The Cloud Native Computing Foundation today rolled out a new version of Kubernetes with a raft of enhancements, some of which have been in the works for more than a year.

Kubernetes is among the most important open-source projects to have been released in recent years. It’s the go-to system for managing workloads that use software containers, an increasingly popular technology for deploying applications that allows code to be seamlessly moved across different infrastructure types. 

Kubernetes 1.11 brings several features aimed at simplifying day-to-day operations. To start, administrators can now change how much data storage is available for a group of containers without having to shut them down and unmount existing storage volumes first. The result is a reduction in downtime, which should make it easier for enterprises to update their container clusters when operational needs change.

The new “dynamic kubelet configuration” feature rolling out in conjunction serves a similar aim. Kubelets are the software agents that Kubernetes deploys on each node in a deployment to perform key operational tasks. With the new release, companies have an easier way to change the behavior of kubelets in a production environment.

That increased management capability should make Kubernetes, and by extension software containers, more enterprise-friendly. But some companies will likely choose to wait awhile before putting the new features to use, since they’re still in the fine-tuning phase.

In the meantime, risk-averse enterprises can start looking at the enhancements in Kubernetes 1.11 that are already marked as stable. The two most significant changes focus on how the system makes use of external software components.

Kubernetes can now perform load balancing using IP Virtual Server, a technology built into Linux that is more scalable and provides better network throughput than the tool it has used for so far. The update also adds support for a new Domain Name Server system called CoreDNS. It has “fewer moving parts than the previous DNS server,” according to the release notes, as well as customization options that facilitate a broader range of use cases.

Kubernetes 1.11 will become available for download on GitHub.

Image: Cloud Native Computing Foundation