### Windows

We are advancing support for Windows Server and Windows Server Containers to beta along with continued feature and functional advancements on both the Kubernetes and Windows platforms. This opens the door for many Windows-specific applications and workloads to run on Kubernetes, significantly expanding the implementation scenarios and the enterprise reach of Kubernetes.

## Before Upgrading

#### Multi-platform

* [alpha] The Conformance e2e test suite now passes on the arm, arm64, and ppc64le platforms. ([#288](https://github.com/kubernetes/enhancements/issues/288), [@luxas](https://github.com/luxas), [@mkumatag](https://github.com/mkumatag), [@ixdy](https://github.com/ixdy))

- Kubeadm: fix a bug in the host memory detection code on 32bit Linux platforms ([#97403](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/97403), [@abelbarrera15](https://github.com/abelbarrera15)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

- Kubeadm: fix a bug where file copy(backup) could not be executed correctly on Windows platform during upgrade ([#117861](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117861), [@SataQiu](https://github.com/SataQiu)) [SIG Cluster Lifecycle]

    * While this is a backwards-incompatible change, it would have been impossible to setup reliable monitoring around these metrics since the labels were not stable. 
* Fix keymutex issues which may crash in some platforms. ([#74386](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74386), [@danielqsj](https://github.com/danielqsj))



# v1.12.6

[Documentation](https://docs.k8s.io)

## Downloads for v1.12.6

* fix issue: fail to detach azure disk when there is server side error ([#74398](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74398), [@andyzhangx](https://github.com/andyzhangx))
* Fix keymutex issues which may crash in some platforms. ([#74386](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/74386), [@danielqsj](https://github.com/danielqsj))

As far as platforms, working with SIG-Windows, enhancements were made to the kubelet to improve platform support on Windows operating systems, and improvements to resource management were also made.  In particular, support for sysctls on Linux graduated to beta.

### SIG OpenStack

- `kubeadm`: fixed a bug where file copy(backup) could not be executed correctly
  on Windows platform during upgrade. ([#117861](https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/pull/117861), [@SataQiu](https://github.com/SataQiu))
- `kubeadm`: speedup init by 0s or 20s. kubelet-start phase is now after etcd

  amd64 binary instead of the go-runner that matches that architecture.
  
  This commit explicitly sets the '--platform=linux/${arch}' to ensure
  we're pulling the correct go-runner arch from the manifest list.
  
  Before:
  `FROM ${base_image}`
  
  After:

To grow the developer community, SIG Windows  released multiple [tools](https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/sig-windows-dev-tools/). The new tools support multiple CNI providers (Antrea, Calico), can run on multiple platforms (any vagrant compatible provider, such as Hyper-V, VirtualBox, or vSphere).