Fleio Blog

Fleio version 2020.11.0 is now available in beta and you can test it in your lab environment, since this release is not recommended for production.

You can now install Fleio through docker and docker-compose by running a single command.

Fleio now works on Ubuntu 20.04 and CentOS 8.

Note that we continue to support Fleio deployment with system packages (deb & rpm) for a few more months, but docker will eventually become the only method to run Fleio.

Docker install script takes about 3 minutes on Ubuntu 20.04. Here’s a real time installation:

Why docker?

The deployment with system packages from Fleio repos has worked well for a number of years, but occasionally, depending on the Python version installed on the system and on the system packages that came from the official distro repos, has also been a pain. Some customers had MySQL installed, others MariaDB, some on version 10.1 others on MariaDB 10.4, not to mention different charsets and so on. Some of the software versions were buggy and each production environment came with different challenges when debugging a Fleio installation.

Python 3.5 from Ubuntu 16.04 is keeping us back from upgrading Django framework from 2.x to 3.x, from upgrading the magnum-client and from upgrading a number of libraries.

We could, of course, keep on adding OS packages for Ubunut 20.04, CentOS 8 and so on, deploying custom Python binaries and enforcing a consistent environment on the host through package scripting and third party repos.

But in a number of years we would end up with the same problem: how can we make sure all customers are running, let’s say, Python 3.9.4 and MariaDB 12.4?

Well, that’s what Docker was designed for: to offer a consistent binary environment. The horizontal scaling enablement and future integration of Fleio with Kubernetes comes as a well-received bonus.

We’ve been reluctant to use docker for a number of years. The poor initial performance, the old security issues, the immature tooling and behavior did not make docker too attractive for production. But seven years after docker’s birth and after working on Fleio docker deployment for the past 6 months we can say that docker is a reliable tool.

We’re looking forward to hear your feedback and to make docker deployment rock solid. It’s best you start testing Fleio on docker as soon as possible, after all, everyone will run Fleio on docker in a few months.

We’ll offer guides for migrating from legacy deployment to docker, offer support and even perform the migration for you if chose so.

Magnum Kubernetes improvements in Fleio

• Floating IP enabled checkbox and add feature to show Master LB checkbox on cluster create form (defaults to selected cluster template values).
• Allow creating cluster templates without docker volume size for storage drivers other than device mapper
• You can now upgrade Magnum Kubernetes clusters

Enable features based on user group

In Fleio settings you can enable or disable each feature, for end-users as well as for staff users, and define the exact feature set that makes sense in your scenario.

This was possible until now at a global level: all end-users had the same feature set and all staff had the same feature set.

Now you can define the available end-user features based on user groups. Each end-user group can have a different set of features.

And more

Tons of other improvements are part of 2020.11.0 release. Before heading to the Changelog, let me mention here a few:

• Improved logging (general logging redesign coming up, now the first step released)
• Major performance improvement when processing floating IPs usage information (how many floating IPs has this OpenStack project used and for what time span)
• You can associate/de-associate/re-associate an OpenStack project to a service in Fleio, all without actually deleting the OpenStack project and resources (unless you chose so).
• Let’s say you have one region where you have much more powerful network gears. You want to delegate the network management to the end-users, but just this one region. You can now limit end-user networks and routers creation to the specified regions.

We’ll talk about some of the other features in the stable release, 2020.11.1, which should be out in about one week.

In the meanwhile, see a complete list of changes in the https://fleio.com/docs/changelog/v2020.11.0.html.

Congrats to our technical team for another major release and thanks to you, all our customers, for your support.