Recent Updates

• 2024.04.23.7

  UDP Support, Functions in Pipelines, and Latency Aware Load Balancing!

  The latest release of the Cycle Platform brings powerful support for native gaming and video streaming via UDP, more granular configuration for function containers, and massive performance gains when using Cycle's native load balancer.

  • added

    Ability to Trigger Function via Pipeline

    Functions can now be triggered via pipeline. Have a migration/init script that needs to run as part of a deployment? This can now easily be accomplished with functions and pipelines.

  • added

    UDP Support

    The Native Load Balancer now supports UDP connections which can be useful for VPNs, video streaming, gaming, etc.

  • added

    Function Configuration

    Max Runtime, Max Queue time, and other settings can now be configured for functions within the container config.

  • added

    Latency Aware Load Balancing

    The Native Load Balancer now supports, on a per-router basis, latency-based load balancing ensuring that traffic will be routed to the top quartile of instances relative to the ingress load balancer. This can reduce bandwidth costs while also yielding performance increases within environments that have multiple load balancers.

  • added

    Support for Multiple Stack Files

    Users can now specify the path to a stack file inside of a repo, enabling teams to have multiple stacks from one repo source.

  • improvement

    Auto Release Functions (Beta)

    Functions that terminate will now autorelease from the scheduler so they can be used again.

  • improvement

    Native Load Balancer V1 Optimization

    We've made a few improvements within the Native LB to more quickly adapt to routing changes. Additionally, the Native LB now uses less internal API calls when aligning with container state changes.

  • fixed

    Portal: Fixed Load Balancer Traffic Graphs

    We fixed a calculation error in our traffic graphs that was showing false traffic spikes.

  • improvement

    Portal: Pipeline Support for Scoped Variables in Stacks

    Scoped variables, that exist within stacks, can now be configured via pipelines.

• 2024.04.11.3

  Functions Released in Beta

  We're excited to introduce a beta release of Cycle Functions, bringing functionality to the platform that facilitates running lambda, batch, and serverless like workloads. We've also made improvements and fixes across the board: the Scheduler API Endpoint is now publicly accessible for applications needing external API interaction, we've refined our telemetry caching for LBv1 to prevent potential downtime in rapidly changing environments, and you can now configure load balancers to bind to a server's host IP for more efficient edge/CDN deployments.

  • added

    Functions

    Organizations can now run their functions (lambdas / batch jobs / serverless-like microservices) natively on-top of your Cycle infrastructure. This feature release is currently a beta release.

  • improvement

    Scheduler API Endpoint

    The scheduler can now be publicly accessible if your application needs to utilize the scheduler API from an external endpoint.

  • fixed

    Telemetry Caching

    In the last update, we introduced a caching layer for LBv1 telemetry information to persist telemetry across LB restarts. Unfortunately, this caching could get out-of-hand for environments that were changing often. This could lead to the load balancer not synchronizing new changes yielding potential downtime for an environment. We've refactored this to be a bit more intelligent about when we should cache telemetry data.

  • added

    Host Node LB

    You can now instruct a load balancer to bind to the server's host IP instead of acquiring new IPs. This is helpful in building edge/CDN like deployments where an environment may have dozens, or hundreds, of entrypoints.

  • fixed

    Stack Builds with Branch Overrides

    Previously, a stack build would occasionally fail to clone via git if you used a custom git branch. This has been fixed.

• 2024.03.27.1

  Advanced Role Based Access Controls

  We're happy to release this update which includes a new and completely reworked role based access controls (RBAC) system. Now users can create custom roles, change the capabilities of default roles, and use existing roles as templates. Along with this major rework we've also released a new integration with Depot.dev, allowing users to choose to use Depot's factory to build their images.

  • added

    Custom Roles

    Previously, hubs supported only four default roles. Admins can now create custom roles, with associated capabilities, to further define users. Granular ACLs will be available in the next update.

  • added

    Depot Integration

    Cycle has a native integration with Depot.dev to allow faster build times.

  • improvement

    Service Resources

    Previously, we were too aggressive with our throttles for service containers. Service containers should now see a slight improvement in performance, especially under high traffic demads.

  • improvement

    Environment Telemetry Summary

    Previously, we would remove the telemetry data associated with a instance once an container was deleted. This lead to an issue where historical data was improper and negatively skewed.

  • improvement

    Portal: Improved RBAC Visibility

    The portal now supports more granular, role based, visibility and blocks per "panel" in the portal.

• 2024.02.29.1

  Completely Rebuilt Integrations, New Healthcheck Mechanics, and Network Diagrams

  In this release, users will find a completely rebuilt integrations section under the familiar hub integrations. This rework moves provider, object, TLS, and all integrations on Cycle to the hub scope and unifies them in a single space for a better user experience and better hub management. We've also introduced a brand new healthcheck focused step in pipelines that allows users to wait for a deployment to be healthy before proceeding in the pipeline. The portal now has a great network diagram on the container modal dashboard, which will help users quickly diagnose and solve issues related to publicly accessible containers.

  • improvement

    Integrations

    We completely rebuilt the way users and applications can configure external integrations for Cycle. This new approach enables us to roll our new integrations with infrastructure providers, storage providers, and more, in one streamlined approach.

  • added

    Portal: Public Network Diagram

    When viewing a container that expects public ingress traffic, Cycle's portal now displays a topology diagram that can help in solving potential configuration issues.

  • added

    Container Metadata

    Every container instance gets a .json file mounted into /var/run/cycle/metadata that gives context about the container, and the environment hosting that container.

  • added

    Pipeline Healthcheck Step

    A new 'Healthcheck' step has been introduced which enables pipelines to wait for a deployment to checkin, and become healthy, prior to continuing.

  • improvement

    Ingress Port / Route Management

    In the Native V1 Load Balancer, teams can now disable a controller from listening to public traffic -- even if a container desires a port/route to exist.

• 2024.02.13.3

  New Pipeline Steps and Improvements to SDN, Variable Support, and Load Balancing

  On the heels of the newly released Deployments feature, we've added new pipeline steps that make deployments more powerful than ever. Along with the new steps, users will find support for using SDN's to communicate between deployments, extended variable support in pipelines, mTLS support for the native load balancer, and optimizations to how the native load balancer treats unreachable destinations.

  • added

    Additional Pipeline Steps

    Added the ability to start/stop environment deployments via pipeline.

  • improvement

    Increased Variable Support in Pipelines

    More fields now accept variables within pipelines enabling users to build more powerful and dynamic automations.

  • improvement

    SDN Support for Deployments

    Containers in deployments can now utilize SDN's to target containers in deployments from other environments.

  • added

    Mutual TLS (mTLS)

    Cycle's native load balancer now supports mutual TLS on a per-router basis.

  • improvement

    Unreachable Destination Optimization

    If the native load balancer is unable to reach a destination, that destination will be temporarily marked as unavailable to decrease retry attempts on subsequent requests, ensuring lower latency routing.

• 2024.01.31.2

  Security Update for CVE-2024-21626, CVE-2024-23651, CVE-2024-23652, and CVE-2024-23653

  As of a few hours ago, CVE-2024-21626, CVE-2024-23651, CVE-2024-23652, and CVE-2024-23653 were made public. As reported by SNYK, the first of these vulnerabilities involves an issue with RunC runtime and the other three BuildKit. Now, within just a few hours of notice, we bring our users this update fully patching all of their infrastructure and protecting them from any exposure to these exploits.

  • improvement

    Vulnerability Patch

    A number of vulnerabilities (CVE-2024-21626, CVE-2024-23651, CVE-2024-23652, and CVE-2024-23653), that affect almost all container platforms, was announced on January 31st. This update addresses those vulnerabilities.

  • improvement

    Health Check Subshell Support

    Similar to a container runtime override command, or a backup command, health checks now support commands that utilize subshells.

  • fixed

    Expired Routers on Native Load Balancer (Beta)

    Previously, old routers weren't removed from the native load balancer and could occasionally cause race conditions. The native load balancer is still in beta.

  • improvement

    Native Load Balancer Extensions

    Users can now further customize the granularity/sensitivity of their telemetry collection. Additionally, proxy/forward handlers were improved to handle in-transit content modification.