Recent Updates

• 2025.05.15.1

  Our Biggest Platform Release in Years: Virtual Providers and Virtual Machines

  This release marks a new era of hybrid infrastructure orchestration and cements the platform's status as a true alternative to both Kubernetes and VMware. It is easily the biggest release in years for our organization, and we couldn't be more excited to get it into the hands of our users! The biggest piece of this major release is the capability to now run any kind of workload anywhere -- while still maintaining the efficiency, standardization, and automation that the platform brings. We can't wait to see what you're able to build.

  • added

    Virtual Providers

    Virtual providers makes it simple to add any x86-compatible (Intel, AMD, etc) infrastructure to your Cycle clusters, unlocking the full potential of bare metal and massively reducing the technical lift for on-prem, colo, or non-native bare metal cloud offerings.

  • added

    Virtual Machines

    For workloads that don't play nicely with containers, we now support running virtual machines alongside your containerized workloads in environments. Great for legacy apps, maintaining hybrid stacks, and even running a full on OS inside the environment.

  • added

    Deployment-Restricted Scoped Variables

    Scoped variables now support being scoped to deployments. This gives users ultimate flexibility when it comes to certain scoped variables changing per deployment without the headache of making super dynamic on the fly changes to scoped variables within the environment.

  • added

    'Fixed' Destination Prioritization for LB V1

    The V1 load balancer now supports fixed destination prioritization. This feature will be mostly used alongside source IP routing to further anchor that the same requesting IP will be routed to the same container instance.

  • added

    Server IP Pools (Virtual Provider)

    Users can now add IP's to virtual provider servers so that containers deployed to them with an L2 network can allocate their own IP's.

  • added

    L2 Networks (SDN)

    The platform now supports Layer 2 software-defined networking via its Networks primitive. This enables L2 connectivity across your infrastructure for more advanced networking needs.

  • added

    L2 domains

    Containers on Cycle can now connect directly to Layer 2 networks, not just at the environment level. This allows for tighter control over how workloads interact with external infrastructure or broadcast domains.

  • added

    Expose Host's Cgroups

    Users can now choose to expose the underlying host's Cgroups to a container. This aids in building things such as monitoring functionality.

  • added

    Expose Power API

    Users can now give a container the ability to shut down a server via the internal API through opting into the expose power API.

  • improvement

    Upgraded to Linux Kernel 6.6.17

    The Linux kernel used by CycleOS has been upgraded to 6.6.17.

  • added

    Log Volume

    Each server now mounts a 10GB hard capped log volume. This guards against disk pressure caused by containers with uncontrolled log output from filling the servers disk entirely. Once disk usage for this volume hits 90% log retention is reduced from 72 to 48 hours.

• 2025.04.24.2

  Traffic Draining, Source IP Routing, and Tons of Improvements

  An exciting release as we move into the end of April and prepare for an awesome summer of updates. Users can now mark instances to drain traffic, signaling the platform to stop routing new connections to them while existing sessions wind down safely. The V1 load balancer gets some nice flexibility improvements and servers now support nicknaming. New graphs for server telemetry have been added and container instance network telemetry graphs fixed. This release marks the beginning of an impressive schedule of releases we have moving into summer so keep your eyes peeled for changelog updates!

  • improvement

    Source IP Routing

    V1 load balancer routers now support source IP routing mode. This allows for more consistent and predictable routing to instances that require more durable sessions.

  • added

    Server Network Telemetry Graph

    A new server telemetry graph has been added to the portal that shows transmit and receive bytes for individual nodes.

  • added

    Traffic Draining

    Container instances can now be marked for traffic draining, informing the platform that traffic should no longer be sent to that instance. For load balancers, the platform will stop traffic to that load balancer making it safe to remove, restart, or reconfigure.

  • fixed

    Container Telemetry Transmit and Receive

    Container instance network telemetry data had an issue where transmit and receive data was flipped. This has been fixed and now shows correctly.

