While we'll have a detailed look at all of this in future articles (you can get a glimpse of it in our public changelog), there's one subject that's close to our heart: our images.

Redesigning images

Each time you deploy an add-on or application on our platform, our orchestrator provides you with a virtual machine based on Exherbo Linux, for which we have built the kernel and binaries specifically to guarantee a classic, high-performance, up-to-date and secure GNU/Linux environment. This environment is configured in a standard way, mainly via environment variables.

This minimal system, specific to our needs and ready to be configured, makes up what we call our images. Over the past few months, we've radically changed the way we design them. Until now, we had different images for each of our runtimes/languages, or almost all of them. Updating and testing images was sometimes complex and very manual. So we simplified and automated all of this.

For several weeks now, we've had regularly-generated image, which differs very little according to needs, and which we put through a battery of drastic tests to ensure that any application will deploy smoothly as it evolves. Implementation has been smooth over the months, and we are now at the end of a process that has been transparent to all our customers.

Why tell you about it today? Because it's what will enable us to gradually review and improve the way you deploy applications on Clever Cloud. We've already laid a few building blocks here and there, like the integration of uv for Python, for example. But things are going to change much more significantly over the coming months and through 2025. One of our biggest runtimes is PHP.

PHP 8.4, sessions in Materia KV

Our discussions with the community at last year's PHP Forum gave us the opportunity to think about how we could improve things. One of the recurring requests was for us to be more responsive in our support for new versions of PHP. The changes we've made will enable us to test the move to PHP 8.4, expected at the end of November, more quickly. Once it's been validated and integrated into Clever Cloud, you'll be able to activate it via a simple environment variable update.

The flexibility of PHP sessions was also a recurring topic. Currently, they can rely on local persistent storage or a Redis database linked to your application. This summer, we worked to tailor our Materia KV technology to this need. A few days ago, we put a new version into production, with support for expiring keys and commands enabling it to be supported transparently for users.

• Deploy a demo PHP application with sessions in Materia KV

This is quite simple: retrieve the above repository content with git, Clever Tools, then create a PHP application as if it were to host its sessions on a Redis database, the code is identical:

clever create -t php --alias phpSessions
clever env set ENABLE_REDIS "true"
clever env set SESSION_TYPE "redis"

Once done, create a Materia KV add-on and link it to the application you've just created:

clever addon create kv phpSessionsKV --link phpSessions

After that, just deploy the application, and in a few seconds you'll have the expected result, taking advantage of everything that goes with the Clever Cloud platform: keeping it up and running, domains and TLS certificates management, logs, metrics, and so on.

clever deploy & clever open

How did we achieve this? When we designed Materia KV, we set out to create a different kind of key-value database, complementary to our current offering. It is therefore distributed and highly resilient (the data is written in three of our data centers in Paris), but can be used almost seamlessly, since it is compatible with existing ecosystems.

For example, it currently supports the protocol on which Redis is based, and can be used with similar commands or clients such as iredis, redis-cli, valkey-cli, graphical interfaces, etc. We will shortly be adding Dynamo DB and GraphQL.

• Learn more about Materia KV

Franken PHP, better deployment

Another topic close to our hearts is the integration of Franken PHP, developed by our friends and partners at Les Tilleuls. Mixing PHP with a Caddy web server in a rather elegant and unusual way, this solution allows us to think differently about the deployment and configuration of PHP applications, and is increasingly appealing in this ecosystem, which has largely regained vitality in recent years.

We tested it on Clever Cloud, and explained to some customers how to deploy it, via Docker or natively. Above all, we wanted to go one step further and integrate it directly into our images, to simplify its use within our platform. This will soon be the case, thanks to our work on simplifying and redesigning our images. At the same time, we'll be gradually improving our deployment of PHP.

At the moment, we're operating on the basis of the language's legacy, some of which dates back to versions 5.x or 7.x, which can sometimes hold us back in the developments we'd like to implement. After the release of PHP 8.4, we're going to stick to the “historical” operation of our PHP image, so that our customers can benefit from stability in the deployment of their applications.

But most of all, it will enable us to reinvent some areas by focusing on actively supported versions of PHP, with clear management of application and runtime lifecycles. We'll tell you more about this plan later in the year.

Let's discuss at PHP Forum

As you may have gathered, the PHP community is very important to us. That's why we're partnering with AFUP again this year. We'll be present at the 2024 PHP Forum being held on October 10 and 11 at the New York Hotel in Disneyland Paris. Don't hesitate to come and chat with us, we'll have a few surprises and exclusives to show off on site. It will also be an opportunity for you to share your feedback and requests. Because that's how we want to build the future of Clever Cloud: together.

