Hello, Cloud Gurus. I'm Nigel Poulton the author of the Kubernetes book and the KCNA book all
about how to smash the KCNA exam. Anyway, this is Kubernetes This Month, the show that brings
you all the top news and happenings in the world of Kubernetes. Now, while you’re here,
be sure to subscribe so you always know what’s going on with Kubernetes and cloud native.
Okay, so Kubernetes 1.24 has landed. It's the first release of 2022,
and it ships with 46 enhancements. 14 of those are features graduating to stable,
15 are moving to beta, and there's 13 shiny new alpha features. However, grabbing
all the headlines in this release is definitely the removal of the Dockershim. Effectively
removing the Docker runtime. Now I get it. It feels like we've been talking about this forever,
but it is probably the biggest feature removal in the entire history of Kubernetes. And it has got
massive potential to do widespread damage. But the good news is, even though it's here, the
world is still turning. Though, it is still really early days with this. I mean, yeah, the version is
released and it's out there, but not many of us are using it yet. So for me, the potential
for disruption still exists and it's gonna exist for at least the next six to 12 months.
Now look to help you, I've added the link for the guide for getting ready in the description.
And hopefully this is the last time we'll need it. Something else of interest in this release
is that, going forward, new beta APIs will be off by default. Now that's the opposite
of the way it's been in the past, where they were on by default. And it was super useful to
have them on by default, but it was almost too useful sometimes. I mean, people would
often find themselves hooked on beta features without realizing they were beta. So as of 1.24,
new beta APIs will be off by default, but anything that was already beta in previous releases,
so already enabled, they'll stay turned on. It's just net new beta stuff, like
the 15 enhancements in 1.24. If you want to use those, you're gonna have to enable them by hand.
Okay. While supporting efforts to increase security in the software supply chain, all future
release artifacts will be signed. Hopefully this will be seamless and totally in the background
for most of us, but it is a good thing to know. And it's a reassuring step in the direction of
overall project maturity and being fit for purpose in today's world. Now, one last highlight from
me. As a former storage guy and a person who thinks feature-rich storage in Kubernetes is a
big deal for key workloads, I am stoked that storage capacity tracking and volume expansion
are now stable features. Volume expansion, which has been in beta since 1.11 by the way,
nearly 15 versions I love that. Well, this lets you directly edit an existing PVC and specify new,
bigger size. Now it is only for making things bigger. There's no making things smaller.
Anyway, it requires support from your CSI driver and of course your backend storage system.
The other one was storage capacity tracking. This exposes capacity info, so the scheduler
can pick appropriate nodes for Pods that need storage. Now there's obviously a ton more,
however, last but not least the theme, or the codename for this release, is
Stargazer. Over a thousand companies and a thousand individuals contributed and
huge props to James Laverack and the rest of the release team for getting this one over the line.
Okay. So we had our second in-person KubeCon since the pandemic and it was the first one
back in Europe. Now there was some simmering tension around the way the CNCF had handled
the face mask policy. And if you knew about that, and you paid attention at the event,
you could definitely feel it rumbling away in the background.
But I think a good 90-odd percent of people there wouldn't even have known. Anyway, the event was
good and the general feel was that there was a lot more attendee footfall than in LA six
months earlier. That said, though, I'm not sure it was a rip roaring success. Like, I don't know,
it felt a little bit subdued to me. I mean, personally, I love being back face-to-face with
people. I hosted two quizzes, a lightning talk, and book signing. So it was a lot of fun. I just,
I don't know, it felt a bit cautious. Anyway, it all started with the usual day zero events.
So mini conferences like GitOpsCon, Cloud native securitycon, Prometheus Day, eBPF Day, and a bunch
more. Plus a ton of workshops and other stuff. And loads of it was sold out. But not all. After
that though, there was three days of sessions, hallway tracks, briefings, and booths, and even
some beaches and a few parties. But you know what? I think if there were any key takeaway themes from
being boots on the ground, it really felt like there was an uptake in hybrid and multi-cloud
tools and offerings. Unsurprisingly, as well, the security folks were there in force. There's
still a huge demand for 101 beginner content. And, as usual, it feels like every KubeCon just
attracts more and more IT and operations people. And that was KubeCon Europe. Great to be back.
Okay. So time for my other top picks from last month. Hot off the heels of its most
recent round of funding, Docker's acquired Tilt, which is basically a tool or a project
for making microservices development easier. Now from a 40,000 foot view,
that seems like a great fit because Docker is also about generally making developers lives
better. However, I thought the blog article announcing the move was kind of funny. I mean,
it really felt like they were saying, yeah, there's potential for great synergies here,
but it was really lacking a clear path for how the two will actually integrate. I mean,
the blog itself finished up saying pretty much, we're gonna put our heads together and figure
out where Docker and Tilt can integrate. I mean, that's after they've acquired them. I love it.
I was also really interested to see Spot Pods go GA on GKE Autopilot clusters. These are basically
Pods running on Spot instances. And, as with most things spot, yeah they're cheap, but they can be
evicted at any time and without warning. So not suitable for all workloads, but most definitely
a cool new feature in the ever improving and maturing GKE ecosystem. Well, last up this month,
O'Reilly have decided to pull down the shutters on katacoda.com. However, it's not totally gone.
It's just, you can only leverage it exclusively from within the O'Reilly learning platform.
And that’s it for this month! If you liked this episode, you can check out
more of our original series with an ACG free plan.
You’ll also get access to our learning paths, and new free courses every month.
And the best thing is, you don’t even need a credit card to sign up - check out the link below.
And on that note, stay safe. I'll see you all again next month. Same kube time, same kube place.