Release notes for CloudNativePG 1.28

History of user-visible changes in the 1.28 minor release of CloudNativePG.

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

Version 1.28.0

Release date: Dec 9, 2025

Features

  • Quorum-Based Failover Promoted to Stable: Promoted the quorum-based failover feature, introduced experimentally in 1.27.0, to a stable API. This data-driven failover mechanism is now configured via the spec.postgresql.synchronous.failoverQuorum field, graduating from the previous alpha.cnpg.io/failoverQuorum annotation. (#8589)

  • Declarative Foreign Data Management: Introduced comprehensive declarative management for Foreign Data Wrappers (FDW) by extending the Database CRD. This feature adds the .spec.fdws and .spec.servers fields, allowing you to manage FDW extensions and their corresponding foreign servers directly from the Database resource. This work was implemented by Ying Zhu (@EdwinaZhu) as part of the LFX Mentorship Program 2025 Term 2. (#7942, #8401)

Changes

  • Updated the default PostgreSQL version to 18.1-system-trixie. (#9178)

  • Updated the default PgBouncer version to 1.25.1 for new Pooler deployments. (#9367)

Enhancements

  • Enabled simultaneous image and configuration changes when using primaryUpdateMethod: restart, allowing you to update the container image (including PostgreSQL version or extensions) and PostgreSQL configuration settings in the same operation. Note that when using primaryUpdateMethod: switchover, image and configuration changes must still be performed separately to avoid configuration mismatches during the switchover process. (#8241)

  • Improved network failure detection for replica instances by setting the default tcp_user_timeout to 5 seconds. This change helps replicas detect and recover from silent network drops more quickly. Previously, replicas could wait up to 127 seconds before detecting such failures; with the new timeout, they reconnect to the primary within 5 seconds. To preserve the previous behavior, set STANDBY_TCP_USER_TIMEOUT to 0 in the operator configuration. (#9317)

  • Adopted standard Kubernetes recommended labels (e.g., app.kubernetes.io/name) for all resources generated by CloudNativePG (Clusters, Backups, Poolers, etc.). Contributed by @JefeDavis. (#8087)

  • Introduced securityContext at the pod level and containerSecurityContext for individual containers (including postgres, init, and sidecars). This provides granular control over security settings, replacing the previous cluster-wide postgres and operator user settings. Contributed by @x0ddf. (#6614)

  • Introduced the alpha.cnpg.io/unrecoverable=true annotation for replica pods. When applied, this annotation instructs the operator to permanently delete the instance by removing its Pod and PVCs, after which it will recreate the replica from the primary. (#8178)

  • Introduced a new caching layer for user-defined monitoring queries to reduce load on the PostgreSQL database. (#8003)

  • Enhanced PgBouncer integration by automatically setting auth_dbname to the pgbouncer database, simplifying auth setup. (#8671)

  • Allowed providing stage-specific pg_restore options (preRestore, postRestore, dataRestore) during database import. Contributed by @hanshal101. (#7690)

  • Added the PostgreSQL majorVersion to the Backup object's status for easier identification and management. (#8464)

  • Enhanced cluster restore to wait for all init containers to complete before starting the restore process. This ensures that backup tools running in init containers finish preparing the data before the restore begins. The implementation correctly handles Kubernetes init container sidecars by ignoring those with RestartPolicy=Always. (#9026)

  • Added the PGBOUNCER_IMAGE_NAME operator configuration parameter to allow overriding the default PgBouncer image. This is useful for air-gapped environments or when using internal registries. (#9232)

  • cnpg plugin:

    • Added a --timeout flag to the kubectl cnpg status command for configuring the timeout for filesystem operations such as calculating cluster size. The default remains 10 seconds but can be adjusted for large clusters where operations may take longer. (#9201)

    • Improved cnpg report to generate more shell-friendly file names. (#8984)

Security

  • Allowed providing fine-grained custom TLS configurations for PgBouncer. The Pooler CRD was extended with clientTLSSecret, clientCASecret, serverTLSSecret, and serverCASecret fields under .spec.pgbouncer. These fields enable users to supply their own certificates for both client-to-pooler and pooler-to-server connections, taking precedence over the operator-generated certificates. (#8692)

  • Added optional TLS support for the operator's metrics server (port 8080). This feature is opt-in and enabled by setting the METRICS_CERT_DIR environment variable, which instructs the operator to look for tls.crt and tls.key files in the specified directory. When unset, the server continues to use HTTP for backward compatibility. (#8997)

  • Enabled cnpg report operator to work with minimal permissions by making only the operator deployment required. All other resources (pods, secrets, config maps, events, webhooks, and OLM data) are now optional and collected on a best-efforts basis. The command gracefully handles permission errors for those resources by logging clear warnings and continuing report generation with available data, rather than failing completely. This enables least-privileged access, where users may have limited, namespace-scoped permissions. (#8982)

Fixes

  • Improved resilience of all probe types (liveness, readiness, and startup) to transient Kubernetes API server connectivity issues. Probes now use a caching mechanism that falls back to cached cluster definitions during brief network interruptions, preventing unnecessary pod restarts and probe failures. (#9148)

  • Fixed the CheckEmptyWalArchive safeguard to run correctly when restoring from a volume snapshot using CNPG-I backup/WAL plugins (e.g., plugin-barman-cloud). Previously, this check was skipped for plugin-based implementations. (#9306)

  • Improved error reporting when ImageCatalog retrieval fails. The operator now emits a Warning event and logs errors for all failure types, not just NotFound errors, improving visibility into configuration issues. (#9266)

  • Fixed TLS certificate verification issues when connecting to CNPG-I plugins by adding the cnpg.io/pluginServerName annotation. This allows customizing the DNS name used for certificate verification in environments where the plugin's certificate uses a different DNS name than the Service name. (#9222)

  • Fixed an issue where the instance manager controller could fail to restart after an error, reporting a "controller already exists" message. The controller now uses SkipNameValidation for subsequent initialization attempts. Contributed by @mateusoliveira43. (#9123)

  • Fixed incorrect WAL restore path handling in plugins when the destination path is absolute, preventing path duplication issues. Contributed by @Endevir. (#9093)

  • Fixed the CREATE PUBLICATION SQL generation for multi-table publications to be backward-compatible with PostgreSQL 13+. The previously generated syntax was only valid for PostgreSQL 15+ and caused syntax errors on older versions. (#8888)

  • Fixed backup failures in complex pod definitions by reliably selecting the postgres container by name instead of by index. Contributed by @Joda89. (#8964)

  • cnpg plugin:

    • Fixed bugs in cnpg report log collection, especially when fetching previous logs. The collector now correctly fetches previous and current logs in separate requests and gracefully handles missing previous logs (e.g., on containers with no restart history), ensuring current logs are always collected. (#8992)

Supported versions

  • Kubernetes 1.34, 1.33, and 1.32
  • PostgreSQL 18, 17, 16, 15, and 14
    • PostgreSQL 18.1 is the default image