Introducing Scalr 2.0!

July 28th, 2010
After 9 months of hard work, we are very proud to present to you the new Scalr, complete with a new engine and user interface. We’ll detail each new feature with a dedicated post, and here’s the summary:

  • New! Scalarizr. Allows you add a node to be managed by Scalr. Supported os: Ubuntu 8.04, Ubuntu 10.04, Debian 5, CentOS 5, Fedora 8, Fedora 12, Fedora 13 (This list will be extended within the next releases)
  • New! DNS manager. Increased stability and speed, decreased number bugs and fails.
  • New! Apache virtualhosts manager.
  • New! API 2.0. Added methods for creating DNS zones and Server snapshots. Please note that this API replaces and is not compatible with the previous API.
  • Replaced “Synchronize to all” with “Create server image” instead. New object – BundleTask.
  • Improved EBS (network storage) and ELB (load balancer service) management, fixing tons of issues.
  • Improved MySQL status page.
  • Improved Scaling algorithms and logging. You can now see why your role was scaled. Up or down.
  • Improved UI. Faster, with a new page for checking all information about servers and farm roles.
  • AWS platform changes: Added Asia-Pacific region, and RDS (mysql service) as cloud platform.
  • Scalr will show warnings in UI if issues have been posted on status.aws.amazon.com.
We rewrote about half of Scalr source code, about 15.000 lines of code. A large amount of bugs were fixed in the process, and it is now possible to add support for new cloud platforms.

Posted in Release | 6 Comments »

Open Stack for Cloud Computing Launched

July 19th, 2010

Congratulations to our friends at Rackspace and NASA Nebula, who launched OpenStack.org today!

Open Stack is an “open source, open standards” stack for Cloud Computing, which includes Compute (like EC2) and Storage (like S3). You can find all the code for Open Stack on Launchpad, as well as the other sub-projects like the iPad and iPhone apps.

This is a huge leap forward, probably the single most important announcement in the industry since EC2.

How does Scalr play into this?

We’re thinking about it. Scalr is currently licensed under the GPL v2, and we’d have to change that to the Apache License which the Open Stack charter requires. The Apache License precludes the dual licensing business model, in which we sell a commercial license to use Scalr for those averse to the GPL.

Open Stack also has a nascent Web UI, with a subset of Scalr’s functionality.

If anyone wants to weigh in here, their thoughts are welcome.

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Introducing the Scalr Scheduler

March 5th, 2010

Today Scalr released the Scheduler, a Cron Job task manager designed for Cloud environments.

The problem is that Cron jobs, which are scripts that are executed periodically, were up until now tied to individual servers. When that individual server failed, the Cron job wouldn’t be executed. When that server was scaled, it would be executed once per server. This means that the tasks you set to be executed once per hour, could be executed 5 times in the hour, or not at all – not very reliable, to say the least.

Scalr based the Scheduler off Apache ZooKeeper, which is a part of Hadoop. It is a centralized service for providing group services, especially distributed lock services. The Scheduler extends Scalr’s scripting interface, and allows you to write scripts and set their execution schedule and scope: once on all servers, every hour on a subset of servers, daily on a single server, and any other combination!

As always, the code is available on Google Code and delivered as a service at scalr.net.

***

You can find the Scheduler under the Tools menu, found at the top when logged in:

Tasks Scheduler drop-down

You can schedule tasks to be executed periodically using the Scalr Scheduler

To add a Cron job or schedule a script, click the + icon next to the Search box:

Click the + icon to add a new cron job or to set a schedule for a script

You can then select the script to be executed, choose the parameters for it, schedule a time or interval, and run!

Configure the cron job's interval, parameters, and more

Posted in Announcements | 2 Comments »

New Scalr release featuring the Scalr Scheduler

February 25th, 2010

Hi all,

We pushed a new release out this week, a few of you might have seen this already.

This is a rather important update, as it brings us closer to Scalr 2.0, which will extend Scalr to all Operating Systems and environments. You can find the complete list of features added below, and I’d like to highlight the Scheduler, the improved Monitoring system, as well as the shortcuts to your farms added to the top menu.

