Kubernetes v1.18 releases, container cluster management system

Kubernetes is an open-source system for managing containerized applications across multiple hosts; providing basic mechanisms for deployment, maintenance, and scaling of applications.

Kubernetes builds upon a decade and a half of experience at Google running production workloads at scale using a system called Borg, combined with best-of-breed ideas and practices from the community.

Kubernetes is hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). If you are a company that wants to help shape the evolution of technologies that are container-packaged, dynamically-scheduled and micro services-oriented, consider joining the CNCF. For details about who’s involved and how Kubernetes plays a role, read the CNCF announcement.

Changelog v1.18

What’s New (Major Themes)

Kubernetes Topology Manager Moves to Beta – Align Up!

A beta feature of Kubernetes in release 1.18, the Topology Manager feature enables NUMA alignment of CPU and devices (such as SR-IOV VFs) that will allow your workload to run in an environment optimized for low-latency. Prior to the introduction of the Topology Manager, the CPU and Device Manager would make resource allocation decisions independent of each other. This could result in undesirable allocations on multi-socket systems, causing degraded performance on latency critical applications.

Serverside Apply – Beta 2

Server-side Apply was promoted to Beta in 1.16, but is now introducing a second Beta in 1.18. This new version will track and manage changes to fields of all new Kubernetes objects, allowing you to know what changed your resources and when.

Extending Ingress with and replacing a deprecated annotation with IngressClass

In Kubernetes 1.18, there are two significant additions to Ingress: A new pathType field and a new IngressClass resource. The pathType field allows specifying how paths should be matched. In addition to the default ImplementationSpecific type, there are new Exact and Prefix path types.

The IngressClass resource is used to describe a type of Ingress within a Kubernetes cluster. Ingresses can specify the class they are associated with by using a new ingressClassName field on Ingresses. This new resource and field replace the deprecated kubernetes.io/ingress.class annotation.

SIG CLI introduces kubectl debug

SIG CLI was debating the need for a debug utility for quite some time already. With the development of ephemeral containers, it became more obvious how we can support developers with tooling built on top of kubectl exec. The addition of the kubectl debug command (it is alpha but your feedback is more than welcome), allows developers to easily debug their Pods inside the cluster. We think this addition is invaluable. This command allows one to create a temporary container which runs next to the Pod one is trying to examine, but also attaches to the console for interactive troubleshooting.

Introducing Windows CSI support alpha for Kubernetes

With the release of Kubernetes 1.18, an alpha version of CSI Proxy for Windows is getting released. CSI proxy enables non-privileged (pre-approved) containers to perform privileged storage operations on Windows. CSI drivers can now be supported in Windows by leveraging CSI proxy. SIG Storage made a lot of progress in the 1.18 release. In particular, the following storage features are moving to GA in Kubernetes 1.18:

• Raw Block Support: Allow volumes to be surfaced as block devices inside containers instead of just mounted filesystems.
• Volume Cloning: Duplicate a PersistentVolumeClaim and underlying storage volume using the Kubernetes API via CSI.
• CSIDriver Kubernetes API Object: Simplifies CSI driver discovery and allows CSI Drivers to customize Kubernetes behavior.

SIG Storage is also introducing the following new storage features as alpha in Kubernetes 1.18:

• Windows CSI Support: Enabling containerized CSI node plugins in Windows via new CSIProxy
• Recursive Volume Ownership OnRootMismatch Option: Add a new “OnRootMismatch” policy that can help shorten the mount time for volumes that require ownership change and have many directories and files.

Other notable announcements

SIG Network is moving IPv6 to Beta in Kubernetes 1.18, after incrementing significantly the test coverage with new CI jobs.

NodeLocal DNSCache is an add-on that runs a dnsCache pod as a daemonset to improve clusterDNS performance and reliability. The feature has been in Alpha since 1.13 release. The SIG Network is announcing the GA graduation of Node Local DNSCache #1351

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