The Kubernetes (K8s) project released the long-anticipated 1.19 iteration of the all-consuming cloud infrastructure platform coming in just a day past its already-delayed target date. The update was notable for both its content and gestation.

The latest release includes 33 “enhancements” with a dozen of those moving to “stable,” 18 in “beta,” and 13 in “alpha.” This is slightly less than the 38 enhancements posted in the previous release.

One of the more interesting of the updates is that the support window for K8 versions has been expanded from nine months to one year. This should allow for slower-moving organizations that are working directly with K8 instead of through a hosted platform to have a bit more runway in terms of updateability.

“That provides a little bit more time for bigger corporations and organizations to adjust and to upgrade Kubernetes,” Taylor Dolezal, lead on the K8 1.19 release, said in an interview. “It's a lot when you have huge footprints to get everything updated in a reasonable amount of time, so it's been quite a while, quite a long time coming.”

The K8 project cited a survey from early last year that found “a significant subset of Kubernetes end-users fail to upgrade within the current 9-month support period.” It noted that 30% of users would “better be able to keep their deployments on supported versions if the patch support period were extended to 12-14 months,” and that was “true regardless of whether the users are on self-build or commercially vendored distributions.”

“An extension would thus lead to more than 80% of users being on supported versions, instead of the 50%-60% we have now,” it added.

However, the rapid evolution of the K8 platform had the project reign in that extension period to an even year, which “provides the cushion end-users appear to desire, and is more in harmony with familiar annual planning cycles.”

The move could also be a boon for enterprises that continue to struggle with K8’ infernal update schedule. A Platform9 survey of more than 1,300 attendees at last year’s KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event in San Diego found more than 44% cited “upgrades” as challenge in running K8.

Outside of the support extension, K8 1.19 includes a new alpha feature that adds an application programming interface (API) for a Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver that can report storage capacity. It can then use that information in the K8 scheduler to determine if a pod has sufficient capacity to run.

This involves an alpha feature that allows any existing storage driver that supports dynamic provisioning to be used as an ephemeral storage volume. And a new CSI health monitoring tool that can share information between K8 and the underlying storage systems.

Containers were initially viewed as a perfect match for stateless applications that did not require stored data to operate or support a running application. These were typically web services that acted as a go-between for any storage needs. Any actual storage within a stateless container was ephemeral, and thus a restart flushed out stored data.

However, as the use of containers has blossomed, use cases have extended into stateful applications. As such, a number of vendors and projects have been developed that allow for containers to tap into a central data repository so that they can support stateful applications.

The 1.19 release was initially expected to drop around the end of June, which would have been in keeping with what has been a quarterly release cadence. However, project leaders explained that external events altered that plan.

“We gave breaks around when we saw the George Floyd protests and the teams just needed that mental space and time to talk with their families and deal with what was going on, especially in the major cities,” Dolezal said.

Dolezal also explained that the release team provided contributors with time off around the recent KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe event and that they were also dealing with the ongoing impact from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I think it was just a lot to deal with, and I liked that we were able to come together and agree on hey, let's take a little bit more time in this release and not burn ourselves out. Because being open source it's definitely community focused, and it was nice to not push those people too much or stress them out,” Dolezal added.

One vendor previously told SDxCentral that they did not expect any impact from the delayed update.

“The delay and alternate schedule for Kubernetes releases this year will likely not have a major impact on our business,” explained Tobi Knaup, co-CEO of D2iQ, in an email. “Given Kubernetes’ complexity, the success of most projects depends on the experience of the deployment team as much as the technology itself. With the majority of our customers moving from siloed deployments to scaling Kubernetes across the enterprise, this experience becomes more critical than a new version.”

Dolezal, who is also a developer advocate at HashiCorp, said that the subsequent 1.20 release will be the last one scheduled for this year, “and the plan is to return to a three-month update cycle (baring no unforeseen circumstances),” he added.