  • Added the Scheduler (Ability to execute script, launch farm or terminate farm at specified date/time)
  • Improved the Monitoring system, including an API call to get the graph’s URL
  • Monitoring now available on mobile.scalr.net, too
  • Added automatic snapshots for RDS instances
  • Added ability to update SOA refresh
  • Added AMI filter during Spot instances request
  • Added ability to download logs as csv file.
  • Improved navigation menu.
  • Various bugfixes and improvements.

Updated scalr.net, development.scalr.net and trunk repo for scalr o/s (http://code.google.com/p/scalr/source/browse/#svn/trunk).

Posted in Release | No Comments »

2010 Resolution: keep Scalr on google code up to date!

January 14th, 2010

Hi everyone, happy new year!

As part of our 2010 resolutions, we decided to keep in sync the source code on Scalr.net and that on Google Code. This is good news for everyone that deployed Scalr on their own servers, but also to everyone else as the power of open source lies in that other people can contribute to it. If somebody wants support for Eucalyptus, they can modify the source code to add capability for it, and send us a patch. We then merge it to the trunk, and you and everybody else then gets it. Patches should be sent to patches@scalr.com.

If you have suggestions for other resolutions, let us know!

Below is a complete changelog:

Events system improvements:

  • Added new events: OnDNSZoneUpdated, OnEBSVolumeAttached

Scripting engine improvements:

  • Added the zone_name variable for scripts executed on DNSZoneUpdate event
  • Added the new_ip_address variable for scripts executed on IPAddressChanged event
  • Added the volume_id and mountpoint variables for scripts executed on EBSVolumeMounted event
  • The ability to execute scripts from the Scripts view page.

Snapshots manager improvements:

  • Remove multiple snapshots in one time
  • Share snapshots!

API improvements:

  • Added methods: LaunchInstance, TerminateInstance, GetFarmDetails, GetScriptDetails, RebootInstance, GetEvents, GetLogs
  • Added methods for working with DNS zones: ListDNSZones, ListDNSZoneRecords, AddDNSZoneRecord and RemoveDNSZoneRecord
  • Improved the ExecuteScript method.
  • Added LA for each instance to the GetFarmDetails method
  • Added the ability to execute scripts with specified revision and parameters

Core improvements:

  • Amazon RDS support
  • Amazon Spot instances support.
  • Amazon CloudWatch support (fine grained monitoring)
  • Amazon VPC support (enterprise feature, deploy on non-shared servers)
  • Rewrote the “Synchronize to all” feature. Cleaner and more reliable now.
  • Same goes for AutoEBS and AutoEIP. Cleaner and more reliable.
  • When you create a new AMI for a custom role, you can now switch over to it immediately.
  • And the long awaited “Keep me logged in” checkbox on the login page!
  • Filters for instances on the Servers view page.
  • CloudFront distributions for domains not managed by Scalr.
  • The ability to remove Elastic Load Balancers.
  • Support for new region: us-west-1 (deploy on the west coast!)
  • A new page with more details on the instance.
  • Increased page load speed. Optimized js code. (faster, better interface!)
  • An improved MySQL status page for your Farms
  • The ability to set whether Scalr should terminate or reboot instances that fail to respond to SNMP calls.
  • The ability to slowdown the scaling process
  • Support for new instance types, the high memory instances (32 and 68GB of memory)
  • The ability to add Google Apps MX records in the Zone Edit page in a single click.
  • The ability to edit system DNS records. For advanced clients.
  • The ability to set both size and snapshot for Role auto EBS (previously just one)
  • Added ability to edit farm role specified security group
  • Added Hide terminated instances checkbox on instances list.
  • Added ability to view all instances (include non-scalr ones)
  • Added ability to set system timezone for clients (Logs, Events, API logs)
  • Fixed bug in garbage.php with “select all” checkbox
  • Fixed bug with default SSH port (see thread)
  • More than 200 bugs was fixed and tons of other internal improvements.

