New Kubernetes Update Graduates Windows Node Support from Beta -- Virtualization Review

New Kubernetes Update Graduates Windows Node Support from Beta

By David Ramel
03/25/2019

Support for using the Kubernetes open source container orchestration system to wrangle Windows containers has been graduated from beta and is now a baked-in production-level feature of Kubernetes 1.4, out today as the first release of the year.

The project's Release Team said more such enhancements have graduated to stable in this release than ever before. Other highlighted features included kubectl (command-line interface, or CLI) updates, the general availability of Local Volumes and more. Here's a look at some of those main enhancements.

Windows Nodes support: This entails the ability to add Windows nodes as worker nodes, along with scheduling Windows containers.

"Enterprises with investments in Windows-based applications and Linux-based applications don’t have to look for separate orchestrators to manage their workloads, leading to increased operational efficiencies across their deployments, regardless of operating system," the team said in a March 25 blog post. Key functionality associated with Windows support was described as:
- Support for Windows Server 2019 for worker nodes and containers
- Support for out of tree networking with Azure-CNI, OVN-Kubernetes, and Flannel
- Improved support for pods, service types, workload controllers, and metrics/quotas to closely match the capabilities offered for Linux containers

Kubectl CLI updates: These include:
- Rewritten documentation published as its own book-formatted site, sporting a new logo and mascot (pronounced kubee-cuddle).
- Kustomize (customize raw, template-free YAML files for multiple purposes) declarative Resource Config authoring can now be done from kubectl.
- The kubectl plugin mechanism that helps developers publish their own custom kubectl subcommands in the form of standalone binaries has graduated to stable status, helping users extend the CLI with better functionality.

General availability of Persistent Local Volumes: Locally attached storage is now available as a persistent volume source. This persistent local storage is primarily used for things like distributed file systems and databases, which can be costly to utilize. "On cloud providers, local SSDs give better performance than remote disks," the team said. "On bare metal, in addition to performance, local storage is typically cheaper and using it is a necessity to provision distributed file systems."