize the topology constraint options for CoreDNS component deployments on the Operations > Add-ons page of the console.	This upgrade does not affect your services.
v1.9.3.10-7dfca203-aliyun	For clusters of v1.20.4 and later.	registry.{{.Region}}.aliyuncs.com/acs/coredns:v1.9.3.10-7dfca203-aliyun	April 3, 2023	Optimized zone-level anti-affinity scheduling. Reduced the possibility of pod eviction in elastic node scenarios.	Due to scheduling policy adjustments, if all schedulable nodes in the cluster are in a single zone, CoreDNS replicas may fail to be scheduled and the component upgrade may fail. To ensure DNS availability, scale out your cluster and distribute the schedulable nodes across multiple zones to ensure that CoreDNS replicas can be scheduled and run.