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Release Radar - Q1 2022

Crossplane 1.6
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TLDR: efficiencies

  • New support for exponential backoff
  • New --max-reconcile-rate flag to configure how frequently Crossplane attempts reconciliation
  • go.cachedir now used in all CI steps

vcluster 0.5
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TLDR: more distro options

  • Now supports k0s and vanilla K8s distributions in addition to existing k3s target
  • New capability to sync NetworkPolicy upstream (to the host cluster)
  • Kubernetes 1.23 support

Waypoint 0.7
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TLDR: UI redesign

  • UX improvements including dropdown environment selection and a timeline view of milestone events
  • waypoint CLI now supports triggers (run a specific operation for a specific project), intended for use during CI workflows
  • waypoint.hcl can now fetch from external sources like Hashi Vault and K8s ConfigMaps

Pinniped 0.13
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TLDR: upstream IdP revocation checks (!)

  • User tokens are now only refreshed after verifying validity remains true with the identity’s source OIDC IdP
  • Refined selection of TLS ciphers used by all components to align with modern best practice (TLS1.2/1.3 only, PFS support etc)
  • Supervisor listen ports can now be customized

GitLab 14.7
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TLDR: group access tokens

  • New support for streaming audit events to a custom HTTPS endpoint [Ultimate]
  • New group access token capabilities; SaaS supported and can manage via UI/API (previously self-host only, via Rails console)
  • LDAP configuration now supports multiple hosts, with descending priority failover capability
  • Helm chart for GitLab Runner now supports interactive web terminal sessions
  • New CI_JOB_JWT_V2 variable for enhanced OIDC support in Pipelines (eg for access to hyperscaler stored secrets)

Tempo 1.3
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TLDR: backend search!

  • New capability to search the entire backend (requires tempoBackendSearch feature flag in grafana:master)
  • Compactors can now be auto-removed from their hash ring after two failed heartbeats
  • A size ceiling for traces - max_bytes_per_trace - can now be configured (default=50MB)

Prometheus 2.33
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TLDR: native cardinality analysis

  • Search feature added to service discovery & target web UI pages
  • New cardinality analysis capability via check metrics (requires feature flag --extended)
  • Variosu local TSDB and remote-write performance improvements

Traefik 2.6
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TLDR: K8s Gateway enhancements

  • Improved support for Kubernetes Gateway API; v1alpha2 and RouteNamespaces compatibility
  • New ability to configure ACME cert duration
  • Can now configure advertised HTTP/3 port

CDK for Terraform 0.9
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TLDR: cross-stack references

  • New support for referencing resources/data sources across stacks (and thus across environments)
  • CLI can now output directly to JSON; an -output-file flag has been added to the deploy and (new) output commands
  • Improved support for sets and lists in resources generated by TF providers/modules

Argo Workflows 3.3 (RC)
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TLDR: workflow hooks

  • New ‘workflow hooks’ facilitate execution of templates based on conditional logic
  • ARGO_DEBUG_PAUSE ENV for toggling a single task’s debug mode
  • Plugin templates enable extension development (essentially simply HTTP servers) in Go or Python

Gitea 1.16
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TLDR: federation! but external CI integrations deferred :(

  • Can now sign commits with an SSH key (requires OpenSSH =>8.1 and Git =>2.34)
  • Support for the AGit workflow
  • Nascent federation capabilities
  • First party support for MSFT OAuth2 providers and WebAuthn (to supersede existing U2F support)

VictoriaMetrics 1.73
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TLDR: MacOS binaries

  • dropSamplesOnOverload flag to drop incoming data if storage is unavailable or ingestion rate too high
  • first party amd64 and arm64 (Apple Silicon) macOS compiles
  • indexdb rotation and arm64 efficiency improvements
  • vmalert now supports Prometheus style file-based configuration, Consul service discovery and basic auth for notifiers

GitHub Enterprise 3.4
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TLDR: Dependabot!

