Hello, Cloud Gurus. I'm Nigel Poulton the author  of the Kubernetes book and the KCNA book all   about how to smash the KCNA exam. Anyway, this  is Kubernetes This Month, the show that brings   you all the top news and happenings in the  world of Kubernetes. Now, while you’re here,   be sure to subscribe so you always know what’s  going on with Kubernetes and cloud native. Okay, so Kubernetes 1.24 has landed.  It's the first release of 2022,  

and it ships with 46 enhancements. 14 of  those are features graduating to stable,   15 are moving to beta, and there's 13  shiny new alpha features. However, grabbing   all the headlines in this release is definitely  the removal of the Dockershim. Effectively   removing the Docker runtime. Now I get it. It  feels like we've been talking about this forever,   but it is probably the biggest feature removal in  the entire history of Kubernetes. And it has got  

massive potential to do widespread damage. But  the good news is, even though it's here, the   world is still turning. Though, it is still really  early days with this. I mean, yeah, the version is   released and it's out there, but not many of  us are using it yet. So for me, the potential   for disruption still exists and it's gonna  exist for at least the next six to 12 months. Now look to help you, I've added the link for  the guide for getting ready in the description.  

And hopefully this is the last time we'll need  it. Something else of interest in this release   is that, going forward, new beta APIs will  be off by default. Now that's the opposite   of the way it's been in the past, where they  were on by default. And it was super useful to   have them on by default, but it was almost  too useful sometimes. I mean, people would   often find themselves hooked on beta features  without realizing they were beta. So as of 1.24,  

new beta APIs will be off by default, but anything  that was already beta in previous releases,   so already enabled, they'll stay turned  on. It's just net new beta stuff, like   the 15 enhancements in 1.24. If you want to use  those, you're gonna have to enable them by hand. Okay. While supporting efforts to increase  security in the software supply chain, all future   release artifacts will be signed. Hopefully this  will be seamless and totally in the background   for most of us, but it is a good thing to know.  And it's a reassuring step in the direction of  

overall project maturity and being fit for purpose  in today's world. Now, one last highlight from   me. As a former storage guy and a person who  thinks feature-rich storage in Kubernetes is a   big deal for key workloads, I am stoked that  storage capacity tracking and volume expansion   are now stable features. Volume expansion,  which has been in beta since 1.11 by the way,   nearly 15 versions I love that. Well, this lets  you directly edit an existing PVC and specify new,   bigger size. Now it is only for making things  bigger. There's no making things smaller.

Anyway, it requires support from your CSI driver  and of course your backend storage system.   The other one was storage capacity tracking.  This exposes capacity info, so the scheduler   can pick appropriate nodes for Pods that need  storage. Now there's obviously a ton more,   however, last but not least the theme,  or the codename for this release, is   Stargazer. Over a thousand companies and  a thousand individuals contributed and   huge props to James Laverack and the rest of the  release team for getting this one over the line.

Okay. So we had our second in-person KubeCon  since the pandemic and it was the first one   back in Europe. Now there was some simmering  tension around the way the CNCF had handled   the face mask policy. And if you knew about  that, and you paid attention at the event,   you could definitely feel it  rumbling away in the background. But I think a good 90-odd percent of people there  wouldn't even have known. Anyway, the event was  

good and the general feel was that there was  a lot more attendee footfall than in LA six   months earlier. That said, though, I'm not sure  it was a rip roaring success. Like, I don't know,   it felt a little bit subdued to me. I mean,  personally, I love being back face-to-face with   people. I hosted two quizzes, a lightning talk,  and book signing. So it was a lot of fun. I just,   I don't know, it felt a bit cautious. Anyway,  it all started with the usual day zero events.   So mini conferences like GitOpsCon, Cloud native  securitycon, Prometheus Day, eBPF Day, and a bunch   more. Plus a ton of workshops and other stuff.  And loads of it was sold out. But not all. After  

that though, there was three days of sessions,  hallway tracks, briefings, and booths, and even   some beaches and a few parties. But you know what?  I think if there were any key takeaway themes from   being boots on the ground, it really felt like  there was an uptake in hybrid and multi-cloud   tools and offerings. Unsurprisingly, as well,  the security folks were there in force. There's   still a huge demand for 101 beginner content.  And, as usual, it feels like every KubeCon just   attracts more and more IT and operations people.  And that was KubeCon Europe. Great to be back. Okay. So time for my other top picks from  last month. Hot off the heels of its most  

recent round of funding, Docker's acquired  Tilt, which is basically a tool or a project   for making microservices development  easier. Now from a 40,000 foot view,   that seems like a great fit because Docker is  also about generally making developers lives   better. However, I thought the blog article  announcing the move was kind of funny. I mean,   it really felt like they were saying, yeah,  there's potential for great synergies here,   but it was really lacking a clear path for  how the two will actually integrate. I mean,   the blog itself finished up saying pretty much,  we're gonna put our heads together and figure   out where Docker and Tilt can integrate. I mean,  that's after they've acquired them. I love it. I was also really interested to see Spot Pods go  GA on GKE Autopilot clusters. These are basically  

Pods running on Spot instances. And, as with most  things spot, yeah they're cheap, but they can be   evicted at any time and without warning. So not  suitable for all workloads, but most definitely   a cool new feature in the ever improving and  maturing GKE ecosystem. Well, last up this month,   O'Reilly have decided to pull down the shutters  on katacoda.com. However, it's not totally gone.   It's just, you can only leverage it exclusively  from within the O'Reilly learning platform.

And that’s it for this month! If you  liked this episode, you can check out   more of our original series with an ACG free plan.   You’ll also get access to our learning  paths, and new free courses every month.   And the best thing is, you don’t even need a  credit card to sign up - check out the link below.  And on that note, stay safe. I'll see you all  again next month. Same kube time, same kube place.