Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware 1.34.300-gke.59 is now available

## Announcement Announcement Google Distributed Cloud (software only) for VMware 1.34.300-gke.59 is now available for download. To upgrade, see [Upgrade clusters](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/distributed-cloud/vmware/docs/how-to/upgrading). Google Distributed Cloud 1.34.300-gke.59 runs on Kubernetes v1.34.3-gke.400. If you are using a third-party storage vendor, check the Google Distributed Cloud-ready storage partners document to make sure the storage vendor has already passed the qualification for this release. After a release, it takes approximately 7 to 14 days for the version to become available for use with GKE On-Prem API clients: the Google Cloud console, the gcloud CLI, and Terraform. ## Fix Fixed The following issues were fixed in 1.34.300-gke.59: * Fixed vulnerabilities listed in [Vulnerability fixes](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/distributed-cloud/vmware/docs/vulnerabilities). * Fixed an issue where upgrading to an Advanced Cluster caused an unexpected -np suffix to be appended to node pool labels (such as cloud.google.com/gke-nodepool). This could prevent pods from being scheduled on the correct nodes if they rely on node selectors with exact matches for these labels. * Fixed an issue where setting the deprecated `stackdriver.enableVPC` field to `true` in a cluster configuration file blocked upgrades to an Advanced Cluster. This field has no current function, and the upgrade validation now ignores it, allowing upgrades to proceed. * Fixed an issue where, during migration to Advanced Clusters, a new version of the node-problem-detector was incorrectly deployed onto existing non-Advanced (V1) nodes. Because its health check logic was incompatible with these older nodes, it repeatedly restarted the container runtime (containerd), causing cluster upgrade failures. * Fixed an issue where retrying the `gkectl upgrade admin` command after a previous failure failed with `AlreadyExists` errors (such as failing to create the credential namespace) in the bootstrap cluster. The command was updated to automatically handle resources left over from a previous attempt, making it safe to retry directly and eliminating the need for manual cleanup. * Fixed an issue where cluster creation or upgrade failed if the proxy or noProxy configuration fields contained leading or trailing whitespaces. These spaces resulted in malformed arguments for the control plane load balancer initialization job, causing the control plane load balancer initialization to fail. * Fixed an issue where the system certificate pool was ignored when a custom CA certificate was configured for a registry mirror. This caused image pull failures (such as `certificate signed by unknown authority` when pulling the Kind image) during cluster upgrades. * Fixed an issue where if updates or upgrades to advanced admin clusters failed and the external bootstrap cluster was deleted, you could lose critical data related to cluster state (not user workload data).