Hub 1.0 follow-up: two top issues users reported + what we're doing about it.

Last week we announced the release of TurnKey Hub v1.0. The response was great, signups went through the roof and many of you went the extra mile and provided detailed feedback on your first impressions from the new version.

Many thanks to all of you who cared enough to share their experience, whether good or bad. I know it gets thrown around a lot, but we really do care about getting feedback from users. And not just the ego-massaging vanity fair stuff either. "This didn't do what I expected and it gave me a hard time" is just as valuable if not more so. When you're so close to something it can be difficult to anticipate the perspective of a new user that may struggle with things we've been foolishly taking for granted.

In the future if you run into any issues, don't be shy. Speak up, we're listening. Even if you're sure someone else must have reported the same issue before you, there's still value in your report.  When users report the same related issues over and over, we take that as a sign of urgency, roll up our sleeves and do something about it.

For example here are a couple of the most common issues users have been talking to us about since the 1.0 Hub release last week.

Issue #1: Improved server status (implemented)

The problem

When a new server is launched, its in the pending state (represented by a yellow status icon) while Amazon allocates resources and boots the system. As soon as the server starts booting, Amazon changes the state of the server to running which we've been representing as a green status icon.

Trouble is, a green light sets the expectation that you're ready to go, but that isn't necessarily true as the machine may not have finished booting just yet.

TurnKey automatically installs security updates before exposing potentially vulnerable services to a hostile network, so depending on the number of updates, the boot process can take a few minutes to complete. Meanwhile you're scratching your head trying to figure out why you can't connect to the web application in your newly launched cloud server.

Bottom line, we received multiple reports related to this issue and on closer inspection realized we need to communicate better to the user that they still have to wait, preferably while providing some insight as to what is happening so the user doesn't lose patience and think the system is "stuck".

The solution

TurnKey cloud servers now update the Hub with their boot status, which the Hub server dashboard displays and periodically updates. Most importantly, the Hub only gives you a green light and changes the status to running when the server has fully finished booting.

The server dashboard uses AJAX to auto-update when the server status changes.

Issue #2: AWS free tier, and EBS backed instances (request for feedback)

Not long after Amazon announced support for micro instances, the AWS free tier plan was born, with much fanfare and excitement. Micro instances are especially small servers that don't pack a lot of punch for production use, but can none-the-less be useful in some low-end usage scenarios.

We were initially hoping to support micro instances immediately in the Hub, but micro instances presented a few unique technical challenges due to extra limitations imposed by Amazon. For example, they had to be EBS-backed, which means they're booted from a persistent virtual network drive known as an EBS volume in AWS lingo.

In case you're wondering, EBS backed instances are different from the regular temporary storage instances in that they provide the ability to stop and start instances at any time. You don't pay for CPU hours while an EBS backed instance is "off", just the persistent storage space.

Alas, as the Hub doesn't yet support setting up EBS based servers, TurnKey users couldn't launch micro instances or take advantage of the free tier, which we understand is a bit disappointing.

Since the 1.0 release we've received an increasing number of requests to add support for micro instances, the AWS free tier and EBS backed instances to the Hub.

We realize it's important to some users, but we're still trying to figure out if it's important enough to override other priorities. To get more information we've set up 2 community survey polls (micro/free-tier, ebs-backed) and are inviting users to register their vote.
 

Finally, if you have any other feedback on how we can improve the Hub, don't hesitate to let us know!