
The latest version of Kubernetes is here, with 58 enhancements: 23 stable, 22 in beta, and 13 in alpha.
Kubernetes v1.34 is codenamed “Of Wind & Will (O’ WaW),” inspired by the fact that every release cycle is impacted by factors (AKA winds) out of the control of the release team, like the state of tooling, documentation, or historical decisions of the project.
“Sometimes these winds fill our sails, sometimes they push us sideways or die down,” the release team wrote. “What keeps Kubernetes moving isn’t the perfect winds, but the will of our sailors who adjust the sails, man the helm, chart the courses and keep the ship steady. The release happens not because conditions are always ideal, but because of the people who build it, the people who release it, and the bears, cats, dogs, wizards, and curious minds who keep Kubernetes sailing strong — no matter which way the wind blows.”
One of the stable features in Kubernetes v1.34 is structured parameters in Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA). DRA provides a way to select, allocate, share, and configure GPUs, TPUs, NICs, and other devices.
Another new stable feature is that Job controllers will now delay creating replacement pods to prevent resource contention. Previously, replacement pods were created immediately when a pod started terminating, but the replacement pod sometimes has trouble finding available nodes until the original pod terminates fully.
Other stable features include the ability to cancel volume expansions that are unsupported by the underlying storage provider; VolumeAttributesClass, an API for modifying volume parameters; and a new configuration file format that supports multiple JWT authenticators, CEL expression validation, and dynamic reloading.
The team also highlighted a new beta feature that allows kubelet to request short-lived, audience-bound ServiceAccount tokens. According to the release team, this enables image pulls to be authorized based on the pod’s identity instead of a node-level credential.
Finally, in alpha, the team is adding support for KYAML, which is a version of YAML designed for Kubernetes. It can be used as the output format for kubectl and addresses some of the challenges of YAML and JSON. For instance, YAML’s whitespace requires careful attention to indentation and nesting, and is susceptible to unexpected type coercion because of its optional string-quoting. JSON lacks comment support and has requirements around trailing commas and quoted keys.
For a full breakdown of all the enhancements in Kubernetes v1.34, visit the release team’s blog post. The release team will also host a webinar on 9/24 at 12 PM ET to go over what’s new.