Harbor 2.9: Enterprise Container Registry Security Enhancements

Introduction

Harbor 2.9, released on October 5, 2023, is most relevant if you’re hardening clusters without turning every deploy into a support ticket. The real value is in rollout safety: tighter controls with fewer false positives, clearer policy outcomes, and smoother day-2 response when something is blocked.

Security Enhancements

• Vulnerability scanning improvements provide better detection and reporting of security vulnerabilities.
• Image signing enhancements enable better verification and trust of container images.
• RBAC refinements provide granular permissions for registry operations and resources.
• Audit logging tracks all registry operations for compliance and security auditing.

OCI Artifact Support

1. OCI artifacts improvements expand support for Helm charts, OPA policies, and other OCI-compatible artifacts.
2. Artifact management enables better organization and versioning of various artifact types.
3. Compatibility enhancements ensure seamless integration with OCI-compatible tools.
4. Storage optimizations provide efficient storage for diverse artifact types.

Kubernetes Integration

• Image pull secrets integration simplifies Kubernetes image access configuration.
• Webhook enhancements enable better integration with Kubernetes admission controllers.
• Operator improvements simplify Harbor installation and management.
• Helm chart enhancements provide better configuration and deployment options.

Performance & Scalability

• Storage optimizations reduce storage footprint and improve access performance.
• Replication improvements provide faster image replication across registries.
• Caching enhancements reduce load and improve response times.
• Resource management optimizations reduce resource usage.

Getting Started

helm repo add harbor https://helm.goharbor.io
helm install harbor harbor/harbor --version 2.9.0

Configure Kubernetes to use Harbor:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Secret
metadata:
  name: harbor-registry-secret
type: kubernetes.io/dockerconfigjson
data:
  .dockerconfigjson: <base64-encoded-config>

Summary

Harbor 2.9 provides teams with secure, feature-rich container registry capabilities for enterprise container image management.