chore(recipes): align overlay network-operator pins to v26.1.1

[yuanchen8911]

Summary

Aligns two overlay-level network-operator chart pins to match the registry default (26.1.1):

• recipes/overlays/kind.yaml: 25.1.0 → 26.1.1 (a year behind — this is the 25.1.0 → v26.1.1 major bump chore(recipes): check and update runtime component versions across all recipes #698's audit flagged)
• recipes/overlays/aks.yaml: "v26.1.0" → "26.1.1" (also drops the spurious "v" prefix — NGC publishes the chart as 26.1.1 without v; Helm was warning "unable to find exact version requested; falling back to closest available version" on every render)

Motivation / Context

The audit in #698 lists network-operator: 25.1.0 → v26.1.1, major. The registry default at recipes/registry.yaml was bumped to 26.1.1 in #777, but two overlays carry their own explicit pins that didn't get updated alongside the registry — the classic overlay-pin drift pattern we've cleaned up in dynamo (#725) and aws-efa (#872).

Fixes: follow-up #3 from #698 (network-operator: 25.1.0 → v26.1.1, major)
Related: #698, #777 (registry default bump)

Type of Change

• Refactoring (no functional changes — overlay pins now match registry default that bundles already use)

Component(s) Affected

• Recipe engine / data (recipes/overlays/kind.yaml, recipes/overlays/aks.yaml)

Implementation Notes

No image changes. make bom-docs produces zero diff against main after this PR, because the registry default at 26.1.1 was already the BOM source — every bundle built from the registry default has been using v26.1.1 since #777. The two overlays were the only places still pinning older versions, and the kind overlay's 25.1.0 pin was a year stale.

v-prefix correction on aks.yaml. NGC publishes the chart as version 26.1.1 (no v prefix; the appVersion is v26.1.1). The "v26.1.0" pin in aks.yaml was emitting WARN: unable to find exact version requested; falling back to closest available version on every render. Helm was falling back to chart 26.1.0 correctly, but the warning is noisy and the pin should match the chart version exactly.

Dead config in kind values.yaml (noted, not addressed). recipes/components/network-operator/values.yaml carries top-level keys (deployCR, nicClusterPolicy, nvIpam, secondaryNetwork) that the v26.1.x chart schema no longer accepts. Helm silently ignores them and the chart renders correctly; the keys are simply dead config. Cleaning up the kind values file to match the new schema is out of scope for this chart-pin alignment — would conflate "bump pin" with "rewrite values schema" and is a low-priority cleanup since kind environments don't have RDMA hardware anyway and the network-operator deployment there is largely a stub for recipe-completeness.

Testing

make qualify   # Go tests, golangci-lint + yamllint, BOM regen, chart-pin
               # verification (ADR-006), 20/20 chainsaw, vulnerability scan,
               # license headers, agents-sync check — all green

Also manually verified helm template against the v26.1.1 chart with both AICR values files (values.yaml for kind, values-aks.yaml for AKS) — renders cleanly, no errors.

Risk Assessment

• Low — Overlay pins align to the registry default that production bundles already use. The set of rendered images is unchanged (make bom-docs produces zero diff). The only behavioral change is: bundles built from kind/aks recipes now pull chart 26.1.1 instead of (25.1.0 / 26.1.0). Both are forward-compatible — the AKS values file uses only forward-compatible keys, and the kind values file has dead keys that are silently ignored on v26.1.1 the same way they were on prior versions.

Rollout notes: Existing AICR-deployed clusters running kind or AKS recipes can helm-upgrade in place by regenerating the bundle and running deploy.sh. The network-operator controller pod rotates once. No CRD migrations required (v26.1.x schema is the same forward from v26.0).

Checklist

• Tests pass locally (make test with -race)
• Linter passes (make lint)
• I did not skip/disable tests to make CI green
• I added/updated tests for new functionality (n/a — version bump only)
• I updated docs if user-facing behavior changed (n/a — no user-visible change)
• Changes follow existing patterns in the codebase
• Commits are cryptographically signed (git commit -S)

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ℹ️ Recent review info

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📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between f548633 and 2774500.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• recipes/overlays/aks.yaml
• recipes/overlays/kind.yaml

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📝 Walkthrough

Walkthrough

This PR updates the network-operator Helm chart version referenced in two recipe overlay files. The AKS recipe upgrades from v26.1.0 to 26.1.1 with removal of the leading v prefix. The kind recipe upgrades from 25.1.0 to 26.1.1. No other configuration, dependencies, or validation settings are changed in either file.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 1 (Trivial) | ⏱️ ~2 minutes

Suggested reviewers

• mchmarny

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 4

✅ Passed checks (4 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly and concisely summarizes the main change: aligning overlay network-operator chart version pins to v26.1.1, which is the primary focus of the changeset.
Description check	✅ Passed	The description is comprehensive and directly related to the changeset, providing detailed context about version pin alignment, motivation, testing, and risk assessment.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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