  • improvement

    SFTP Lockdowns

    As always, SFTP on any server will go into lockdown after a spike in failed login attempts. Users who were successfully authorized prior to the lockdown can now continue their session uninterrupted.

  • added

    Server Nicknames

    All servers now support adding a nickname, making it simpler to track individual servers in a cluster and hub.

  • added

    Restart Container

    A button has been added for restarting containers. For containers with multiple instances, the restart stagger will also be automatically applied.

  • improvement

    Load Balancer IP Summary

    Load balancer IP's on the environment summary now show the exact assigned IP instead of the associated CIDR from which an IP is assigned.

  • improvement

    Retry Image Downlaods

    The compute service now tries multiple times to download container images from factory if there is an interruption.

  • improvement

    UID/GID for Scoped Variables

    Added support for specifying permissions and UID/GID for injected scoped variable files.

  • added

    Console Buffer Increased

    Increased the console buffer on containers making more room for logging during times where the compute services is updating or restarting.

• 2025.03.19.3

  Private Load Balancing, New Pipeline Steps, and Advanced Sysctl Commands

  This update brings a focus on flexibility in environments and pipelines. Users will enjoy a new pipeline step (deprecate container) and also new ways to use named resource identifiers. Load balancers can now be run without a public IP's assigned to them opening the door to more dynamic, zero-trust architectures. In the API, filtering got an upgrade with the addition of filtering on deprecated tag for containers. Finally, users who need to take deeper control of IPv6 settings can use the disable_ipv6 for further granularity in networking control on containers.

  • added

    Private Load Balancers

    Load balancers can now be enabled without public IPs. This is valuable for load-balancing private applications within an environment that might not need public internet access -- i.e. Cloudflare tunnels.

  • improvement

    Named Arguments in Resource Identifiers

    We now support arguments like deployment.version and deployment.tag as parameters to a resource identifier in pipelines. With these arguments, teams can build significantly more flexible pipelines furthering automation efforts.

  • added

    Deprecate Containers Step

    Containers can now be deprecated via pipelines.

  • improvement

    Jobs Endpoint

    The jobs endpoint wasn't properly limited to the expected capability for API keys.

  • improvement

    Filtering via Deprecation State

    In the API, containers can now be filtered by their deprecation state using ?filter[deprecated]=true/false

  • added

    Disable IPv6

    While we don't recommend disabling IPv6, there may be a specific reason where it is required. By setting net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ip6 to 1, Cycle now fully disables IPv6 for a container.

• 2025.02.20.1

  Improved Load Balancer Routing, Upgraded TLS, and Administrative Flexibility

  This release brings users a handful of solid improvements and a couple needed fixes. The V1 load balancer routers got a fix to path matching in routes and also a major improvement to the predictability of the router chosen. Now the first match will always win. On the security front, a now deprecated cryptography alorithm was removed and the platform now enforces a higher minimum TLS version. Finally, hub billing now support multiple billing contacts, expanding flexibility on who in an organization receives important emails.

  • improvement

    Integration Deprecations

    Hub integrations can now be deprecated. This demarkation has no effect on existing integrations but will prevent new additions of that integration from being added.

  • improvement

    SSH TLS Update

    Removed a now deprecated crypto algorithm and now enforced a minimum TLS version of 1.3

  • fixed

    Route Matching Predictability

    We've refactored how the LB makes routing decisions to eliminate a race condition that existed with path matching. Now, router matching is significantly faster and more predictable, with the first (top) match always winning.

  • improvement

    Billing Contact

    Organizations can now update their billing and tax information within the portal. Additionally, organizations can subscribe additional email addresses to invoice notifications.

  • improvement

    User Uploaded Wildcard TLS Certificates

    We've expanded the functionality of user uploaded certificates to work with wildcard certificates. While we've supported LetsEncrypt wildcards for years, our recently added 'user uploaded certificates' did not support wildcards until now.