This membership is in line with Clever Cloud's commitment to open source, its promotion and protection.

A unique vision of open source

Joining the Eclipse Foundation reflects Clever Cloud's desire to play an active role in strengthening open source and, in particular, in building a strategically autonomous European cloud. As recent developments in the market for proprietary virtualisation software have shown, it is imperative to have open source alternatives to these, whose governance is indisputable and transparent. The Eclipse Foundation is the ideal partner for this: an association under Belgian law, it offers neutral and open governance, and promotes and enables the implementation of best practice in this area for the projects it supports.

"We are very proud to be joining the Eclipse Foundation. This membership embodies our ambition to strengthen open source, as well as to develop the strategic autonomy essential to the emergence and distribution of independent clouds, in Europe and around the world," says Quentin Adam, CEO of Clever Cloud.

"We are delighted to welcome Clever Cloud to the Eclipse Foundation. Their commitment to open source aligns perfectly with our mission to foster transparent governance and promote best practices in open technology projects,” said Mike Milinkovich, Executive Director at the Eclipse Foundation. “As part of our community, Clever Cloud will participate in a number of important initiatives that promote European innovation with a worldwide impact."

For the development of open source in Europe and worldwide

By participating in the Eclipse Foundation ecosystem, Clever Cloud aims to:

• Promote open source in Europe and worldwide: Through shared values and a commitment to businesses and organisations, this membership will contribute to the wider adoption of open source in Europe and worldwide. This supports an independent digital economy, encouraging local innovation and reducing dependency on proprietary solutions and technological lock-in;
• Promoting transparent governance: While open source projects are now essential components of any application, it is important to ensure that they remain free and open. Clear, stable governance that is immune to privatisation abuses is the guarantee of their development, the investment they attract and their longevity;
• Continuing to innovate in the development of open solutions: A shared belief in open source, the impact of sharing knowledge and its intrinsic quality of innovation through collaborative work. Motivated by the quality of software and its maintainability, Clever Cloud has long been invested in the development of open solutions such as Sōzu, Exherbo, Biscuit, etc.

This membership supports Clever Cloud's commitment to the strategic autonomy of cloud software components, of which open source is an essential building block, for the maintenance of robust, open and transparent innovation. This support for local innovation and technological development gives European companies the opportunity to collaborate and develop solutions tailored to the specific needs of their markets.

Clever Cloud will be contributing a number of its open source projects to the foundation in the near future, providing an opportunity to strengthen the availability of alternatives to proprietary software with unquestionable and transparent governance.

About the Eclipse Foundation: The Eclipse Foundation provides our global community of individuals and organisations with a business-friendly environment for open source software collaboration and innovation. We host the Eclipse IDE, Adoptium, Software Defined Vehicle, Jakarta EE, and over 415 open source projects, including runtimes, tools, specifications, and frameworks for cloud and edge applications, IoT, AI, automotive, systems engineering, open processor designs, and many others. Headquartered in Brussels, Belgium, the Eclipse Foundation is an international non-profit association supported by over 360 members. Visit us at this year’s Open Community Experience (OCX) conference on 22-24 October 2024 in Mainz, Germany. To learn more, follow us on social media @EclipseFdn, LinkedIn, or visit eclipse.org.

When you deploy an application with Clever Cloud, it's not just put online and maintained in operational conditions. We deliver it with a host of services and functions dedicated to optimising your log management, throughout the lifecycle of your application.

We upgraded it last year to rely on Vector for emission, Apache Pulsar for ingestion and consumption, while ensuring isolation between each user (multi-tenant) and each application. The previous solution had shown its limitations and prevented us from delivering some enhancements. Our main objective was to improve our users' experience on many different levels.

A new log management experience at Clever Cloud

We've been using it successfully in our Clever Tools command line interface (CLI) for several months now. You can view your logs live, download those for a given time window, or even filter them, with the results available in a variety of formats. Documentation is available here. Of course, this feature is based on our APIv4, which is also documented there.

The next step was to integrate this new technical brick into the Console. This was an opportunity for us to rethink the section dedicated to logs so that it exploited our Web Components and met our criteria in terms of usability, functionality and accessibility. Our team spent several months rethinking it from top to bottom.

