Kubernetes version 1.32, released on December 11, 2024, introduces several notable enhancements and changes:
- Memory Manager Reaches General Availability (GA): The Memory Manager, responsible for efficient and predictable memory allocation for containerized applications, has graduated to GA. This feature allows for exclusive memory allocation for Pods in the Guaranteed QoS class, optimizing performance for memory-intensive workloads. details here
- Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) Enhancements: The release includes significant updates to DRA, improving resource allocation for workloads requiring dedicated hardware like GPUs and FPGAs. Notably, the previous implementation of DRA has been replaced to enhance compatibility with cluster autoscaling and simplify API interactions details here
- API Removals: The flowcontrol.apiserver.k8s.io/v1beta3 version of FlowSchema and PriorityLevelConfiguration has been removed. Users are advised to transition to the flowcontrol.apiserver.k8s.io/v1 API version, available since v1.29, to ensure continued functionality details here.
- Windows Node Enhancements: Kubernetes now offers graceful shutdown support for Windows nodes, allowing the kubelet to handle system shutdown events properly. This ensures that Pods on Windows nodes terminate gracefully, enhancing reliability during maintenance or system updates details here.
- Relaxed Environment Variable Naming: The system now permits nearly all printable ASCII characters (excluding =) in environment variable names. This change provides greater flexibility for applications that require special characters in environment variables details here.
- LoadBalancer Behavior Awareness: A new ipMode field for Services of type LoadBalancer has been introduced, which can be set to “VIP” or “Proxy”. This enhancement improves the interaction between cloud provider load balancers and kube-proxy, potentially enhancing performance for certain cloud providers details here.
- Improved Resource Name Generation: When creating resources with the generateName field, the API server now automatically retries name generation up to seven times in case of conflicts. This reduces the likelihood of conflicts and enhances resilience for large-scale workloads details here
For a comprehensive overview of these updates and more, please refer to the official Kubernetes v1.32 release notes.
AWS Release on Amazon EKS
AWS has announced support for Kubernetes version 1.32 on Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) and Amazon EKS Distro.
You can now create new EKS clusters with version 1.32 or upgrade existing clusters via the EKS console, eksctl CLI, or infrastructure-as-code tools.
This release includes key enhancements such as stable support for custom resource field selectors and automatic removal of persistent volume claims (PVCs) created by StatefulSets.
Additionally, the v1beta3 API version for FlowSchema and PriorityLevelConfiguration has been deprecated. Refer to the Kubernetes release notes and AWS documentation for a detailed overview of the changes.
Kubernetes 1.32 is supported in all AWS Regions where EKS is available, including AWS GovCloud (US) Regions. To learn more about supported Kubernetes versions on EKS and how to upgrade your cluster, consult the EKS documentation. You can also use EKS Cluster Insights to identify potential issues before upgrading.
EKS Distro builds for version 1.32 are accessible via the ECR Public Gallery and GitHub. Check the EKS version lifecycle policy documentation for more details.
To know what is Kubernetes you can read our introduction here. You can also learn more about Amazon EKS on the official product page.
