Release notes for CloudNativePG 1.24

History of user-visible changes in the 1.24 minor release of CloudNativePG.

For a complete list of changes, please refer to the commits on the release branch in GitHub.

Version 1.24.0

Release date: Aug 22, 2024

Important changes:

• Deprecate the role label in the selectors of Service and PodDisruptionBudget resources in favor of cnpg.io/instanceRole (#4897).
• Fix the default PodAntiAffinity configuration for PostgreSQL Pods, allowing a PostgreSQL and a Pooler Instance to coexist on the same node when the anti-affinity configuration is set to required (#5156).

Features:

• Distributed PostgreSQL Topologies: Enhance the replica cluster feature to create distributed database topologies for PostgreSQL that span multiple Kubernetes clusters, enabling hybrid and multi-cloud deployments. This feature supports:
  • Declarative Primary Control: Easily specify which PostgreSQL cluster acts as the primary in a distributed setup (#4388).
  • Seamless Switchover: Effortlessly demote the current primary and promote a selected replica cluster, typically in a different region, without needing to rebuild the former primary. This ensures high availability and resilience in diverse environments (#4411).
• Managed Services: Introduce managed services via the managed.services stanza (#4769 and #4952), allowing you to:
  • Disable the read-only and read services via configuration.
  • Leverage the service template capability to create custom service resources, including load balancers, to access PostgreSQL outside Kubernetes (particularly useful for DBaaS purposes).
• Enhanced API for Synchronous Replication: Introducing an improved API for explicit configuration of synchronous replication, supporting both quorum-based and priority list strategies. This update allows full customization of the synchronous_standby_names option, providing greater control and flexibility (#5148).
• WAL Disk Space Exhaustion: Safely stop the cluster when PostgreSQL runs out of disk space to store WAL files, making recovery easier by increasing the size of the related volume (#4404).

Enhancements:

• Add support for delayed replicas by introducing the .spec.replica.minApplyDelay option, leveraging PostgreSQL's recovery_min_apply_delay capability (#5181).
• Introduce postInitSQLRefs and postInitTemplateSQLRefs to allow users to define postInit and postInitTemplate instructions as one or more config maps or secrets (#5074).
• Add transparent support for PostgreSQL 17's allow_alter_system parameter, enabling or disabling the ALTER SYSTEM command through the .spec.postgresql.enableAlterSystem option (#4921).
• Allow overriding the query metric name and the names of the columns using a name key/value pair, which can replace the name automatically inherited from the parent key (#4779).
• Enhanced control over exported metrics by making them subject to the value returned by a custom query, which is run within the same transaction and defined in the predicate_query field (#4503).
• Allow additional arguments to be passed to barman-cloud-wal-archive and barman-cloud-wal-restore (#5099).
• Introduce the reconcilePodSpec annotation on the Cluster and Pooler resources to control the restart of pods following a change in the Pod specification (#5069).
• The readiness probe now fails for streaming replicas that were never connected to the primary instance, allowing incoherent replicas to be discovered promptly (#5206).
• Support the new metrics introduced in PgBouncer 1.23 in the Pooler metrics collector (#5044).
• cnpg plugin updates:
  • Enhance the install generate command by adding a --control-plane option, allowing deployment of the operator on control-plane nodes by setting node affinity and tolerations (#5271).
  • Enhance the destroy command to delete also any job related to the target instance (#5298).
  • Enhanced the status command to display demotionToken and promotionToken when available, providing more detailed operational insights with distributed topologies (#5149).
  • Added support for customizing the remote database name in the publication and subscription subcommands. This enhancement offers greater flexibility for synchronizing data from an external cluster with multiple databases (#5113).

Security:

• Add TLS communication between the operator and instance manager (#4442).
• Add optional TLS communication for the instance metrics exporter (#4927).

Fixes:

• Enhance the mechanism for detecting Pods that have been terminated but not deleted during an eviction process, and extend the cleanup process during maintenance windows to include unschedulable Pods when the reusePVC flag is set to false (#2056).
• Disable pg_rewind execution for newly created replicas that employ VolumeSnapshot during bootstrapping to avoid introducing a new shutdown checkpoint entry in the WAL files. This ensures that replicas can reconnect to the primary without issues, which would otherwise be hindered by the additional checkpoint entry (#5081).
• Gracefully handle failures during the initialization of a new instance. Any remaining data from the failed initialization is now either removed or, if it's a valid PostgreSQL data directory, moved to a backup location to avoid possible data loss (#5112).
• Enhance the robustness of the immediate backups reconciler by implementing retry logic upon initial backup failure (#4982).
• Wait for the postmaster to shut down before starting it again (#4938).
• Ensure that the Pooler service template can override the default service (#4846).
• Exclude immutable databases from pg_database metric monitoring and alerting processes (#4980).
• Removed unnecessary permissions from the operator service account (#4911).
• Fix cluster role permissions for ClusterImageCatalogs (#5034).
• Ensure the operator initiates a rollout of the Pooler instance when the operator image is upgraded (#5006)
• Address race condition causing the readiness probe to incorrectly show "not ready" after a PostgreSQL restart, even when the postmaster was accessible (#4920).
• Prevent reconciliation of resources that aren't owned by a Pooler (#4967).
• Renew the certificates managed by the operator when the DNS Subject Alternative Names (SANs) are updated (#3269, #3319).
• Set PVC default AccessModes in the template only when unspecified (#4845).
• Gracefully handle unsatisfiable backup schedule (#5109).
• Synchronous replication self-healing checks now exclude terminated pods, focusing only on active and functional pods (#5210).
• The instance manager will now terminate all existing operator-related replication connections following a role change in a replica cluster (#5209).
• Allow setting smartShutdownTimeout to zero, enabling immediate fast shutdown and bypassing the smart shutdown process when required (#5347).
• cnpg plugin:
  • Properly handle errors during the status command execution.
  • Support TLS in the status command (#4915).

Supported versions

• Kubernetes 1.31, 1.30, 1.29, and 1.28
• PostgreSQL 16, 15, 14, 13, and 12
  • PostgreSQL 16.4 is the default image
  • PostgreSQL 12 support ends on November 12, 2024