kaustubh yerkade

Posted on Sep 27

What's in new Kubernetes v1.34 Of Wind & Will

#kubernetes #devops #cloud #containers

Kubernetes v1.34 Of Wind & Will

When you sail the seas of distributed systems, sometimes incremental improvements are the difference between drifting and making headway.

Kubernetes v1.34, released in August 2025, is one of those releases: not dramatic, but deeply useful and built for day-to-day cluster operability, security, and observability.

What's new ?

58 enhancements → 23 stable, 22 beta, 13 alpha
No API removals → relatively safe upgrade
Themes → resource awareness, stronger security, more observability, scheduling refinements

Highlights You Should Try

1. Dynamic Resource Allocation (GA)

Specialized hardware (GPUs, FPGAs, NICs) now has first-class APIs like ResourceClaim and DeviceClass.

Better utilization, safer oversubscription, and predictable scheduling.

2. Pod-bound Tokens for Image Pulls

Kubelet can now pull images using short-lived, workload-scoped tokens instead of long-lived Secrets.

Result: reduced attack surface + stronger alignment with least privilege.

3. Per-Container Restart Rules (Alpha)

Pods no longer need a one-size-fits-all restart policy!

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: multi-container
spec:
  restartPolicy: Always
  containers:
  - name: main-app
    image: myapp:latest
  - name: helper
    image: helper:latest
  restartPolicyRules:
    - containerName: helper
      restartPolicy: Never
    - containerName: main-app
      restartPolicyRules:
        - exitCodes: [137]
          action: Never

This example shows:

helper container will never restart.
main-app container will restart normally, except when it exits with code 137 (OOMKilled), where restart is disabled.

4. KYAML Output Format

kubectl get pods -o kyaml

A Kubernetes-flavored YAML that avoids classic YAML pitfalls while remaining valid YAML.

5. Fine-grained Authorization

RBAC and webhooks can now use field selectors and label selectors for decisions.
Example: restrict Pod deletes only to resources with certain labels.

6. Volume Expansion Recovery

PVC resize failures are no longer terminal → cancel and retry with a smaller size.

7. Windows Kubelet Shutdown Handling

Windows nodes now gracefully handle shutdowns, honoring lifecycle hooks and grace periods.

Other Notable Improvements

Job .spec.podReplacementPolicy → stable
AuthenticationConfiguration API → stable
Per-node swap (LimitedSwap) → stable
.status.nominatedNodeName field → alpha (scheduler hints)
Relaxed DNS validation → stable
CEL-based mutating admission → alpha/beta

Upgrade Considerations

No removals → safe upgrade path
Alpha features → require feature gates
Ecosystem maturity → check CNI, service mesh, monitoring
Test stateful + GPU workloads carefully before production rollout

Kubernetes v1.34 isn’t about fireworks, it’s more about refinement.

More control (1. restart rules, 2. KYAML, 3. RBAC selectors)
More security (per-Pod tokens)
More resilience (1. volume expansion retries, 2. Windows parity)

If you’re on v1.33 or earlier, v1.34 is a worthy upgrade target.
It makes Kubernetes operations smoother, safer, and more predictable.

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