After an internal testing phase, it is now available in beta to all our customers. They can choose it by clicking on a simple link in the interface, and return to the old one whenever they want. Our objective is to continuously improve this section, and then gradually extend it to all our services. To share your feedback, we've created a community space on GitHub for the purpose:

• Go to the Clever Cloud Console
• Give your opinion on our new Logs interface

A myriad of details…

The previous interface allowed you to browse your latest deployments and their various instances one by one. The new interface goes one step further, listing by default all deployments and instances of an application over the last 7 days. The logs of the most recent deployment will be loaded, but you can also add or remove those of the instance of your choice. Each deployment is identified by the hash of the related code commit, with instances numbered (in the case of horizontal scalability).

You can reduce the time window to a few days or a few hours, or even manually indicate start and end times, which is useful when you're looking for specific information, for example, when tracking down a bug. You also have a text filter above the main area. It will evolve with the introduction of an indexing mechanism that will open up new possibilities in this area.

Of course, you can also follow the publication of your logs live. This will be the section displayed by default when a deployment is in progress.

... and of features

The main area lets you select one or more lines with the keyboard and mouse via the gutter on the left, with the option of copying the result to the clipboard just as simply by pressing CTRL+C/Cmd+C. At the top right you'll find a button to set the area to full screen, another to return to the bottom of your logs and a settings area.

Although it's still new, it's already quite complete and uses our new API for user settings. It lets you choose between different light/dark themes, remove colors and ANSI codes, line wrap or not, define a format for date and time, choose whether to display in your time zone or in UTC, distinguish instances by name, etc. Of course, this is subject to change, so don't hesitate to make suggestions.

We'll keep you posted on future improvements in our Changelog (via its RSS feed), or on this blog for the next big steps between now and general availability. Don't forget to follow us on LinkedIn or X/Twitter to keep up to date.

Hosting your sites through a service such as Clever Cloud is not just about sending your files to a server. It is gaining in simplicity of execution, in velocity, and more importantly, ensuring that they are kept in operating conditions.

For each application or add-on deployed, you automatically get services such as backups, log management or metrics monitoring. So you can be assured that you are ready for production.

A new metric tile

This also includes a number of features that make it easy for you to access essential information through our Console. Among its recent improvements, we added a new "tile" in the overview of each of your applications:

Here you will find the vCPU and memory usage over a 24-hour period, in the form of a graph with 24 bars, each representing one hour. An average value is also displayed, corresponding to the last hour.

A three-level color scheme allows you to instantly identify a situation that needs your attention, or to make sure that everything is fine. An information panel explains how the elements are working and you have shortcuts to more complete metrics or to the Grafana dashboard related to your application.

And if you don't want to have to worry about the load level of your application and want to feel more peaceful, think about activating the auto-scalability. It allows you to constantly increase or decrease the size or number of your instances as needed, while respecting the limits you defined. 

A convenient and accessible web component

Of course, this tile has been developed as a Web Component, documented here, that you can freely use. It is also the first one to follow our accessibility rules, from buttons and links to screen reader handling: it will feature a table for the graphic.

In 2022, Clever Cloud has more than doubled its team to improve services and develop new ones by strengthening its R&D department. We also wanted to take more time to fine-tune the core of our customers' daily life: the Console.

This is the web interface they use to manage and deploy their applications and add-ons, access their metrics, logs, etc. It is developed by our front-end team, led by Hubert Sablonnière, who recently welcomed 4 new members.

Since then, they’ve been focused on improving the consistency of the Console's elements, with an important concern for both user experience and accessibility. Background work has been done as well: general improvement of the code, testing and deployment procedures, redesign of the notification system, icon management, generation of the Clever Components documentation and clarification of some prices.

SSH keys: a more useful and clear interface 

A few weeks ago, we also implemented a new SSH keys management form, using Clever Components for a better accessibility and an adjustment to all screens. It is especially more understandable, with contextual help, explicit error messages, better focus management, etc. 

There are now three sections: one for adding a new key, a second one listing existing keys, which you can delete, and finally the one used to import GitHub keys. For every case, the basic commands are explained:

Streamlined email and member management 

We have done the same with email and member management of an organization. The core elements have also been redesigned to use our components and better adapt to different device formats with improved accessibility. 

But we especially made sure that useful elements are presented in a clear way. For example, the primary and secondary emails of an account are distinguished, with a mention in case of verification and the possibility to change the status at any time:

For the management of an organization, a three-zone structure has been implemented: one for inviting members, another for listing those present and their roles, as well as their management (editing, deleting), and finally a third for leaving an organization, identified as a "danger zone". 

A thorough work has also been done on the messages and information provided, especially to better identify members who have not activated the double authentication on their account (2FA), with a specific filter available:

These improvements are only the beginning of the Console evolution, which will continue throughout 2023, with a roadmap already well underway and big projects about to be completed. Good news by the way: the new logs interface is being finalized, we'll tell you about it soon ;)

Good news! The procedure to install Matomo (formerly Piwik) on a Clever Cloud instance is now much easier! We've automated the whole thing, so all you have to do is to order an add-on from the Clever Cloud Console.

