DKP 2.4.0 Features and Enhancements

The following improvements are included in this release.

DKP Upgrades

DKP 2.4 supports upgrades of Kubernetes and the Platform Applications from DKP 2.3 For more information see Supported Upgrade Paths.

For environments with Kaptain only: Upgrade Kaptain to the latest version BEFORE upgrading DKP. This version of DKP removes a MinIO version required for Kaptain versions 2.1 and earlier.

NVIDIA GPUs

This feature will enable you who are using GPU nodes for their computational heavy applications, to run GPU nodes On-prem, and in Air-gapped environments, enabling our security conscious customers to use GPU workloads on DKP.

Konvoy Image Builder instructions have been added for building an image for GPU capable systems under the Konvoy Image Builder section called KIB for GPU.

When upgrading a nodepool running GPU workloads, users must drain the existing nodes in the nodepool and replace them with new nodes configured to run GPU workloads. With DKP 2.4, the nodes with NVIDIA GPUs are configured with nvidia-gpu-operator (https://docs.nvidia.com/datacenter/cloud-native/gpu-operator/overview.html) and NVIDIA drivers to support the container runtime. Critical GPU workloads can be impacted while upgrading the nodepool.

Users may have to specify configuration overrides for the nvidia-gpu-operator app prior to upgrading the Kommander component of DKP and for any workspace upgrades that have attached clusters running GPU nodes. For information on how on how to do this, refer to Upgrade Kommander | Prerequisites-for-Configurations-with-NVIDIA-GPU-Nodes.

To ensure minimum downtime and maintain high availability of the critical application workloads during the upgrade process, we recommend deploying Pod Disruption Budget (https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/disruptions/) for your critical applications.

The Pod Disruption Budget will prevent any impact on critical applications as a result of misconfiguration or failures during the upgrade process.

RHEL 8.6 Support

DKP 2.4 now supports the RHEL 8.6 OS.

Installation Enhancements

The DKP Kommander install command will now wait for all enabled applications to become ready by default. This can be disabled by setting the wait flag to false i.e. --wait=false.

You can view the progress by setting the -v 2 flag.

Cluster-scoped Application Configuration via the UI

DKP UI now allows for the custom configuration and deployment of applications on a per-cluster basis. This functionality allows you to use DKP in a multi-cluster scenario without restricting the management of multiple clusters from a single workspace. For instructions, refer to Cluster-scoped Application Configuration via the UI.

Enhanced KIB Documentation

Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) is a complete solution for building Cluster API compliant images. The goal of Konvoy Image Builder is to produce a common operating surface to run Konvoy across heterogeneous infrastructure. Inside the new Konvoy Image Builder section of documentation, you will find provider specific instructions for building an image compatible with a specific environment as well as a version compatibility table. Any override files that are needed are found within that section as well. Plus, inside each Advanced Configuration for your provider, the KIB instructions are listed in the order in which they should be performed.

Complete DKP Air-gapped Bundle for Download

In DKP 2.4.0 for air-gapped environments, a new compressed archive is available for download which contains all the DKP components needed for an air-gapped installation, including the DKP CLI, Konvoy Image Builder and all air-gapped bundles. Navigate to the Download site for the new Complete Air-gapped Bundle.

The download site contains these sections:

DKP CLI binary downloads
Konvoy Image Builder downloads
NEW Complete DKP Air-gapped Bundle - the complete bundle of all the components needed for an air-gapped install
Air-gapped Components for Individual Download - in the event you want to customize and only download each component separately to create your own bundle rather than the new complete bundle

Get Started and DKP Terms Section of Documentation

Our Documentation sections regarding installation have been reorganized for better understanding. In the Get Started with DKP section, you will find step by step instructions to go from Download all the way through log in to your UI dashboard in order. At the bottom of each page you will find a link to the next step or next relevant topic to help guide you. Other new sections such as DKP Concepts and Terms contain helpful terminology for understanding the intricacies of the product. Also, an Advanced Kommander section detailing installation was broken out and placed above the Day 2 configuration information.

Ability to Upgrade GCP

With the release of DKP 2.4, you are now able to upgrade their DKP clusters provisioned on Google Cloud Provider (GCP) from DKP 2.3 to DKP 2.4. Refer to both the DKP Enterprise Upgrade and Upgrade DKP documentation for instructions.

Provision DKP Clusters on Azure Using DKP UI

With the release of DKP 2.4, you are now able to provision DKP clusters on Microsoft Azure via the DKP UI. Refer to the Create a new Azure Cluster via UI documentation for instructions.

Rook Ceph Default Storage

Rook Ceph is a storage platform that is now included by default for usage in DKP Platform Applications. This replaces MinIO.

It is important to note that when you upgrade from 2.3.x -> 2.4.x, Ceph is automatically installed if any of the following are true:

minio-operator was installed (used by logging stack).
velero was installed (used for backups).

However, If you did not have minio-operator installed in 2.3.x and instead had configured velero to work with an external cloud storage such as Amazon S3 or Azure Blob Storage, then you do not need rook-ceph and rook-ceph-cluster post upgrade.

In order to explicitly disable installing these apps during upgrade, specify the following in the command line, then run the command:

CODE

dkp upgrade kommander --disable-appdeployments rook-ceph,rook-ceph-cluster

The command above fails if minio-operator is installed as you cannot disable ceph installation if minio-operator is installed.

Refer to Rook Ceph in DKP for additional information.