Recent Updates

• 2024.07.09.2

  Web Application Firewall (alpha) and Improved Pipeline Parallelism

  The team is excited to release the alpha version of our web application firewall, which includes the ability to block or allow traffic based on IP at the load balancer. This first release marks the beginning and the WAF will be expanded to support features like geographic matching, url matching, and http controls over headers and methods. Pipeline parallelism has been improved through the rebuilding of the locking / exclusion mechanisms and the native load balancer now supports rewrite rules that allow for granular URL rewriting.

  • added

    Web Application Firewall (alpha)

    Using the Native Cycle LB? You can now block IPs and IP ranges at the load balancer. This is the first release with WAF functionality -- much more to come!

  • improvement

    URL Rewriting

    Users can now use URL rewriting (with variables!) in the Native Cycle LB. Use regex, with groups, for a path match then utilize a $$# format to insert the corresponding group matches.

  • fixed

    Instance Console Crashing

    Previously non-UTF8 characters would cause the console to crash and reconnect in a loop.

  • fixed

    GCP Server Tagging

    In the previous update, we started tagging servers at infrastructure providers. Under certain conditions, we were tagging servers with a character that wasn't allowed, preventing a provision.

  • fixed

    Race Condition with Wildcard Domains

    We discovered, and fixed, a race condition that existed when a load balancer was instructed to serve traffic for both a wildcard domain and a non-wildcard domain that would exist underneath the same wildcard.

  • improvement

    Better Parallelism With Pipelines

    We rebuilt the locking / exclusion mechanism in pipelines to better determine which resources needed read locks vs write locks. This improvement results in better data integrity while also enabling better performance while running concurrent pipelines.

• 2024.06.28.3

  Native Monitoring, Granular ACLs, and Enhanced DNS Capabilities

  This update marks the beginning of our march toward native monitoring, laying the groundwork for comprehensive metrics, events, logging, and alerting. Users will notice initial visual enhancements, with a full monitoring dashboard to follow. This release also introduces granular access control lists (ACLs), allowing detailed permission settings for several resource types. Geographic DNS (GeoDNS) has been added to support the most latency-sensitive applications, and other improvements include enhanced cluster management, customizable shared memory per container, a rebuilt autoscaler, and expanded support for scoped variables.

  • added

    Monitoring Platform

    We've officially begun the start of Cycle's native monitoring (metrics, events, logging, and alerts) solution. This release contains the base primitives and data collection that the remainder of the monitoring solution will be built upon. You'll notice some new graphs and visual components in the portal, but a future release will contain a proper monitoring dashboard.

  • added

    Granular ACLs

    Building off the custom roles functionality we released in our previous update, organizations can now restrict access to clusters, environments, pipelines, and more via granular access control lists.

  • added

    Geographic DNS

    Deploying a latency sensitive application? Enable GeoDNS on any environment with 3 or more load balancers (entrypoints) to ensure your users get routed to the closest load balancer(s) to your users.

  • improvement

    Clusters

    Previously, Clusters were simply an identifier. Now, with Clusters being their own resource, they support ACLs with other new capabilities to come.

  • improvement

    Custom SHM Size

    Users can now customize the size of the /dev/shm (shared host memory) device that gets attached to container instances.

  • added

    Custom DNS Empty Set

    Since Cycle is IPv6 native, we previously delayed empty IPv4 lookup responses to assist with compatibility for older applications. We no longer enforce that delay for new environments, though it can be set via the discovery settings.

  • improvement

    Auto Scaling

    We've rebuilt the autoscaler to use the new monitoring primitives. These metrics enable us to perform autoscaling in a significantly more efficient, and predictable, manner.

  • improvement

    Scoped Variables Files

    Cycle will now generate the directories required to support the injection of scoped variables who utilize the 'file' access type.

  • improvement

    Scoped Variables with Identifiers

    Users can now specify container identifiers for limiting scoped variables, making gitops/pipeline automation easier.

  • improvement

    Build Variables Support in Pipelines

    When building images via pipelines, users can now pass variables to be injected into a container's build process.

  • improvement

    YAML Support for Stacks

    Not a fan of JSON? Stacks can now be defined via YAML.

  • improvement

    Instance Console Output

    The container instance console now persists (up to 128kb) through updates and restarts.

• 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.