What’s New in Cloud Native: Helm v3 Migration, Contour v0.15, and Key K8s Updates

Helm v3 Migration

The Helm project officially recommends users migrate from v2 to v3, marking a strategic shift. The Helm blog provides step‑by‑step guidance, and a prior article explored rapid K8s app deployment with Helm and the urgency of moving to v3.

KubeCon 2020 Schedule

CNCF announced the 2020 KubeCon + CloudNativeCon dates:

Europe: March 30 – April 2 in Amsterdam

China: July 28 – 30 in Shanghai

North America: November 17 – 20 in Boston (later noted to be November 18 – 21 in San Diego)

Contour v0.15 Release

Contour, the Heptio open‑source Envoy‑based Ingress controller for Kubernetes, released version 0.15. This update adds leader election and configuration file support, improving the split‑deployment model to ensure reliable communication between Envoy and Contour.

Google Cloud Dataproc on Kubernetes

Google announced that its managed Spark and Hadoop service, Cloud Dataproc, can now run on Kubernetes, offering a self‑healing environment that automates infrastructure tasks such as cluster provisioning, Docker image handling, and network configuration.

Kubernetes Project KEP Updates

The following Kubernetes Enhancement Proposals (KEPs) were highlighted:

Kustomize FieldSpec skip : Allows users to skip rendering default values they don’t need.

Kustomize reorder plugin : Introduces a plugin for kustomize build that provides deterministic ordering for resources, supporting both kubectl apply and kubectl delete.

Retroactive Bound Service Account token : Addresses security concerns with JWTs, token exposure, lack of expiration, and scalability by improving token binding and secret management.

StorageVersion API for HA master : Ensures consistent storage versions across master nodes during rolling upgrades to avoid data corruption.

kubectl cp bug fix : Safely unpacks symlinks that could point outside the destination directory.

apiserver bug fix : Resolves a precondition check failure that could reject valid update requests.

Knative Updates

New designs include a Dead‑Letter Channel for handling failed events and the community’s plan to develop an Eventing operator, inviting contributors.

Open‑Source Project Recommendations

Maesh : A lightweight, non‑intrusive service mesh that uses node‑level agents instead of sidecars.

kube‑prompt : An interactive wrapper for kubectl that reduces repetitive command typing.

Kuma : Kong’s open‑source service mesh providing a universal data plane.

Reading Recommendations

“Serverless vs. Containers: The Future of Autoscaling” – explores how serverless complements containers in elastic workloads.

“Deep Dive: What Happens After `kubectl run`?” – explains the full lifecycle from client request to Kubelet.

“Kubernetes #Fails” – a survey of failure cases from 22 IT companies.

“Helm v3 Migration” – a detailed guide on why and how to transition to Helm v3.

“Extending Istio with EnvoyFilter” – shows how to customize Istio’s data plane.

“Building a Complete Microservice Platform with Spring Boot + Kubernetes” – outlines architecture and technology choices.