As a reminder, Matomo is an audience measurement tool known for its quality, providing reliable and detailed statistics on visitors and their browsing. It allows you to replace solutions such as Google Analytics whose use has become illegal in Europe, due to the transfer of data to the United States, without specific consent before any data collection.

A few years ago, we explained how to install Piwik (now Matomo) on Clever Cloud, within our servers hosted in France. At that time, the procedure required several steps. Now, simply create an add-on via the Console. You will then benefit from all the advantages of our platform in terms of scalability, per-second billing, maintaining operational conditions, simplified management and updating.

Before we explain how, let's explain why.

Why it is illegal to impose Google Analytics in France

In a press release dated 10 February, the CNIL (France's independant data protection authority) informed all French website and application publishers that they can no longer integrate Google Analytics, under penalty of sanctions. Three companies have been ordered to change their audience analysis tools. The commission in charge of monitoring personal data protection notes that Google's solution involves transferring visitors data to the United States of America, which is not currently legal under the GPDR. In April, 2022, the Austrian data protection authority (DPA) reached the exact same conclusion.

These decisions are an expected consequence of the "Schrems II" ruling of the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) published on 16 July 2020. The CJEU invalidated the legal mechanism by which the European Commission claimed that the US provides an adequate level of protection for personal data received. In a completely opposite view, the Court made it very clear that the US intelligence legislation is disproportionate and that the remedies are insufficient. 

It therefore removed the overall legal framework by which transfers to the US were possible, and left it to the national authorities to check whether other (contractual) mechanisms were workable. In France and Austria, the DPAs concludes that it is impossible to transfer data to the US under the current state of US legislation and the frameworks provided. Hence the ongoing discussions, the outcome of which is still uncertain, on an arrangement allowing a new UE-USA transfer agreement.

Until then, companies that do not replace Google Analytics or tools that transfer data to the U.S. without specific and prior consent are at risk of being sanctioned in the case of an inspection by a DPA. By issuing public warnings without naming the sanctioned companies, the Commission wants to make it clear that all of them must comply, for example by using an alternative that allows data to remain in the European Union.

Replace Google Analytics with Matomo

This is what Matomo provides. It's a very complete and open source audience analysis tool, recommended for several years by the CNIL. It can be exempted from consent request when configured the right way. 

While it is already possible to set it up on Clever Cloud, we made the process easier through the creation of a dedicated add-on. By installing a Matomo instance in our platform, you keep control of your visitors' audience analysis data. It is no longer sent to the USA. 

Clever Cloud hosts this data for you, on servers located in France.

How to install Matomo?

From the Clever Cloud Console and in the desired organization, select "Create…" then "… an add-on" and "Matomo". Validate and it's done! We have chosen to make the dependencies of this add-on transparent and independent.

How Matomo works on Clever Cloud

The Matomo add-on on Clever Cloud deploys automatically:

• A PHP application configured with a working Matomo (Nano instance)
• A MySQL database (XXS BigStorage instance)
• A Redis cache (S instance)

You can then adjust the settings to suit your needs, or even enable auto-scaling (horizontal and/or vertical). 

As with the other add-ons we provide, Matomo is specially configured to take advantage of the Single Sign On (SSO) identification of the Clever Cloud Console, then you'll be able to create your users directly from Matomo. The documentation is available here.

In 2017, the French Octobus team made an observation: Git is gaining power in the Concurrent Version Systems' field (CVS), helped by proprietary platforms such as GitHub or open platforms such as GitLab. This gradually discouraged users who abandoned competing solutions and communities.

This was notably the case with Mercurial, whose users wanted to take advantage of the benefits while using a modern project management solution. An idea was to adapt the community edition of GitLab to Mercurial.

Heptapod was born. The tool, open source, was developed during two years before a first demonstration, then stabilized. It entered its production phase in 2020. At this time Georges Racinet, project maintainer, met Clever Cloud and this led to the creation of our first hosted service: heptapod.host.

We were regularly asked for forges as a complement to our offer and our CI/CD solutions, allowing our customers to deploy in France, with the simplicity and efficiency of the Clever Cloud platform, without being dependent on a third-party, proprietary solution, whose conditions can change overnight.

Heptapod seemed to us to be the perfect fit to meet this need: it is a full GitLab offering, with the possibility of using Mercurial as a CVS for those who want it. Most importantly, it allows us to deploy our own features with ease, as with the recently implemented runners.

