We’re pleased to announce the release of Kubernetes 1.22, the second release of 2021!

This release consists of 53 enhancements: 13 enhancements have graduated to stable, 24 enhancements are moving to beta, and 16 enhancements are entering alpha. Also, three features have been deprecated.

In April of this year, the Kubernetes release cadence was officially changed from four to three releases yearly. This is the first longer-cycle release related to that change. As the Kubernetes project matures, the number of enhancements per cycle grows. This means more work, from version to version, for the contributor community and Release Engineering team, and it can put pressure on the end-user community to stay up-to-date with releases containing increasingly more features.

Changing the release cadence from four to three releases yearly balances many aspects of the project, both in how contributions and releases are managed, and also in the community's ability to plan for upgrades and stay up to date.

Major Themes

Server-side Apply graduates to GA

Quality of Service for memory resources

Originally, Kubernetes used the v1 cgroups API. With that design, the QoS class for a Pod only applied to CPU resources (such as cpu_shares). As an alpha feature, Kubernetes v1.22 can now use the cgroups v2 API to control memory allocation and isolation. This feature is designed to improve workload and node availability when there is contention for memory resources, and to improve the predictability of container lifecycle.

Node system swap support

Every system administrator or Kubernetes user has been in the same boat regarding setting up and using Kubernetes: disable swap space. With the release of Kubernetes 1.22, alpha support is available to run nodes with swap memory. This change lets administrators opt in to configuring swap on Linux nodes, treating a portion of block storage as additional virtual memory.

Windows enhancements and capabilities

More secure control plane with kubeadm

A new alpha feature allows running the kubeadm control plane components as non-root users. This is a long requested security measure in kubeadm. To try it you must enable the kubeadm specific RootlessControlPlane feature gate. When you deploy a cluster using this alpha feature, your control plane runs with lower privileges.

API changes and improvements for ephemeral containers

Graduated to Stable

Notable Feature Updates

Release notes

Availability of release

This release was made possible by a very dedicated group of individuals, who came together as a team to deliver technical content, documentation, code, and a host of other components that go into every Kubernetes release.

A huge thank you to the release lead Savitha Raghunathan for leading us through a successful release cycle, and to everyone else on the release team for supporting each other, and working so hard to deliver the 1.22 release for the community.

Amidst the ongoing pandemic, natural disasters, and ever-present shadow of burnout, the 1.22 release of Kubernetes includes 53 enhancements. This makes it the largest release to date. This accomplishment was only made possible due to the hard-working and passionate Release Team members and the amazing contributors of the Kubernetes ecosystem. The release logo is our reminder to keep reaching for new milestones and setting new records. And it is dedicated to all the Release Team members, hikers, and stargazers!

Project Velocity

Event Updates

Upcoming release webinar

If you’re interested in contributing to the Kubernetes community, Special Interest Groups (SIGs) are a great starting point. Many of them may align with your interests! If there are things you’d like to share with the community, you can join the weekly community meeting, or use any of the following channels: