diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 9b296894e..d490e8d8f 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -1,3 +1,57 @@
+## 0.17.0 / 2016-01-27
+
+This version no longer works with Alertmanager 0.4.0 and earlier!
+The alerting rule syntax has changed as well but the old syntax is supported
+up until version 0.18.
+
+* [CHANGE] Integrate with Alertmanager 0.1.0 and higher
+* [CHANGE] Degraded storage mode renamed to rushed mode
+* [CHANGE] New alerting rule syntax
+* [CHANGE] Add label validation on ingestion
+* [CHANGE] Regular expression matchers in PromQL are anchored
+* [FEATURE] Send alert resolved notifications to Alertmanager
+* [FEATURE] Allow millisecond precision in configuration file
+* [FEATURE] Support AirBnB's Smartstack Nerve for service discovery
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Storage switches less often between regular and rushed mode.
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Storage switches into rushed mode if there are too many memory chunks.
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Added more storage instrumentation
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Improved instrumentation of notification handler
+* [BUGFIX] Do not count head chunks as chunks waiting for persistence
+* [BUGFIX] Handle OPTIONS HTTP requests to the API correctly
+* [BUGFIX] Parsing of ranges in PromQL fixed
+* [BUGFIX] Correctly validate URL flag parameters
+
+## 0.16.2 / 2016-01-18
+
+* [FEATURE] Multiple authentication options for EC2 discovery added
+* [FEATURE] Several meta labels for EC2 discovery added
+* [FEATURE] Allow full URLs in static target groups (used e.g. by the `blackbox_exporter`)
+* [FEATURE] Add Graphite remote-storage integration
+* [FEATURE] Create separate Kubernetes targets for services and their endpoints
+* [FEATURE] Add `clamp_{min,max}` functions to PromQL
+* [FEATURE] Omitted time parameter in API query defaults to now
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Less frequent time series file truncation
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Instrument number of  manually deleted time series
+* [ENHANCEMENT] Ignore lost+found directory during storage version detection
+* [CHANGE] Kubernetes `masters` renamed to `api_servers`
+* [CHANGE] "Healthy" and "unhealthy" targets are now called "up" and "down" in the web UI
+* [CHANGE] Remove undocumented 2nd argument of the `delta` function.
+  (This is a BREAKING CHANGE for users of the undocumented 2nd argument.)
+* [BUGFIX] Return proper HTTP status codes on API errors
+* [BUGFIX] Fix Kubernetes authentication configuration
+* [BUGFIX] Fix stripped OFFSET from in rule evaluation and display
+* [BUGFIX] Do not crash on failing Consul SD initialization
+* [BUGFIX] Revert changes to metric auto-completion
+* [BUGFIX] Add config overflow validation for TLS configuration
+* [BUGFIX] Skip already watched Zookeeper nodes in serverset SD
+* [BUGFIX] Don't federate stale samples
+* [BUGFIX] Move NaN to end of result for `topk/bottomk/sort/sort_desc/min/max`
+* [BUGFIX] Limit extrapolation of `delta/rate/increase`
+* [BUGFIX] Fix unhandled error in rule evaluation
+
+Some changes to the Kubernetes service discovery were integration since
+it was released as a beta feature.
+
 ## 0.16.1 / 2015-10-16
 
 * [FEATURE] Add `irate()` function.
diff --git a/Makefile b/Makefile
index f76a5480e..d91dc8070 100644
--- a/Makefile
+++ b/Makefile
@@ -41,6 +41,10 @@ build:
 	@echo ">> building binaries"
 	@./scripts/build.sh
 
+tarballs:
+	@echo ">> building release tarballs"
+	@./scripts/release_tarballs.sh
+
 docker:
 	@docker build -t prometheus:$(shell git rev-parse --short HEAD) .
 
@@ -50,4 +54,5 @@ assets:
 	@go-bindata $(bindata_flags) -pkg ui -o web/ui/bindata.go -ignore '(.*\.map|bootstrap\.js|bootstrap-theme\.css|bootstrap\.css)'  web/ui/templates/... web/ui/static/...
 
 
-.PHONY: all style format build test vet docker assets
+.PHONY: all style format build test vet docker assets tarballs
+
diff --git a/scripts/release_tarballs.sh b/scripts/release_tarballs.sh
new file mode 100755
index 000000000..b4b6b68e2
--- /dev/null
+++ b/scripts/release_tarballs.sh
@@ -0,0 +1,42 @@
+#!/usr/bin/env bash
+
+# Copyright 2015 The Prometheus Authors
+# Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License");
+# you may not use this file except in compliance with the License.
+# You may obtain a copy of the License at
+#
+# http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0
+#
+# Unless required by applicable law or agreed to in writing, software
+# distributed under the License is distributed on an "AS IS" BASIS,
+# WITHOUT WARRANTIES OR CONDITIONS OF ANY KIND, either express or implied.
+# See the License for the specific language governing permissions and
+# limitations under the License.
+
+set -e
+
+version=$(cat version/VERSION)
+
+for GOOS in "darwin" "freebsd" "linux" "windows"; do
+  for GOARCH in "amd64" "386"; do
+    export GOARCH
+    export GOOS
+    make build
+
+    tarball_dir="prometheus-${version}.${GOOS}-${GOARCH}"
+    tarball="${tarball_dir}.tar.gz"
+
+    if [ "$(go env GOOS)" = "windows" ]; then
+      ext=".exe"
+    fi
+
+    echo " >   $tarball"
+    mkdir -p "${tarball_dir}"
+    cp -a "prometheus${ext}" "promtool${ext}" consoles console_libraries "${tarball_dir}"
+    tar -czf "${tarball}" "${tarball_dir}"
+    rm -rf "${tarball_dir}"
+    rm "prometheus${ext}" "promtool${ext}"
+  done
+done
+
+exit 0
diff --git a/storage/local/storage.go b/storage/local/storage.go
index f828c01fd..39df437af 100644
--- a/storage/local/storage.go
+++ b/storage/local/storage.go
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@ import (
 	"container/list"
 	"fmt"
 	"math"
+	"sync"
 	"sync/atomic"
 	"time"
 
@@ -124,6 +125,7 @@ type memorySeriesStorage struct {
 	numChunksToPersist int64         // The number of chunks waiting for persistence.
 	maxChunksToPersist int           // If numChunksToPersist reaches this threshold, ingestion will be throttled.
 	rushed             bool          // Whether the storage is in rushed mode.
+	rushedMtx          sync.Mutex    // Protects entering and exiting rushed mode.
 	throttled          chan struct{} // This chan is sent to whenever NeedsThrottling() returns true (for logging).
 
 	fpLocker   *fingerprintLocker
@@ -1253,6 +1255,9 @@ func (s *memorySeriesStorage) incNumChunksToPersist(by int) {
 // files should not by synced anymore provided the user has specified the
 // adaptive sync strategy.
 func (s *memorySeriesStorage) calculatePersistenceUrgencyScore() float64 {
+	s.rushedMtx.Lock()
+	defer s.rushedMtx.Unlock()
+
 	var (
 		chunksToPersist    = float64(s.getNumChunksToPersist())
 		maxChunksToPersist = float64(s.maxChunksToPersist)
diff --git a/version/VERSION b/version/VERSION
index 2a0970ca7..4de33f780 100644
--- a/version/VERSION
+++ b/version/VERSION
@@ -1 +1 @@
-0.16.1
+0.17.0rc2