Organization Dashboard Improvement
We’ve revamped the way organizations operate within our platform. This change addresses a key concern: the complexity of navigating various organization types on the dashboard. We aim to streamline your experience, ensuring a more intuitive and user-friendly interface.
Key Enhancements
In our latest update, we’ve revolutionized the user experience by granting every organization access to all three of our main services, enabling seamless navigation and easy switching between services within the same organization, without the hassle of multiple accounts or interfaces. To ensure clarity and transparency, each service will continue to have its own distinct billing statement. Additionally, for new organizations, we’ve introduced a preference setting feature during creation; this allows you to select a default service dashboard, ensuring a more tailored and efficient user experience from the outset.
For Our Existing Users
We haven’t forgotten about you! Your organization has been automatically transitioned to this new format. The default preference is set based on the primary service your organization was created for. Remember, you can modify this preference anytime in the organization settings.
Compute Billing Upgrades
We did a major update on our compute billing to make it easier to use Spheron Compute and have a better way to pay for all the usage. Here are some highlights of the enhancements we made:
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Transition to Usage-Based Billing: We’ve moved away from subscription-based billing. Now, users can directly purchase credits using either a credit card or a web3 wallet, providing a more flexible and user-friendly approach to accessing compute resources.
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Real-Time Spending and Credit Information: The updated compute billing user interface now displays hourly spending details and the remaining credit balance, offering users improved visibility and control over their compute usage.
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Spending Rate Monitoring: We have implemented a system to track wallet usage and send notifications based on the organization’s spending rate.
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Recurring Monthly Top-Ups: Users now have the option to set up recurring monthly top-ups for compute, ensuring uninterrupted service and easier budget management.
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No More Whitelisting: We have removed the requirement for user whitelisting for On Demand and Autoscale compute deployments, making these features available to all users without restrictions.
Compute Provider Upgrades
Significant advancements have been made in our ongoing efforts to enhance the stability and reliability of our compute providers. Focused on improving observability and troubleshooting capabilities, we have implemented several key upgrades:
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Provider Health Charts on Status Page: We have introduced “On Demand” provider health charts on our Statuspage. This ensures transparent visibility into provider downtime, allowing users to stay informed about service availability and downtime.
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Kubernetes Configuration Backup with Velero: To safeguard against data loss and ensure system resilience, we have enabled Kubernetes configuration backups using Velero. These backups are securely stored on Storj, offering an added layer of protection for our users’ configurations.
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Enhanced Monitoring with Netdata: We have deployed Netdata across all our providers to monitor our Kubernetes infrastructure. This lets us promptly identify and troubleshoot any slowdowns or anomalies, ensuring a smoother and more reliable service.
These updates demonstrate our commitment to providing robust and transparent compute deployments, catering to the evolving needs of our users.
Design System Upgrades
We have started implementing our UI based on the new design system that we are working on. The implementation will provide us with a lot of benefits:
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Consistent Design System Implemented: This initiative aims to streamline the visual language, enhance user experience, and maintain brand consistency throughout our platform.
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Updated Button Component: Replaced existing Buttons & CTAs with a suite of new variants adhering to the newly established design system to ensure a consistent appearance and functionality across the platform.
Benefits
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Enhanced Consistency: Users will now navigate a more uniform and cohesive interface.
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Improved User Interaction: Standardised components ensure a smoother user experience.
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Reinforced Branding: Our platform’s visuals reflect a more unified brand identity.
Instance Activity Enhancements
We’ve recently upgraded the instance activity section, significantly improving the user experience with a more robust and detailed tracking system. This update brings several key enhancements:
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Comprehensive Configuration Tracking: The system now provides a detailed view of all configuration changes made within each instance. Users can easily review the history of specific updates and configurations.
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Extensive Logs Capability: Along with configuration changes, users can access instance logs, events, and deployment logs for each update, offering a clearer understanding of the changes and adjustments made over time. Users can gain insights into issues encountered by accessing their instance logs, instance events, or deploy logs, aiding significantly in troubleshooting.
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Enhanced Monitoring and Management: This update provides users with a clear and comprehensive overview of all activities and changes in their instances. It facilitates smoother operations and more efficient problem resolution, allowing for better instance management.
These improvements are designed to ensure that users have all the necessary tools and information at their fingertips for effective monitoring, management, and troubleshooting of their instances.
Platform Enhancements and Fixes
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UI Enhancement for Add-On Purchases: We’ve improved the UI, streamlining the process for users to purchase add-ons.
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Compute Redeploy Fix: Resolved an issue with random deployment type selection when a user tries to redeploy an instance within a cluster. Now, deployments default to the type used in the latest instance.
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Introduced an option on our marketplace page that allows users to copy the template ID easily.
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Faster Live Metrics Retrieval: Improved the system for fetching live metrics, ensuring quicker and more efficient instance metric access.
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Storage Dashboard Enhancements: We’ve made several targeted improvements to the Storage Dashboard aimed at simplifying and enhancing the user experience for developers:
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Archived Storage Buckets Enhancements: Added functionality to delete archived storage buckets directly from the archived page, simplifying management.
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Storage Dashboard UX Improvement: Enhanced the storage dashboard by preserving the pagination state during various actions for a smoother user experience.
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Instance Page Break Issue: We’ve successfully addressed and resolved a critical issue where the page would break when a user attempted to close an instance in the background.
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Custom Storage Pricing Glitches in Instance Deployment: We have implemented a fix for the recurring glitches in the custom storage options during instance deployment, where users experienced unexpected price changes upon selecting different storage plans. Additionally, we have updated the default value pricing for both ephemeral and persistent storage, ensuring consistent pricing that accurately reflects regional variations. This update aims to provide our users with a more reliable and transparent pricing experience.