Upgrade from Gitlab 11.9.4 to Gitlab 14.1 resulted in SSH Keys issue

Hello all,
I would appreciate your assistance.
I upgraded an old Gitlab 11.9.4 instance to Gitlab 14.1.x (all using dockers).
I have gone through all the upgrade path and middle versions that are required and everything is working rather smoothly. The only issue I am encountering is that users that connected to my Gitlab using SSH are now getting an error of “Remote Host Identification has Changed” and “Possible DNS Spoofing Detected”.
I am at a loss to why is it happening because I copied all the keys from my old /etc/ssh dir to the new one.
From all my searches everyone suggests deleting the relevant lines from the known_hosts file and get them added again on the next call, but I want to avoid that.
I did try and do the above and check the different I have between the two known_hosts files, I see that in the old file the line was composed of:
<hostname> <key-encrypt-method> <key>
In the new file it is:
<hostname>,<IP> <key-encrypt-method> <key>
I assume that may be the issue.

Has anyone has encountered this issue? Would really be glad for assistance.

Thank you!