Scalr 2.2.1 available for download
Hey everyone!
We just released Scalr 2.2.1 to Google code. There are no new features in it, only bug fixes. All the super awesome features are being kept for the upcoming 2.3 release.
To upgrade, follow this short upgrade guide.
Enjoy!
Private Cloud webinar – Scalr & Nimbula
As you know, last year we added support for Eucalyptus, the do-it-yourself EC2 built by Rich Wolski at UC Santa Barbara. A couple months ago, we added support for Nimbula, a similar system heavily focused on permissions. If you are looking to deploy a private cloud in your organization, you might want to sign up for the below webinars to see how you can increase agility. From the description:
The emergence of agile software development methods has led to a shift from traditionally separated development and IT, to an increased adoption of DevOps processes. Nimbula and Scalr have teamed up to ease this transition by creating an integrated cloud management solution using best-in-class technologies. Learn how to achieve an agile dev process through rapid self-service provisioning, image management and high scalability of enterprise applications.
Europe: April 19, 8 am PT
North America: April 19, 11am PT
Asia: April 19, 5pm PT
Scalr Raises, Like, A Hundred Dollars
Scalr Raises, Like, A Hundred Dollars
Investment to Continue Building a Simpler, Easier to Use Alternative to RightScale and perhaps get a new mat for the office door
SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- Today Scalr announced that it has completed a $95 dollar round of financing. Scalr will use the funds to have lunch at a local Indian restaurant in the Bay area.
The financing consists of several investment sources including Sebastian's Mom and UTMEF (the Under-The-Mattress-Emergency Fund).
In the last year, Scalr has been called "the best cloud app ever" by some random guy on the Internet, and "America's best auto-scaling tool" in an internal email from Sebastian to Igor Savchenko, Scalr's CTO. Sources that leaked the details of that private email wish to remain unnamed, but the company of 10 engineers is so small that it wouldn't take much to deduce who it was. In 2010 Scalr:
- Expanded from 2 to 3 countries by hiring an Intern from France
- Launched in almost 1 new market, but backed away to remain focused on scaling web apps
- Grew users by 1000% (but hasn't specified any data points so this is really quite meaningless)
- Saved users from days of downtime by not screwing up and actually doing the job they are supposed to do
- Added support Rackspace Cloud alongside EC2, as well as Eucalyptus and Nimbula, but utterly failed to do so for OpenStack and Cloud.com
“This is definitely not a bubble”, says Gump, senior analyst at Forrester. “Such a conservative amount shows an incredible amount of restraint from the Venture Capital industry.” This comes in stark contrast to Pastel, a startup that raised $41M from Oak Tree Capital before they had even launched.
Scalr Founder and CEO, Sebastian Stadil wasn’t surprised about the new round of financing; “Scalr is already pretty far ahead”, he insists. “We’ve had 3 years to make our software easier to use than our competitor RightScale. For a while we wanted to raise capital as a business model, but twitter beat us to it. We plan on using the capital to get Indian food next Friday.” When asked if the $95 would be enough to pay for lunch for the entire Scalr team, Sebastian declined to comment. He looked worried though.
About Scalr
Scalr is not just an ordinary Cloud management tool. Well, actually, it is, but our marketing department came up with some nice buzzwords to make it sound more interesting than it really is: Scalr is a real-time, open source, distributed, social, mobile, html5 app that helps you scale web applications.
Scalr on the Road!
None of us on the Scalr team have ever been on a roadtrip, so when one of us suggested we organize one, we all started looking for excuses to make it happen.
We came up with lots of them. Excuses like team-building, breaking the work pattern, and giving us the opportunity to look at the big picture. But then we found one that not only trumped them all, but made it difficult to justify not doing it:
Meeting You. Our users and customers.
So we're going to rent the largest RV we can find, start out in New York (we have our plane tickets already!), and drive across the US to San Francisco, and meet as many of you as we can. If you're interested in meeting with us to give your direct feedback, let us know in the comments where you are based!
