Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK) 1.1.0 has been released, enhancing the management of Elasticsearch clusters within Kubernetes environments by introducing improved cross-cluster support and declarative users and roles. This update simplifies setting up cross-cluster search and replication, allowing for efficient data distribution across global environments, and facilitates the management of users and roles through Kubernetes Secrets, supporting GitOps-style deployments. The release also includes quality-of-life improvements such as resource validation at admission time, automatic Kibana encryption key specification, and role-based access control for more secure associations, thereby streamlining operations and bolstering security for users managing Elasticsearch deployments across various Kubernetes clusters.