[ANNOUNCE] Kubernetes v1.18.5, v1.17.8, v1.16.12 pre-announcement (hyperkube kube-proxy fixes)

[Stephen Augustus]

Kubernetes Community,

We're planning to release out-of-band patch releases (v1.18.5, v1.17.8, v1.16.12) later today to resolve multiple reports of hyperkube kube-proxy failures:

• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/92250
• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/92272
• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/issues/92275

Fixes were made across the following PRs:

• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92354
• https://github.com/kubernetes/k8s.io/pull/978
• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92493
• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92494
• https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/92495

If you're having issues with hyperkube in v1.18.4, v1.17.7, v1.16.11, hang tight; you should have a fix soon.

As a general note, hyperkube is deprecated and will NOT be present in the v1.19.0 release or any releases > v1.19.0.

Please, if you're using hyperkube for older releases (v1.18.z --> v1.16.z), make plans to migrate away from it as a deployment strategy.
We have extremely limited capabilities to test hyperkube and support for it should be considered to be "best-effort".

Thank you immensely to Release Managers (Dan and Carlos) for turning around RCs to test these fixes with reporters AND staging today's releases in a single day.

Special shout-out to Sertaç Özercan at Microsoft for testing the RCs internally!

-- Stephen