  • GHA implementation now supports reusable workflows
  • Can now run Dependabot locally [beta]
  • CodeQL now supports Ruby, alongside Python and secret scanning improvements
  • Improved web UI RBAC UX
  • Requiring a PR and configuring approval for that PR are now separate branch protection options

Kyverno 1.6
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TLDR: image verification

  • Policies can now use OCI image config attributes as inputs
  • New capability to validate signed images using cosign
  • Support for more JMESPath operators and filters

MetalLB 0.12
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TLDR: FRR BGP

  • new [experimental] FRR mode for BGP
  • new capabilities are unlocked when using FRR mode:
    • dual stack L2 is supported
    • BGP sessions can be paired with BFD

Argo Events 1.6
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TLDR: improved filtering

  • New capability for evaluating an EventSource against a filter expression
  • New and / or logic operators for Sensor filtering
  • New Sensor transformation capability using either jq or Lua expressions

Grafana 8.4
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TLDR: query caching

  • Playlists can now be shared via links
  • Improvements to bar chart and geomap panel types
  • New query caching capability [Cloud/Enterprise], configurable per-datasource

Istio 1.13
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TLDR: E-W gateway hostname resolution

  • Can now configure proxy-level options via top-level ProxyConfig CRD
  • Telemetry API now supports OTel, filtering of access logs, and customizing service name in traces
  • When configuring east-west traffic flows, FQDN’s are now supported for LB’s (previously required an IP, problematic in EKS/ALB scenarios amongst others)

Vitess 13.0
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TLDR: compatibility improvements

  • Now features native support for the majority of MySQL collations
  • Rewrite of Vitess’ SQL evaluation engine to more closely align with that of MySQL
  • VTOrc now better integrated with sibling components, and is more robust during both automated and user-driven failovers

GitLab 14.8
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TLDR: expanded SSH key support

  • New support for ed25519-sk and ecdsa-sk (U2F-backed) SSH keys
  • New security approval policies (specialized approval process for MRs with detected vulnerabilities)
  • Default issue and MR templates can now be stored ‘as code’ in the .gitlab directory of the project
  • Apple Silicon (arm64 on M1) support for GitLab Runner
  • New visualization options for roadmaps

Kuma 1.5
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TLDR: Zone Egress resource

  • New resource type for specifying a Zone’s single egress point
  • New Envoy-based gateway implemenetation/mode (adding to existing ‘delgated’ mode)
  • Major reduction in memory usage for at-scale deployments

Kong Mesh 1.6
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TLDR:

  • all Kuma 1.5 enhancements plus:
  • New native ECS controller (supports both Fargate and EC2 compute), provisions data plane proxy using AWS secrets
  • support for (FIPS-140-2 compliant) Red Hat universal base image

Tailscale 1.22
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TLDR: ephemerality option

  • DRPO (DERP return path optimization) capability, facilitating faster connections in unilaterally permissive pairs
  • New stateless/ephemeral mode via tailscaled --state=mem
  • Standardized heartbeat frequency across platforms (to align with mobile apps battery saving change)

Thanos 0.25
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TLDR: redis caching

  • Cache component now supports Redis as a backend
  • Compactor can now now outputs traces for compaction events
  • Store component now supports tls_config stanza’s for Minio and Azure backends

vcluster 0.6
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TLDR: plugins

  • New ‘plugin’ framework to facilitate functionality bolt-ons like syncing additional, specific resources, baseline child cluster deployments etc
  • Child clusters can now be ‘paused’ (scale to zero) and ‘resumed’ (scaled back up, restoring state)
  • Support for VolumeSnapshots and PodDisruptionBudgets

kops 1.23
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TLDR: K8s 1.23

  • Adds support for (vanilla) K8s 1.23, while removing support for 1.17
  • Ubuntu 16/18 LTS, Debian 9, RHEL 7, CentOS 7/8 support all removed
  • Aliyun and CloudFormation support has been deprecated (no maintainers)
  • Adds support for DO VPC’s (and shared VPC’s)

ArgoCD 2.3
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TLDR: meta plugins go core!

