Kuma 2.7 release with GUI improvements, shadow policies and more...

We’re excited to announce the release of Kuma 2.7, as usual the release is packed with new features and improvements.

We’ve picked these highlights for you:

• GUI improvements for easier management of your service mesh
• GatewayAPI integration is now Generally Available and uses MeshHTTPRoute
• Shadow policies to help you migrate to the new policies
• Better MeshMetric OpenTelemetry support and profiles

You can always check our release notes for the full list of changes.

GUI improvements

List views now display names, namespaces, and zones for policies and dataplanes, providing a clear understanding of resource placement in multi-zone environments:

The GUI now offers a dedicated view of routes managed by your built-in gateway, providing a clear overview of your gateway configuration:

The dataplane view now displays policies applied to inbound and outbound traffic, simplifying proxy behavior comprehension:

GatewayAPI integration

Our Gateway API integration now uses MeshHTTPRoute, enabling us to retire MeshGatewayRoute which will be deprecated and removed in the future. We’ve also documented how to use the Gateway API with multi-zone.

Additionally, we’re thrilled to announce that our entire Gateway API integration, including GAMMA support, is now Generally Available and no longer considered experimental.

Shadow policies and migration of policies

Since Kuma 2.0 we’ve been rolling out targetRef policies. These policies are more powerful and easier to use than the previous version.

In 2.6.0 we made these the default for new users and in 2.7.0 we’re introducing shadow policies to help users migrate from the old policies to the new ones.

Shadow policies allow you to apply policies in a transparent way, meaning they are not enforced but you can see what would happen if they were. This is a great way to test your new policies before enforcing them and to add new policies without breaking your existing setup.

This makes it easier not only to migrate but also for users to figure what would happen if they applied a new policy. We have also written a guide to migrate to new policies which should greatly simplify migration.

MeshMetric OpenTelemetry support and profiles

In 2.6.0 we introduced MeshMetric, a powerful targetRef based policy to collect and publish metrics from your services and sidecars.

In this release we’ve improved it further with:

• OpenTelemetry data collection supporting multiple backends, more configuration and better reliability.
• Profiles to significantly reduce metric volume, lowering observability costs and making it easier to find what you are looking for.

To complement this, we’ve added a guide on metrics to help you get started with MeshMetric.

Upgrading

We strongly suggest upgrading to Kuma 2.7.1. Upgrading is easy through kumactl or Helm.

Be sure to carefully read the upgrade Guide and the version specific upgrade notes before upgrading Kuma.

Join the community!

Join us on our community channels, including official Slack chat, to learn more about Kuma. The community channels are useful for getting up and running with Kuma, as well as for learning how to contribute to and discuss the project roadmap. Kuma is a CNCF Sandbox project: neutral, open and inclusive.

The community call is hosted on the second Wednesday of every Month at 8:30am PDT. And don’t forget to follow Kuma on Twitter and star it on GitHub!