DKP 2.5.0 Features and Enhancements

The following improvements are included in this release.

Video Overview

Here are a couple videos highlighting some of the new features in DKP 2.5.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYJ4W_O_DW8 https://youtu.be/GUl7zEED19k

Expand a DKP Essential Cluster to a DKP Enterprise Managed Cluster

You can now expand your standalone DKP Essential clusters to be centrally managed under a DKP Enterprise Management cluster. This allows you to manage all your Kubernetes clusters centrally, existing and future, through a single pane of glass with the industry’s best Cloud Native platform.

For more information, see Platform Expansion: Convert a DKP Essential Cluster to a DKP Enterprise Managed Cluster.

Downloadable PDF for Air-gapped Environments

A PDF for each version of the DKP documentation set is now available for download for use in secure environments that do not have access to the external network.

Support for Rocky Linux 9.1

Rocky Linux is now supported as an alternative, open-source operating system to CentOS for pre-provisioned, AWS, Azure, and vSphere environments! Rocky Linux is currently the leading open-source and community-supported alternative to CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, designed to be compatible with the upstream CentOS source. Both air-gapped and non-air-gapped environments are now supported as well as creating images with Konvoy Image Builder.

DKP Insights Enhancements

This release provides CIS compliance with kube-bench, extended Insight alert details, and enables users to activate DKP Insights with a licensing key. It also maintains compatibility and support for other packages used in Insights.

Add-on Licensing in DKP UI

If you are enrolled in the Technical Preview of Insights, you can now activate Insights with an Add-on license in the DKP UI.

See DKP Insights Activating a License Key for more information.

If you want to upgrade DKP or DKP Insights to a new version, you must uninstall Insights, upgrade DKP, and re-install a compatible Insights version to continue using it.

CIS Compliance with Kube-bench Scanning

This version of Insights comes pre-configured with an additional 3rd-party scanning tool, kube-bench by Aqua Security. Kube-bench verifies that your Kubernetes clusters run securely, by examining your clusters' compliance with the CIS Kubernetes Benchmark.

See Kube-bench for more information on how this tool has been set up in Insights.

Extended Root Cause Analysis for Polaris Insights

This version of DKP Insights comes with extended alerts for Polaris-reported issues. The alert details now include information on the root cause (RCA) and suggestions for solutions.

Supported Kubernetes Versions

Insights supports the same Kubernetes versions as the DKP platform. For an overview of compatible DKP and Insights versions, see DKP and Insights Compatibility.

Additional DKP Enhancements

AKS Lifecycle Management through the DKP UI

Users can now create, delete, provision and read Microsoft AKS clusters within the DKP UI. For more information, see Create a new AKS Cluster via UI .

Konvoy Image Builder uses HCL-based Templates over JSON

Previous versions of Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) used JSON templates when building images using Packer. With this release, KIB switches to using HCL templates instead. This keeps KIB in alignment with the upstream Packer project, which has started transitioning away from JSON templates. JSON will still work, but will not receive further updates.

Support for Ubuntu on vSphere

Ubuntu 20.04 is now supported for vSphere environments! Both air-gapped and non-air-gapped environments are now supported as well as creating images with Konvoy Image Builder.

New Cluster Creation Flag to Simplify Output YAML

Currently the DKP CLI allows users to print cluster and node pool resources to standard output with dkp create cluster ... --dry-run -o yaml > cluster.yaml. However, this dumps thousands of lines of text to the standard output. Given the size of the output, it is difficult to manage and edit. DKP has released a new flag --output-directory for create cluster and create nodepool to output smaller and more manageable manifest files.

Scenario-Based Installs

All variables for a provider specific installation have been combined into individual sections of documentation for install for a seamless start to using DKP. If you are using a cloud provider and FIPS, that combination has been assembled for you step-by-step! See the Day 1 - Basic Installs by Infrastructure section of the Documentation to find the combination you need.

You will find that each provider-specific section parallels the other sections, making it easier to find the installation scenario you need. There are, of course, additional steps and procedures where needed and depending on the specific provider. In addition, we added some tips and warnings to these procedures to help avoid some common problems associated with creating managed clusters.

Making the structures parallel is part of a larger “targeted headings” effort to improve Search and find-ability of information in the documentation. Stay tuned for more improvements in this area!

Added Procedures for Managed vSphere Clusters from the DKP CLI

Instructions for creating managed vSphere clusters is now available at the end of each of the installation scenarios. DKP supports network-connected, managed vSphere clusters as well as air-gapped,FIPS, and FIPS air-gapped managed clusters.

Improved Installation Times for Kommander

This version of DKP includes an updated application deployment order for the Kommander component, significantly decreasing installation times.

Improved `kube-prometheus-stack` Override Control on the Management Cluster

In DKP versions 2.4.x and earlier, kube-prometheus-stack was installed on the Management cluster with a default configuration using an override ConfigMap called kube-prometheus-stack-overrides. To add a custom configuration, you had to edit this ConfigMap, and add to the existing set of values. In DKP versions 2.5.x and later, these default overrides are stored in a new ConfigMap called kube-prometheus-stack-mgmt-overrides. With this improvement, the Management cluster override values are now automatically updated during DKP upgrades. You can still modify the kube-prometheus-stack-overrides ConfigMap for custom configurations.

Customizations applied in kube-prometheus-stack-overrides ConfigMap take precedence over the kube-prometheus-stack-mgmt-overrides ConfigMap.

During the upgrade from DKP 2.4.x to DKP 2.5.x, the kube-prometheus-stack-overrides ConfigMap on the Management cluster is automatically updated to remove the Management-cluster-specific default override values that were applied at installation. If no custom configuration was added to this ConfigMap, then the ConfigMap is removed, and the kube-prometheus-stack AppDeployment is updated to remove the .spec.configOverrides field.

A backup of kube-prometheus-stack-overrides is saved to a ConfigMap called kube-prometheus-stack-overrides-backup to ensure you can look up any previous values.

If you want to update, add, or remove service monitors from the .prometheus.additionalServiceMonitors section of the values, you must copy and paste the entire list to the overrides ConfigMap and edit it. This is because list values are not merged across multiple configuration files, but replaced. See Configure Alerts Using AlertManager for more details on how to add service monitors.

Temporary kubeconfig Applied with Self-Managed Flag Use

The dkp create cluster command was enhanced to use a temporary kubeconfig file when using the --self-managed flag.

Apple M1 Macbook Support

DKP now supports ARM64 machines! Previously, machines with an M1 CPU prevented KIND bootstraps. Now you use the DKP CLI on an Apple Macbook M1 machine in the same way that it's currently supported on Linux and Mac arm64 CPU architectures.

Istio Support

Istio is now a fully-supported platform application in DKP. For more information, see Deploy Istio Using DKP.

External Load Balancer Support

If you want to use a non-DKP load balancer for external traffic, you can now Install Kommander with an External Load Balancer.

Konvoy Image Builder (KIB) Release v2.2.6

feat: HCL instead of JSON packer templates
feat: allow submaps in images files
feat: Install specific cri-tools package on Debian derivatives
feat: build Rocky Linux 9.1 images and build vSphere template for Rocky Linux 9.1
feat: support building Ubuntu 20.04 with offline OS packages bundle and add images file for ubuntu 20.04
feat: update Containerd to 1.6.17
Install only the required Ansible collections to reduce size