  • ApplicationSet and Notification projects have been folded into the core Argo CD project/distribution
  • New sync/diff strategies to workaround GitOps incompatible workloads (like some Istio configurations)
  • Official ARM64 build

Golang 1.18
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TLDR: generics 😬

  • Long awaited, super contentious implementation of generics
  • Native fuzzing capability (first major language to include this as a first-party capability)
  • 20% performance improvements for ARM compiled binaries (including Apple Silicon!)

Prometheus 2.34
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TLDR: OTel tracing

  • Chunk write queue now default-disabled (can be toggled with new flag)
  • Now uses OTel tracing library (previously Jaeger)
  • Web UI: alerts page now has search field, classic UI no longer available

netmaker 0.12
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TLDR: node ACLs

  • First-party Debian, RHEL and Arch packages
  • New node ACL capability (allow/disallow traffic between subset of nodes)
  • CLI and GUI now surface capability for enabling/disabling per-client connectivity

vcluster 0.7
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TLDR: isolated mode

  • New --isolate flag, pre-packaged defaults for workload isolation (NetPol, PodSec, resource quotas)
  • StorageClass sync can now be bidirectional (previously only host-to-guest)
  • ServiceAccount sync can guest-to-host inclusive of annotations/labels

VictoriaMetrics 1.75
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TLDR: mTLS support

  • vmalert now supports OAuth and bearer tokens when communicating with datasources and notifiers
  • New -rule.resendDelay flag, equivalent to Prometheus -rules.alert.resend-delay
  • mTLS now supported for intra-component traffic

GitLab 14.9
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TLDR: UI/UX improvements

  • New ability to link an epic to another (with a relationship, eg ‘blocking’ or ‘related’) [Ultimate]
  • Environments page improved to show deployment status (currently active commit, and pipeline/workload health)
  • Deployment approval capability (introduced in 14.8) now surfaced in the web UI (previously only available via API call), with ability to add a comment alongside an approve/reject action

Argo Rollouts 1.2
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TLDR: dry runs

  • New ability to dry-run analyses (or a subset thereof, scoped using regex)
  • Experiments can now define weight splitting parameters (leveraging mesh/ingress controller capability, if it exists)
  • Improved support for ALB controller and AppMesh routing intricacies

Crossplane 1.7
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TLDR: external secrets

  • New [alpha] support for external secret stores (a generic abstraction for backends like Hashi Vault, AKV etc)
  • Webhooks now supported both for crossplane core and in providers

Vault 1.10
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TLDR: MFA to OSS tier

  • Login MFA capabilities (TOTP, Okta, Duo) now supported in OSS offering
  • Can now function as an OIDC provider (using Vault identities for authN)
  • PKI secrets engine can now leverage (PKCS#11/AKV/AWS KMS) HSM [Enterprise]

Alertmanager 0.24
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TLDR: Telegram

  • New mTLS capability for intracluster traffic
  • Adds support for Telegram as receiver
  • Outbound alerts to OpsGenie can now update an existing message

liqo 0.4
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TLDR: CLI capabilities

  • liqoctl connect facilitates pairing two clusters without using public K8s API endpoints
  • liqoctl move volume enables PV migration across connected clusters
  • liqoctl uninstall gracefully unwinds a cluster pairing

CDK for TF 0.10
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TLDR: multi-stack deploys

  • New (ergonomic) support for automated multi-stack deployments, building on v0.9’s cross-stack reference feature
  • terraform output now streamed to the cdktf CLI when using diff, deploy and destroy commands
  • Improved type support - can now reference a list in entirety (previously just elements of a list)

Mirmir 2.0
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TLDR: Grafana forked Cortex to apply AGPL

  • Cortex is basically dead, as Grafana were maintainers of the project
  • Mirmir’s initial 2.0 release is to signify their confidence in the (Cortex) codebase’s production readiness
  • Enhancements (relative to Cortex 1.10) include:
    • monolithic deployment ergonomics
    • new query sharding capability
    • 36% reduction in config parameters

Talos 1.0
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TLDR: GA

  • New admissionControl machine configuration field (facilitates implementation of PodSecurity)
  • talosctl apply/patch/edit commands have new many arguments, like --mode no-reboot and --interactive
  • New ’extension services’ concept, essentially machine plugins
    • Related: alpha support for NVIDIA GPU’s