To update from 1.1 to 1.2:

  1. Backup your database and all files.
  2. Disable cronjobs.
  3. Copy app/* to your directory with scalr.
  4. Execute in shell /path_to_your_scalr/bin/upgrade-to-1.2.0.php
  5. Enable cronjobs.

Posted in Release | 2 Comments »

One more release squeezed in 2009!

December 30th, 2009

Scalr now supports Spot Instances from AWS! You can find the official documentation here: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/spot-instances/

Spot instances is theoretically a great way to lower your web infrastructure costs: since the hourly cost of a Spot instance will likely not go above the rate of an On Demand instance, then if you set your Spot price above that, you will always keep your instances running. You’ll then be saving the difference between the current Spot price and that of a Reserved or  On Demand instance. Let us know if you try this and have any success with it.

To get started, from the menu: Tools -> Amazon Web Services -> Amazon EC2 -> Spot instances.

I hope everyone has a happy new year’s celebration!

Cheers,
Sebastian on behalf of all of Scalr

Posted in Release | 3 Comments »

Our gift for the holidays: December release!

December 15th, 2009

Lots of Cloud goodness for everyone! The December release brings:

* Amazon CloudWatch support (fine grained monitoring)
* Amazon VPC support (enterprise feature, deploy on non-shared servers)
* Filters for instances on the Servers view page.
* CloudFront distributions for domains not managed by Scalr.
* The ability to remove Elastic Load Balancers.
* The ability to execute scripts from the Scripts view page.
* Support for new region: us-west-1 (deploy on the west coast!)
* A new page with more details on the instance.
* Various bugfixes and improvements.
* Increased page load speed. Optimized js code. (faster, better interface!)

On behalf of everyone at Scalr, we wish you happy holidays!

Cheers,
Sebastian, on behalf of the Scalr Team

Posted in Release | No Comments »

New Scaling Algorithm

November 30th, 2009

We are pleased to announce a new algorithm to base your application / website scaling on, scaling based on URL response time.

If response time is critical to you, you can now set this parameter and Scalr will add more nodes when response time on a URL increases above a threshold, or remove nodes when the response time decreases below another.

To access this algorithm, simply edit the Farm from the options menu, select the Role for which to change the scaling algorithm, click the scaling tab, and select ‘Enable scaling based on HTTP URL Response time’. Then add your parameters and url.

Cheers,
Sebastian

Posted in Release | 3 Comments »

More Scalr Goodness

November 24th, 2009

More Scalr goodness for Thanksgiving!

You can now terminate and reboot instances in mobile.scalr.net, and add comments/description for Farms in scalr.net.

There’s also an improved EBS snapshots manager; you can now

  • Remove multiple snapshots in one time
  • Share snapshots!

For those using the free development.scalr.net, it has been updated with the latest Production bugfixes, too.

Posted in Release | No Comments »

November release

November 19th, 2009

Hi all!

We’re proud to bring you November’s release, as you’ll see filled with useful new features.

In scalr.net, you’ll find:

  1. A new event: OnEBSVolumeAttached
  2. An improved MySQL status page for your Farms
  3. Initial Amazon RDS support
  4. The ability to set whether Scalr should terminate or reboot instances that fail to respond to SNMP calls.
  5. The ability to slowdown the scaling process
  6. Support for new instance types, the high memory instances (32 and 68GB of memory)
  7. The ability to add Google Apps MX records in the Zone Edit page in a single click.
  8. The ability to edit system records. For advanced clients.
  9. API changes: Added LA for each instance to the GetFarmDetails method
  10. The ability to set both size and snapshot for Role auto EBS (previously just one)
  11. Internal improvements.

For Scalr Remote (mobile.scalr.net), you’ll find:

  1. Better layout when images are disabled
  2. Added version number in footer
  3. Added LA and Uptime on instance details page
  4. Added View instances from farm details page

Drop us a note if you have any feedback!

Posted in Release | 4 Comments »

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