Kubernetes 1.11 Improves Cloud-Native Application Deployment Options

The second major release of Kubernetes in 2018 brings new dynamic kubelet management capabilities, as well as general availability for the IPVS load balancing feature. The Kubernetes 1.11 release is set to become generally available on June 27, providing users of the container orchestration system with networking, configuration and operations improvements. Among the highlights of Kubernetes 1.11 is the CoreDNS domain name service reaching general availability. The IPVS load balancing feature has now also reached general availability status in Kubernetes 1.11, enabling scalability improvements. Plus, Custom Resource Definition gets a boost with new versioning capabilities that aim to ease operations. Finally, Kubernetes nodes, known as "kubelets" in 1.11, now benefit from a new dynamic configuration capability. "Kubernetes has a configuration facility for services called ConfigMaps," Josh Berkus, Kubernetes community manager at Red Hat and Kubernetes 1.11 release lead, told eWEEK. "In 1.11, admins can configure each node to use a specific ConfigMap for kubelet configuration and once that's done, then the kubelet config can be updated on the fly by updating the ConfigMap." Kubernetes 1.11 is the second major release for Kubernetes in 2018, following the 1.10 milestone that was released on March 26. Kubernetes is a container orchestration and cloud-native application infrastructure platform that was originally developed by Google and has been operated as an open-source Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) project since July 2015. Leadership of Kubernetes releases changes for each milestone, with Kubernetes 1.10 led by Red Hat's Berkus and the 1.12 release set to be led by Tim Pepper, orchestration and containers lead in the VMware Open Source Technology Center.