Popular container orchestration platform Kubernetes has released version 1.18, its first release of the year. The Kubernetes team is calling version 1.18 “fit and finish,” which commonly refers to a completed product with all its parts fitting tight and clean–in other words, Kubernetes sees this latest version as a major new release.

SEE: Kubernetes security guide (free PDF) (TechRepublic)

“Significant work has gone into improving beta and stable features to ensure users have a better experience. An equal effort has gone into adding new developments and exciting new features that promise to enhance the user experience even more,” the Kubernetes team said in a statement.

Version 1.18 brings 38 enhancements to Kubernetes: 15 are leaving beta for the stable channel. 11 are now in beta, and 12 have come to alpha for their first stage of testing. 

SEE: How to deploy a Kubernetes cluster with Multipass (TechRepublic)

The Kubernetes team highlighted five elements of the release it considers major themes, and they’re sure to please users looking for a better experience.

Kubertnetes gets a new debug utility

A new debugger built on kubectl exec has been added to alpha, and the Kubernetes team is welcoming feedback on it. The “kubectl debug” 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.”

Kubernetes Topology Manager lets CPU, device manager communicate

Prior to the addition of this beta feature, the CPU and device manager of a Kubernetes system would allocate resources without consulting the other. Topology Manager fixes that issue, which the Kubernetes team said will “allow your workload to run in an environment optimized for low latency.”

SEE: 3 tips to keep Kubernetes safe at scale (TechRepublic)

Serverside apply gets a second beta

The serverside apply feature that joined Kubernetes beta in version 1.16 is remaining in beta, but with a major new feature: It will now “track and manage changes to fields of all new Kubernetes objects, allowing you to know what changed your resources and when.”

New ingress features 

Ingress, which allows services inside a Kubernetes cluster to reach the internet via HTTP and HTTPS, is getting two big changes in 1.18. First, there’s a new pathType field that will allow Kubernetes users to specify how Ingress paths should be matched. It can be used as an implementation specific path, an Exact, or Prefix path type.

The second new Ingress feature is the new IngressClass resource, which can describe types of ingress within clusters. This new feature replaces the depreciated kubernetes.io/ingress.class annotation.

Support for Windows CSI

This new alpha feature adds a CSI proxy for Windows that will allow non-privileged, but pre-approved, containers to perform privileged storage operations on Windows systems. 

Aside from new features, Kubernetes is also reporting that use of its platform “in production is skyrocketing.” The Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s annual survey found 78% of its respondents reported using Kubernetes, a 20% increase over last year. 

Kubernetes 1.18 can be downloaded now from GitHub.

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