• 2025.01.21.2

  New Load Balancer Metrics, Log Drain Format, and Solid Platform Fixes

  This update features a slew of more granular load balancer metrics for Cycle's V1 load balancer. These new metrics also come with additional tooling in the portal that allows users to make specific filters when debugging network traffic. The log drain format can now be customized, offering higher flexibility for integrations with existing services, and the platform received some great fixes that should lead to even more stability.

  • improvement

    Log Drain Format

    The format of log output can now be customized via the container config integration.

  • added

    Load Balancer Metrics

    The V1 load balancer now collects more granular metrics that can be helpful in diagnosing application issues. A restart of the load balancer is required to gain these additional metrics. Additionally, users can now filter load balancer metrics based on domains and HTTP response codes in the load balancer's URLs tab.

  • fixed

    File Ownership

    We found a bug during our OCI image merging where, under certain conditions, files could lose their respective user/group ownership. This is fixed for all future image builds.

  • fixed

    Instance Migration

    No longer allow an instance to be migrated if an existing migration is already occurring for that instance.

  • fixed

    Migration Deadlock

    If an instance failed to migrate after 16 attempts, it could cause a node deadlock preventing future actions on that server.

• 2025.01.14.3

  Stack Build Logs, Stability Improvements, and Better Auto-Scaling

  In this release, users will find a wonderful new feature in Stack build logs . These logs will give insight into debugging stack builds that, in the past, have been more cumbersome to unpack. Alongside the stack build logs are a slew of stability improvements including a new agent logging mechanism that will enable even more resiliency to each server node during times of high usage. Additionally, auto-scaling was improved, requiring fewer window intervals before a scaling event can happen, resulting in an even more responsive auto-scaling from the platform.

  • improvement

    Metric Label Standardization

    We noticed a few inconsistencies in the naming conventions for metric/event labels. While they're now fixed, certain graphs within the portal will take a little time to populate with new data.

  • added

    Stack Build Logs

    Stacks now generate build logs that detail the overall build of images, stack parsing, etc, making it significantly easier to debug variable/stack formatting issues.

  • improvement

    External Log Draining

    Although this was beta released in December's build, we've made a number of optimizations to provide more context (via HTTP headers) while also reducing the amount of redundant meta information in the POST body.

  • fixed

    Container Reimage / Deleted Instances

    If a container was reimaged immediately after a scale event, any deleted instances would be undeleted.

  • added

    Block Storage / Raw Volumes

    While not accessible yet, we've added the ability to create volumes as raw block devices on compute nodes -- preparing for some soon to be announced features.

  • added

    Migrating Block Storage Volumes

    Support the ability to move block storage volumes between compute nodes.

  • improvement

    GCP Generation 3 + 4 Models

    We've compiled the required kernel modules into CycleOS to support the generation 3 and 4 (c3, c4, n3, m3) and accelerator (GPU) GCP machine types.

  • improvement

    Autoscaling Threshold Calculation

    We rebuilt the logic for network / bandwidth scaling thresholds to enable more responsive scaling. Previously, network scaling events required two interval windows to pass before a scaling event could occur.

  • added

    CycleOS Build Version

    Servers now report their CycleOS build version during their check-ins. This version is also displayed in the portal.

  • added

    Agent/Logging Volume

    Following a restart of the server, CycleOS will now build a dedicated 2GB volume for storing logs. By moving logs to their own volume, nodes will no longer deadlock / become unresponsive if disk usage reaches 100%.

  • improvement

    Hub Delete Prevention

    Hubs with active servers can no longer be deleted, unless the 'force' flag is specified.

  • fixed

    Attached Storage Size Customization

    When deploying servers at AWS or GCP, users can customize the size of the underlying block device. This functionality was broken in December's release.

  • improvement

    Cycle IPs in LB WAF

    Previously, it was possible to accidentally block VPN configuration via the portal by applying restrictive rules to the WAF (web application firewall). Now, the WAF will automatically detect the necessary Cycle IPs to allow VPN configuration without organizations needing to manage the IP list themselves.