Hosting of open source projects can be offered for free. You can also take advantage of a maximum of 1 GB and 100 public users at no cost. Beyond that or for private users/repositories, you will be charged at the current rate.

You can use Heptapod now, the only thing you need is a Clever Cloud account.

• Heptapod documentation

You use Kubernetes in your usual workflow and you wish to keep it this way all while using Clever Cloud?
We designed the Kubernetes Clever Operator for this exact purpose! You get to keep on using the tools you're familiar with, while enjoying the performant features Clever Cloud provides, such as automatic scalability or monitoring tools.

Why a Clever Operator?

We began to work on the Clever Operator following feedbacks from some of our clients using k8s or Openshift who weren't really satisfied about the database management solutions provided by these platforms. Then, we released this operator to answer these needs and now we are proud to announce you can even find it on Operator Hub! The Clever Operator is the best way for our customers to migrate from Kubernetes or Openshift to Clever Cloud managed solutions.

How does it work?

At Clever Cloud, we provide an HTTP API to interact with the managed services we expose. This API is located at api.clever-cloud.com. The Clever Operator works as an interface between the Kubernetes Apiserver and the Clever Cloud API. It exposes Clever Cloud's add-ons through custom resource definition. For now, it can expose the following add-ons: PostgreSQL, Redis, MySQL, MongoDB and Pulsar.

The Clever Operator is compatible with k8s v1.21.0 or above, make sure to use one of these.

How to install it? Three steps to go:

1. First, install the Clever Operator. Either build it from the source code on Github or use our docker image on Docker Hub.

1. Then, configure it. It boils down to setting up CLEVER_OPERATOR_* environment variables. For example, you need to create a token to connect to the API.

1. Finally, create your custom resource definition. Here is a YAML example of what it looks like, for a PostgreSQL database:

apiVersion: api.clever-cloud.com/v1
kind: PostgreSql
metadata:
  namespace: default
  name: postgresql
spec:
  organisation: orga_xxxx
  options:
    version: 13
    encryption: false
  instance:
    region: par
    plan: s_sml

Once, the resource is created you could use the Secret created by the operator as a file directly mounted in your Pod or through environment variables. You have examples of how to do it through the examples folder or following those documentations "Using Secrets as Environment Variables" or "Using Secrets as Files from a Pod".

Now you know how the Clever Operator works! We would be happy to have your feedback about this tool. Please feel free to create an issue here, for any suggestion of enhancement you might have.

Earlier this week, we released some changes in how we present our invoices. The result: invoices that help you understand what you pay and what to expect next time.

As an introduction, let's describe our problem: Clever Cloud bills you for the services you used over a given period, and asks you to credit your account in advance to cover the next billing period. The next invoice will consume your prepaid credits and ask for more credits for the next period, and so on. Up until now, your credits balance at a given time was not clearly displayed. That was a problem. The other problem lies in the management of free credits. These free credits have an expiration date. We had to write this explicitly in the invoices.

Now that we have expressed our problem, let's dive into the solution!

A clearer first page

First, we reworded items on the first page. In part to please our new legal service, but mostly because the existing terms were confusing. E.g. where you had "Clever Cloud consumption", you get "Platform usage fees". Add a few tweaks to make this first page easy to understand: we display a subtotal of everything you owe us for using the service (that's the new "Total fees" line). After that we display how much credits where removed or need to be added to your prepaid account. This gives us the grand total to pay.

Explicating free credits

The next change appears on the second page: we give you a breakdown of all the free credits consumed / expired this month and how we compute the credits to remove or to add to the invoice.

On this second page you have: all the free credits you are entitled to, which ones have come to expire, how much you still have left to cover the next billing period. You also have all the variables we use to compute the added or consumed credits that show on the first page.

This second page will help you keep track of your prepaid credits balance and have a better understanding of why we charge you this specific amount.

With these changes, your accountant should be happy! Hopefully, this will help them understand our invoices and give them time they can spend trying to figure out invoices of your other providers! 😇

Clever Cloud applications to run your jobs

Enhance your Clever Cloud deployments workflow

pipeline {
  environment {
    CLEVER_TOKEN = credentials('CLEVER_TOKEN')
    CLEVER_SECRET = credentials('CLEVER_SECRET')
  }

  stage('clever-tools') {
      steps {
        script {
          sh 'npm install -g clever-tools'
       }
     }
  }

  stage('tests') {
    // Your tests steps
  }

  stage('deployment') {
    steps {
      script {
        // Deploy the application
        // A .clever.json file must exists in the repository
        sh 'clever deploy'
      }
    }
  }
}

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