Kubernetes 1.19 theme is "accentuate the paw-sitive"

The latest release of Kubernetes is now available. Kubernetes 1.19 is the second Kubernetes release of the year.

According to the team, the gap between Kubernetes 1.18 and 1.19 was the largest of any two Kubernetes releases, at 20 weeks. “The 1.19 release was quite different from a regular release due to COVID-19, George Floyd protests, and several other global events that we experienced as a release team. Due to these events, we made the decision to adjust our timeline and allow SIGs, Working Groups, and contributors more time to get things done. The extra time also allowed for people to take time to focus on their lives outside of the Kubernetes project, and ensure their mental wellbeing was in a good place,” the Kubernetes release team wrote in a blog post

This release introduces 33 enhancements, 12 of which are stable, 18 of which are in beta, and 13 of which are in alpha.

As part of this release, the team is now extending the support window for Kubernetes releases from 9 months to one year. “A yearly support period provides the cushion end-users appear to desire, and is more in harmony with familiar annual planning cycles,” the release team wrote. 

Other new features include storage capacity tracking, graduation of Ingress to V1, structured logging, kubelet client TLS certificate rotation, and more. 

The full list of new features can be found in the project’s release notes