Most important features

Strict confinement goes into general availability

MicroK8s is delivered through Snaps and enjoys the benefits of updates and security features. Now we’re stepping even further in direction by implementing strict confinement as a new availability channel. We’re delighted to now offer our users a confined Kubernetes experience that has restricted host system access and a more restrictive security posture. Try it out with:

snap install microk8s --channel=1.25-strict/stable

Shrinking snap size

We’re constantly striving to improve our user experience and as part of this we want to give you MicroK8s in the fastest way possible. As part of this we’ve reduced our snap size by up to 25% to help you get your Kubernetes up and running faster than ever.

Addons go from strength to strength

With the introduction of core & community addon repositories, there are new observability, networking and security addons that are generally available in this release.

Image side-loading support

In order to facilitate offline deployments, faster start up times and local development; we have introduced image sideloading support into MicroK8s 1.25.

Power9 architecture support

You asked for it and we listened. For our community that uses Power9 based machines for acceleration, security and data-intensive workloads; MicroK8s can now be operated on these systems.

Updates since last release

Most important updates since the last release:

• Kubernetes core services

  • Kubernetes v1.25
  • Support for new architecture, Power9 (ppc64el)
  • Containerd upgraded to v1.6.6
  • Runc upgraded to v1.1.2
  • CoreDNS upgraded to v1.9.3
  • Dqlite upgraded to v1.11.1
  • CNI tools upgraded to v0.9.1
  • Helm v3.9.1 is now bundled as part of the snap
  • Flannel upgraded to v0.15.1
  • Calico updated to v3.23
  • Streamlined build process, resulting in a reduced size by about 60MB (230MB -> 170MB)

• Usability Improvements

  • New microk8s images import and microk8s images export-local commands, allowing side-loading of OCI images across the whole cluster.
  • Extend the microk8s CLI with binaries found under $SNAP_COMMON/plugins/
  • New microk8s version command
  • The ingress addon creates an ingress class with name “nginx”, thank you @Orzelius
  • Hostpath provisioner updated to v1.4.0, now allows for setting the reclaim policy, courtesy of @jkosik, as well as specifying StorageClasses to point to configurable host paths, thank you @balchua
  • Support using a custom storage class for the registry addon, thank you @sudeephb
  • The dashboard addon creates a token for accessing it (microk8s-dashboard-token)
  • Check the correct file for AppArmor confinement, thank you @MFAshby
  • Improved kubelet token search, thank you @ortegarenzy

• Addon updates

  • Prometheus addon is deprecated and replaced with observability addon
  • New addon: kube-ovn, try it with microk8s enable kube-ovn
  • New community addon: nfs, try it with microk8s enable nfs, thank you @jkosik
  • New community addon for open source mesh, try it with microk8s enable osm-edge, thank you @naqvis
  • Dashboard updated to v2.6.0, thank you @dud225
  • Updated tests for inaccel addon, thank you @eliaskoromilas
  • Portainer addon updated, thank you @balasu
  • NVIDIA GPU operator updated to v1.11.0
  • ArgoCD updated to v4.6.3, thank you @jkosik
  • Upgrade Multus CNI to 3.9.0 and support for arm64 architectures, thank you @dud225
  • Registry addon updated to 2.8.1, adding support for s390x and ppc64le architectures.
  • Updated Linkerd to v2.12.0, thank you @balchua
  • Updated Jaeger to v1.36, thank you @balchua
  • Updated Keda to v2.8.0, thank you @balchua
  • Updated MetalLB to v0.13.3, adding support for configuring address pools via CRD, thank you @balchua
  • Updated Knative to v1.6.0 available on arm64, s390x and ppc64el, thank you @csantanapr

Users following the latest stable MicroK8s track will be automatically upgraded to v1.25 in the next few days. Those who want to upgrade their existing clusters can follow the instructions in our docs. Remember, to call sudo microk8s addons repo update <repo_name> on the addon repositories you would like to fetch updates for.

For more information on MicroK8s consult the official docs, and to contribute to the project, check out the repo at https://github.com/ubuntu/microk8s, or chat with us on the Kubernetes Slack, in the #microk8s channel!