Cloud Native Weekly:Seamless KubeSphere Upgrade Guide & Noteworthy OSS Tools
🔧Open Source project recommendations
Kagent
Kagent is an open-source Kubernetes-native framework designed to help DevOps and platform engineers build and operate agentic AI in Kubernetes environments. Unlike traditional generative AI tools, Kagent focuses on autonomous reasoning and automating multi-step tasks. It is ideal for complex operations such as configuration management, troubleshooting, performance analysis, alert management, and traffic configuration.
Built on Microsoft’s AutoGen framework, Kagent supports the Model Context Protocol (MCP), enabling seamless integration with various cloud-native tools. The project is under active development and is planned to be contributed as a CNCF sandbox project to foster community collaboration and ecosystem growth.
Reloader
Reloader is a Kubernetes controller developed by Stakater, designed to automatically detect changes in ConfigMaps and Secrets and trigger rolling updates of related workloads (like Deployments, StatefulSets, and DaemonSets). In Kubernetes, simply updating a ConfigMap or Secret does not automatically restart Pods, which can result in outdated configurations. Reloader listens for these changes and ensures applications always run with the latest configurations.
DevSpace
DevSpace is an open-source Kubernetes development tool aimed at simplifying cloud-native application development, deployment, and debugging. As a client-side tool, it requires no installation of components within the cluster, instead interacting directly via kubectl, helm, and other native tools.
Gardener
Gardener is an open-source Kubernetes cluster management platform that offers Kubernetes-as-a-Service across multi-cloud environments. Its core philosophy is to manage Kubernetes clusters using Kubernetes itself, enabling efficient, scalable, and consistent cluster operations.
📘Technical recommendations
Complete Guide to Upgrading from KubeSphere v3.4.x to v4.x
This article provides a comprehensive guide to upgrading KubeSphere from v3.4.x to v4.x smoothly. The process is divided into three main stages: upgrading the host cluster, upgrading the member clusters, and upgrading the gateway. The upgrade begins with downloading and configuring the upgrade script and files, running a cluster status check, then performing upgrades in sequence. Notably, the gateway upgrade can cause service disruptions, so it’s recommended to execute it during off-peak hours. After the upgrade, it’s crucial to validate service functionality and cluster health, ensuring all Pods are in the Running state.
Revolutionizing K8s Configuration Management: From String Interpolation to the Koreo Way
This piece critiques the conventional approach of treating YAML configuration files as mere string templates, which is common with tools like Helm and Kustomize. While sufficient for simple scenarios, this method becomes cumbersome for complex conditions. Koreo offers a new paradigm, replacing string operations with an overlay-based method. Koreo uses an expression language, similar to programming, for atomic updates, making configurations more maintainable, reusable, and testable — treating them as code rather than static text.
Deep Dive: Understanding Kubernetes DNS Configuration and Resolution
This article explores the mechanics of DNS configuration in Kubernetes, especially the interplay between hostNetwork, dnsPolicy, and dnsConfig. When a Pod uses hostNetwork: true or dnsPolicy: Default, it inherits the host’s DNS settings. If the host’s /etc/resolv.conf contains more than three DNS servers, Kubelet emits a warning and ignores the excess, which can lead to inconsistent DNS resolution, particularly in dual-stack (IPv4/IPv6) setups.
To address this, it’s recommended to limit the number of DNS servers on the host or use the — resolv-conf flag in Kubelet to specify a custom configuration. Understanding Linux DNS config hierarchy (/etc/nsswitch.conf, /etc/resolv.conf, systemd-resolved) is also key to troubleshooting DNS issues.
🌐What’s new in cloud native
Keycloak 26.2.0 Released
Keycloak 26.2.0 introduces several significant features and enhancements. These include the official release of token exchange functionality, allowing internal tokens to be converted into standard-compliant tokens. It also debuts Fine-Grained Admin Permissions V2, enabling resource-based permission definitions for streamlined management.
New Grafana dashboards enhance observability and troubleshooting capabilities. Security improvements include default TLS encryption, X.509 CRL caching optimizations, and enhanced token header support. The Keycloak Operator can now create NetworkPolicies to restrict internal traffic. Other updates include support for event filtering by Unix timestamp, SMTP XOAUTH2 authentication, and dynamic authentication flows based on client policies.
Valkey 8.1: Enhanced Performance and Reliability
Valkey is an open-source high-performance database caching system, tailored for large-scale distributed data scenarios. It supports multiple storage engines and is optimized for reliable, low-latency data access under high concurrency. Valkey 8.1.0 — the first stable release in the 8.x series — introduces improvements in performance, reliability, observability, and usability. It maintains full compatibility with previous Valkey versions and Redis OSS 7.2.4.
About KubeSphere
KubeSphere is an open source container platform built on top Kubernetes with applications at its core. It provides full-stack IT automated operation and streamlined DevOps workflows.
KubeSphere has been adopted by thousands of enterprises across the globe, such as Aqara, Sina, Benlai, China Taiping, Huaxia Bank, Sinopharm, WeBank, Geko Cloud, VNG Corporation and Radore. KubeSphere offers wizard interfaces and various enterprise-grade features for operation and maintenance, including Kubernetes resource management, DevOps (CI/CD), application lifecycle management, service mesh, multi-tenant management, monitoring, logging, alerting, notification, storage and network management, and GPU support. With KubeSphere, enterprises are able to quickly establish a strong and feature-rich container platform.
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