The Oracle Linux team is pleased to announce the general availability of Oracle Cloud Native Environment Release 1.7, the scalable and highly available Kubernetes distribution that you can use to deploy your containerized applications across public clouds and on-premises.

This release includes Kubernetes 1.26, support for the latest Oracle Linux 8 and Oracle Linux 9 releases, Rook Storage Orchestrator for Ceph, and KubeVirt integration. If you are running Kubernetes clusters across public clouds and on-premises, the enhanced cluster management features–including the ability to have a consistent view across all environments–can make it much easier for you to manage your workloads. 

Oracle Cloud Native Environment is an integrated suite of software components for the development and management of cloud native applications. Based on the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and Open Container Initiative standards, Oracle Cloud Native Environment delivers a simplified framework for the installation, update, upgrade, and configuration of key features for orchestrating microservices through Kubernetes.

New features and enhancements

Oracle Cloud Native Environment 1.7 includes

  • Oracle Linux 9 support
    • Oracle Linux 9 Update 2, the latest Oracle Linux release announced in May 2023, is now supported, in addition to Oracle Linux 8, as the operating system on which to deploy Oracle Cloud Native Environment. This option gives Oracle Linux customers and community adopters the opportunity to run the Kubernetes infrastructure on the latest Oracle Linux releases, including the option to run Kubernetes on the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 7 (UEK R7) and the Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK).
  • Container Storage Interface
    • Rook and Ceph: Rook orchestrates the Ceph storage solution, with a specialized Kubernetes Operator to automate management. Rook 1.11.6, part of Oracle Cloud Native Environment 1.7, helps ensure that Ceph will run well on Kubernetes and helps simplify the deployment and management experience. Rook turns distributed storage systems into self-managing, self-scaling, self-healing storage services. It automates the tasks of a storage administrator, including deployment, bootstrapping, configuration, provisioning, scaling, upgrading, migration, disaster recovery, monitoring, and resource management.
  • Virtual Machine workload management
    • Kubevirt: KubeVirt technology addresses the needs of development teams that have adopted or want to adopt Kubernetes but possess existing Virtual Machine-based workloads that cannot be easily containerized. More specifically, KubeVirt 0.58.0, part of Oracle Cloud Native Environment 1.7, provides a unified development platform where developers can build, modify, and deploy applications residing in both application containers and virtual machines in a common, shared environment. Oracle Cloud Native Environment is today mentioned as an official adopter of the KubeVirt technology.
       
  • Kubernetes release 1.26.6, part of Oracle Cloud Native Environment 1.7, achieved CNCF Kubernetes Conformance certification. The Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program test suite is a subset of e2e tests that SIG Architecture has approved to define the core set of interoperable features that all conformant Kubernetes clusters must support. The tests verify that the expected behavior works as a user might encounter it in the wild.      
  • Other updated components
    • CRI-O 1.26.3
    • Calico 25.1
    • Multus 0.1
    • Istio 17.2
    • MetalLB 13.9
    • Helm 3.11.3
  • For a full list of individual software component versions included with this release, please review the Oracle Cloud Native Environment Release Notes.

Arm platform support available as a technology preview

Oracle Cloud Native Environment 1.7 is now available for Arm as a technology preview, for testing and evaluation purposes. With this release, you can run Oracle Cloud Native Environment on Arm-based instances on the cloud as well as bare metal servers deployed on-premises or at the edge.

As the needs of applications and capabilities of hardware continue to grow, Arm-based systems are designed to deliver the performance-per-watt, flexibility, and scalability their customers demand. Along with Kubernetes, which has become a compelling technology for modern application development on-premises, cloud, and at the edge, the combination can really be the foundation of the modern application development pillar.

This technology preview allows our partners (ISV and IHV), as well as customers and community users, to test Oracle Cloud Native Environment’s upcoming support for Arm.

Note: The Oracle Cloud Native Environment 1.7 for Arm developer preview release should not be used in a production environment and is not supported.

Installation and upgrade

Oracle Cloud Native Environment is installed using packages from the Unbreakable Linux Network or the Oracle Linux yum server and container images from the Oracle Container Registry. Existing deployments can be upgraded in place using the `olcnectl module update` command.

You can install Oracle Cloud Native Environment by following the instructions in the getting started guide. You can also update Oracle Cloud Native Environment by following the updates and upgrades guide.

Support for Oracle Cloud Native Environment

Support for Oracle Cloud Native Environment is included with an Oracle Linux Premier Support subscription.

Oracle Linux Premier Support is included with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure subscriptions and Oracle Premier Support for Systems at no additional cost.

Try it out quickly and free of charge

Oracle Cloud Native Environment Luna Labs give you quick access to live environments to test the solution and check how it works. Here is a list of labs you can try on your own:

For more labs you can connect to https://luna.oracle.com and leverage its search engine to find what you’re looking for.

Additional resources