Unable to manage Workload clusters after updating the Management cluster to version 0.24.X

[pawcykca]

What happened:

After updating the Management cluster from version 0.23.5 to 0.24.4, I am unable to manage Workload clusters in version 0.23.5 due to the following validation error:

eksctl anywhere version
Version: v0.23.5
Release Manifest URL: https://anywhere-assets.eks.amazonaws.com/releases/eks-a/manifest.yaml
Bundle Manifest URL: https://anywhere-assets.eks.amazonaws.com/releases/bundles/109/manifest.yaml

eksctl anywhere upgrade cluster -v3 -f test-cluster.yaml --skip-validations=pod-disruption
...
❌ Validation failed    {"validation": "control plane ready", "error": "parsing get kubeadmcontrolplane response: json: cannot unmarshal array into Go struct field APIServer.spec.kubeadmConfigSpec.clusterConfiguration.apiServer.ControlPlaneComponent.extraArgs of type map[string]string", "remediation": "ensure control plane nodes and pods for cluster eksa-ford-test are ready"}
...
Logging out from current govc session
Cleaning up long running container      {"name": "eksa_1771495729916128429"}
Error: failed to upgrade cluster: validations failed: parsing get kubeadmcontrolplane response: json: cannot unmarshal array into Go struct field APIServer.spec.kubeadmConfigSpec.clusterConfiguration.apiServer.ControlPlaneComponent.extraArgs of type map[string]string

What you expected to happen:

Ability to manage Workload clusters in version 0.23.X after updating the Management cluster to version 0.24.X

How to reproduce it (as minimally and precisely as possible):

1. Create management and workload cluster using EKSA 0.23.5
2. Upgrade management cluster to EKSA 0.24.X
3. Upgrade workload cluster using EKSA 0.23.X binary -> fail with validation error

Environment:

• EKS Anywhere Release: 0.24.4 (Management cluster) and 0.23.5 Workload cluster
• EKS Distro Release: v1-34-eks-13 (Management cluster) and v1-33-eks-16 (Workload cluster)