Announcing TurnKey Hub v2.0

I can't believe it's been over 6 years since we announced v1.0. Even more shocking is the last hub tagged blog post was over 4 years ago, given that we haven't stopped developing, improving and adding features to the Hub during that time.

The below are just a few highlights that stood out while I was reviewing the git-log for the base application, though I'm sure I missed some...

$ git diff --stat 68a14f27 HEAD
585 files changed, 54948 insertions(+), 15202 deletions(-)

Review of notable changes since the last post

On-boarding and support

• Improved account setup flow. Since the deployment of the new on-boarding flow, we've seen a 68.3% increase in users going from zero to a fully setup account. We continue to analyze where users are getting stuck, improve the flow, and remove friction where ever we can.
• We've been experimenting with integrated online chat and issue tracking. Obviously this has increased our support load, but the improved support we can offer users, and the insights we get are totally worth it.

IAM Role support

• Mid 2014 we added support for IAM roles. IAM is AWS's Identity and Access Management system. An IAM role is the secure, recommended way to authorize apps to call the AWS API on your behalf.
• Before IAM roles, the only way to provide access was to share secret keys which could get stolen. Worse, there was no way to tell who was using those keys to access your account or what they were doing.
• With IAM roles, there are no keys to steal and it is possible to log access by role to keep track of all actions performed on your behalf by 3rd party apps.
• We believe in multi-layered security, so we also developed what we internally call the 'hub-vault', a separate system acting as the gatekeeper for performing 'assume-role' API calls against Amazon STS.

Cloud deployment and management

• Completely redesigned dashboards (servers, domains, assets, etc.).
• Support for HVM instance types (bang-for-your-buck).
• Support for 'magical' VPC deployments (creates a VPC if needed, enables DNS attributes, creates and attaches an Internet Gateway, sets up VPC/Gateway routing, creates Subnets and associates routing tables).
• Improved launch page - inline usage fees, instance sizes tagged per generation, more advanced options (enable security notifications, availability zone selection).
• Currently supports 14.1 appliances, updated to 14.2 when released.
• Added support for multi-zones.
• Reserved instances now supports 3rd party offers.
• Server SSH fingerprints available in dashboard for OOB verification.

TurnKey Backup and Migration (TKLBAM)

• Completely redesigned dashboard.
• Support for IAM role STS credentials, and vanilla Amazon S3.
• Reduced storage fees ($0.03/GB).
• Backups are now stored in regional buckets with unique prefixes.
• Due to supporting vanilla S3, the Hub now has a TKLBAM free plan.

New billing system

• We now leverage Stripe to handle our billing, an industry leading payment processor who processes billions of dollars worth of transactions for thousands of companies. Integrated with end-to-end encryption from browser to Stripe, your credit card details never touch the Hub.
• The Hub now has stream-lined upgrade/downgrade functionality, with pro-rata support, as well as free trials.
• Previously the Hub leveraged Amazon DevPay for billing as well as TKLBAM storage. We've developed a migration mechanism to ease the move, as well as providing free-upgrades / discounts.

Amazon marketplace integration

• Users who have instances deployed via the Amazon marketplace can now register them with the Hub, and get the standard TKLBAM plan as well as support enabled in their account.

As usual, if you have feedback or ideas for improvement, please send it our way.

The TurnKey Hub lives at: https://hub.turnkeylinux.org