We’re heads-down working on Fly - so we thought we should post semi-regular updates about recent changes to the platform. Let us know if this is useful!
Anycast-like DNS in private networks
We added an internal DNS feature: find the nearest geographic VM of an app.
For example - find the current region’s DB replica or Redis cache instance without having to know the current region. Or get a list of nearby backup options should the current region’s VM be unreachable.
top1.nearest.of.appname.internal
will give you the nearest internal ipv6 address, starting with the region from which the query is issued. top5.nearest.of.appname.internal
gives you the nearest five addresses, and so on. Go nuts!
Docker registry improvements
We’ve improved speed and reliability of the Fly Docker registry. Now each region runs its own registry and metadata cache. The registry stores layers using S3 accelerated endpoints, which should help with speed and reliability issues in regions far from the US.
Launch a free Elixir Livebook
Livebooks are a great way to experiment with Elixir in the browser. You can now launch Livebooks without a credit card. Give it a spin!
For us, this was a prototype for building more launchers in the future in our new Elixir app. Stay tuned for more.
A new, official Redis image
We have an official Fly Redis repository and Docker image. It exports Prometheus metrics out of the box. Stay tuned for a more structured way to launch Redis on Fly. For now, feel free to experiment with the image and post issues on Github.
Fly CLI improvements
We’re working hard to improve our CLI. Here are some highlights from the last few weeks:
-
fly launch
supports launching Remix apps with persistent SQLite storage. -
fly.toml
accepts aDockerfile
path and, for multistage builds,build-target
. -
fly image show
reports details about a deployed app image, and whether official Fly images have an update available. -
fly launch
supportsno-deploy
andgenerate-name
options. Useful in CI environments. -
fly.toml
accepts Dockerfile build targets. Before, this was only available on the command line. - Release tasks no longer hang due to missing or delayed logs.
Building our UI on Elixir
We love Elixir! We’re working full time rebuilding our UI as a fresh Elixir web app. Some recent highlights:
- Forum login is now handled by Elixir. A new user should now be brought in with meaningful usernames instead of user123 .
- Logs are now shown in launchers when deploying apps.
- Apps list now shows the organization name on the ‘Apps that haven’t been deployed’ just like ‘Active apps’.
Docs & Guides
We posted some tips for working with high availability Postgres from the client perspective. Client Side Postgres High Availability Connection Tips