Traveling from New York to San Francisco
Scalr 2.2 now available on Google Code
I'm pleased to announce that Scalr 2.2 is now available to download on google code.
If you are upgrading from a previous version, be sure to follow the linked guide.
Below is the list of new functionality added:
- Rackspace support
- Scale on Rackspace Cloud, with Fanatical Support™
- Nimbula support
- Scale on Nimbula, the private cloud software built by the creators of EC2
- Multiple regions for Eucalyptus
- Install Eucalyptus in all your datacenters, and have Scalr manage distributed applications across them
- Chef-based Role builder
- Use the power of Chef to manage configuration on your new Roles
- Major UI overhaul
- Servers, Roles and a few other objects can be managed without page reload
- Pretty URLs like /servers/view or /server/%SERVERID%/edit
- Almost all code responsible for UI on the server side is being rewritten
- Safe shutdown
- Trigger a script prior to shutdown to authorize Scalr to terminate the server
- HTTPS support for ELB
- Ability to delete roles
Cheers,
The Scalr Team
Added support for Japan region
AWS announced last night that they had opened up a datacenter in Tokyo, Japan. We added support for it this morning, and if you go to the Role Builder (Roles -> Role builder), you'll be able to create Roles there.
We're working to release officially supported images, and will have them by tomorrow unless you hear otherwise.
I wonder what other datacenters Amazon is building. My guess is one in Amsterdam, or perhaps Paris.
New UI for DNS management
Those of you who have been with us for a while most likely knew this already, but the code responsible for the user interface to our DNS management tool was pretty old. In fact, it was some of the oldest in the system. We were never quite happy with it despite some improvements, so we decided to make a complete overhaul.
And lo and behold! 'Tis now done.
Brand spankin' new UI for your site's DNS records
If you click the above thumbnail, you'll see a screenshot of the new UI, which allows you to use your own domain name or a temporary one under scalr.ws, create your DNS records (or let Scalr create them for you), and more. This makes it trivial to create new subdomains, configure MX records for email, and more.
And it's much more visually appealing, don't you think?
Widgets to be added to 2.3
With 2.2 out, we've started to move towards 2.3. Taking a look at the votes that have been cast for the Dashboard Widgets, the three most popular ones are under consideration for being added. Namely:
- Load graphs - you can choose a server farm, and add its Load Graph as a widget to the Dashboard
- Server farm run-rates - you can choose a server farm, and see it's $/hr run-rate over time
- Resource usage breakdown - pie charts and graphs for the resources used for each account (EC2 compute units, memory, disk)
If you have any questions about these, let us know in the comments!
Hang out with the Scalr crew on IRC
Hey everyone!
We realized the other day that we missed the days of IRC, so we created a #scalr channel on freenode.
Please join us to talk about auto-scaling and everything else. You can use Colloquy for Mac, ChatZilla for Firefox, or any client from this google search.
See you on IRC,
The Scalr crew
Announcing Scalr 2.2!
"So, what's new in Scalr 2.2?" you ask?
Lots of things!
For one, you can now scale on the Rackspace Cloud, and benefit from their awesome Fanatical Support™!
You can now scale on the Rackspace Cloud
And if you're more into private clouds, you can now deploy Eucalyptus in each of your datacenters with a Region for each. Lets keep those machines working, baby!
Regions for Eucalyptus allows you to build applications that span multiple datacenters
Equally exciting is the all-new, Chef-based Role builder, that allows you to create roles from scratch, and assign 'Behaviors' to them (more on Behaviors in a later post).
Choose which Cloud infrastructure you want to deploy on...
Then choose your OS...
And choose the software you want. Voilà!
We've also built a new UI controller, that allows you to use different Scalr functions without a full page reload. This makes for a faster, more pleasant Scalr UI.
And then there's small things, like HTTPS support for ELB, and the ability to delete roles. And cookies that actually keep you logged in!
Oh, and did I mention a new Dashboard? You can vote on new widgets to add here.
The Dashboard now uses a widget system