Keptn 0.8 release candidate, blogs, and more - week March 1, 2021

[Juergen Etzlstorfer]

Dear Keptn community,

we are excited to announce the release candidate for Keptn 0.8! 

This new release brings so many new and exciting features, but we don't want to re-iterate the release notes here. Instead, let me tell you some of my personal highlights of this release!

• Custom task sequences: It is now possible to add custom tasks to a task sequence to address those use-cases that go beyond the opinionated approach of Keptn. And as you might already know: yes, each task sequence is now made explicit, so you always know in which order your tasks are processed by Keptn.
• Multiple execution services to execute the same task: It is now possible to have more than one Keptn execution service executing the same task in parallel. An example of this has already been demonstrated by having Jmeter tests and LitmusChaos tests running at the same time to test the resilience of your applications. Once both tests are finished Keptn's SLO-based evaluation can give you a resilience score. And there are so much more use-cases possible now! 
• Parallel execution of task sequences: Not only can multiple services execute upon a task, but this new flexibility is also available on the level of task sequences. For example, if you want to deploy your applications in multiple regions or multiple clusters at the same time, a parallel execution of a task sequence for deploying, testing, and evaluating is now possible. 
• Multi-cluster support: a feature we have been asked multiple times! It is now possible to have workloads orchestrated by Keptn running on different clusters. Different pre-prod and production clusters? No problem. Dedicated testing infrastructure that should be orchestrated by Keptn? Sure! Now possible thanks to the split between the control-plane and execution-plane of Keptn.
• New sequence screen in the Keptn Bridge: With so many new exciting features, there is also something new to see in the Keptn Bridge. A dedicated sequence screen gives you an overview of all processed task sequences, with filtering capabilities. 

For all changes that happened behind the scenes, please have a look at the release notes.

What is your favorite new feature? Please let us know - and if you tweet it, please don't forget to tag us @keptnProject! 

If you are a Keptn developer and you want to upgrade your Keptn service to the latest version, please have a look at this video where Christian walks you through the update procedure. The video is done in real-time and you can do your upgrade in less than 20 minutes! 

While Keptn 0.8rc1 brings a lot of new features and there will be more exciting things released in the future, we also looked back to the beginnings of our project: how it all started and what we have achieved so far. Jürgen Etzlstorfer summarized our journey in his latest blog article. 

Have a great week!