Announcements

Hey everyone! We're trying something new for this release, by creating a place for discussion around updates we push out for Cycle. It's a more discussion oriented version of our changelog, where we can engage with all of you about what's new.

This release (2025.04.24.02) is a huge release that has been in the works for nearly a month now. It brings with it a lot of stability and performance improvements, but also tons of feature requests we've received from all of you.

New Stuff

We've added a few new goodies to the platform based on your feedback.

A New Network Telemetry Graph

We've added a new graph to the server dashboard, that shows network traffic transmission on a per network interface basis. It's now possible to see data transmitted over the private network, public network, or even SDNs.

You Can Now Restart a Container

Finally, right? Well, you could always stop and start them, but there was one major issue with this method - Cycle would restart all of them at once...

With the new "restart" functionality, the platform will respect the stagger set in the container's configuration, preventing downtime while your restart is in progress.

Instance State Uncertainty

Instance states have a 'normal state', such as running, but also have health checks, migration state, traffic draining, and more. One thing we've heard from our users is that sometimes their instance state will still say 'running', but the server that instance was running on went offline. What gives?

Well, the TL;DR is that we don't actually know that it went offline. Cycle relies on checkins from the underlying host to know what state that instance is in, and if it misses a checkin, or the network drops, the instance may still be running, even if Cycle can't prove it.

This led to some uncertainty, but we didn't want to alert people that an instance was offline just because of a network hiccup. In this release, we've tackled the issue by introducing an 'uncertainty' marker on top of container instances where the underlying host has missed a couple checkins.

Now, you'll be alerted that something may be off about an instance even if we're not sure what state it might be in anymore. Here's what that looks like:

Server Nicknames

Last but certainly not least, we've added the ability to set a custom name on your servers, that will be visible throughout the interface. It will appear anywhere a hostname previously did. If no nickname is set, you'll still see the same hostname from before.

(we wouldn't want to hide Michael T's latest server hostname).

Improvements

Along with the new features, we've improved a handful of things as well.

Source IP Routing

We've introduced a new load balancer routing mode, dubbed Source IP. this mode will attempt to provide sticky sessions for all requests coming from a specific IP address.

Better SFTP Lockdown Intelligence

Cycle has had SFTP lockdown intelligence for over a year now, but some clients would open up dozens of new connections when navigating or transferring files, possibly for better throughput. These clients would quickly put the SFTP connection into lockdown, blocking all new connections.

In this release, we've made it smarter - lockdown will not count new connections from a recently authenticated IP address toward the lockdown criteria. Clients can be greedy with new connections, while bad actors still get locked out.

Scoped Variable Files: Users, Groups, and Permissions

We've added support for a UID, GID, and file permissions to be set on scoped variable files that are injected into the container. Some applications require specific permissions on files to play nice, and this alleviates the need for any funky workarounds that were previously required.

Load Balancer IP Display

Prior to this release, the environment dashboard would show the CIDR (the entire address space) allocated to a load balancer instance. While useful in some circumstances, most people (ourselves included) just wanted to see the specific IP attached to that load balancer instance. Now, when you go to an environment dashboard, you'll see the correct IP.

There were quite a few other minor tweaks and bug fixes, along with a LOT of work on something we'll be revealing very soon. Leave a comment with your thoughts on the latest update, questions you may have, or any issues you run into. (You can also message any of our team in slack)

Our next release will be historic...you won't want to miss it.

Our format for stack variables has been slightly updated to support some new use-cases and to improve security.

Starting today, variables in stack files must be a value to a key (no more free form variables making JSON or YAML invalid). Entire subsections can still be replaced, for example "environment_variables": "{{$variables}}".

The $ syntax will allow for a literal string escape, so anywhere where a number, object, or array should be replaced with a value, throw a $ in front of the variable name and Cycle will do a literal replacement during a build. Without the $, the variable will still be treated as a string "identifier": "{{id}}".

Finally, the value of variables will not be embedded into build outputs anymore. This is to ensure that no secrets or keys are inadvertently leaked or made visible where they shouldn't be.

This change is breaking for some stacks

To update your stacks to ensure compatibility for your next build:

1. ensure that any variables that shouldn't be strings are escaped with a $
2. ensure that any free-floating replacements/invalid JSON & YAML are removed.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment here or reach out to our team on slack!

Thanks, have a great weekend.