Go behind the scenes with Kubernetes Dashboard

As you'll no doubt have read, ElfHosted is not a traditional seedbox, VPS, or shared hosting provider, but rather something new - we run the apps you choose, on a selection of appropriate hosts, in a highly-available and fault-tolerant way, using Kubernetes. And we open-source it all.

Kubernetes

What's the downside?

This distinction has many advantages (automation, scalability, resilience...), and some complex implications - for one, your apps don't necessarily run on the same hardware, so it may be that Radarr, Sonarr, and qBittorrent are all running on different hosts with different storage and processor capabilities. Our streamers (Plex, Jellyfin, Emby), for example, run on hosts with Intel Quicksync support, for hardware transcoding support.

We can't (easily) provide TCP-based access for services like SSH or FTP, which is why we rely on rlcone and WebDAV for data migrations, and we can't provide "root access" because each app runs on an as-locked-down-as-possible container, dispersed across our cluster.

One previously negative implication has been (until now...) that it's not simple to see app's real-time CPU / memory usage, or to watch logs in realtime. Certainly, these are available at a cluster-admin level, but without complicated authentication integrations, it's not possible to provide a user with visibility into their own resources, without exposing the privacy of other users.

A sexy solution!

We now have a solution I'm particularly proud of, because it exposes our Kubernetes environment on a per-user basis, in a way that's safe, while still providing all the cool visibility.. which I'm happy to now be able to share with you...

Behold, the mighty Kubernetes Dashboard!

(Read more for the sexy solution, plus details on which Open Source projects we sponsor, and how we help you to help your favorite app devs!)

Using your own dedicated, locked-down and SSO-secured Kubernetes Dashboard instance, you can see your app (pod) CPU/RAM usage, watch logs in realtime, and even restart apps (an alternative to ElfBot).

In time, I plan to expand this to limited editing of ConfigMaps, which will allow easy¹ customizing of app environments, for more complex apps which rely on many ENV variables.

Support your favorite app devs

When I posted recently in the TRaSH-Guides Discord about ElfHosted, I was challenged by a user on why I was "selling" free software (Radarr, etc), and whether or not I did anything to support the devs behind the projects I was "profiting from"².

I did clear up the misunderstanding (we're not "selling" free software, we're selling the resources and management to let you run that free software), but since then I've wanted to do more to support the devs behind the projects we rely on.

I don't have an easy or prescriptive solution, but what I've decided to do currently is to sponsor the tools which make the whole platform work, and to make it easy for individual users to choose how / whether to sponsor / support the developers of the software they use. I'll be adding sponsorship as an ongoing expense to our monthly "Elf-Disclosure" progress reports, since these components are critical to the operation of our platform.

I created the "sponsorship" page, to detail the projects I sponsor, and my rationale behind this decision.

I've also added links to every app's page (i.e., Calibre or Jellyfin, to pick at random) to the project's direct sponsorship / donation options.

Bug fix : NZBGet /config volume

A user support request unearthed another bug yesterday - NZBGet's /config volume was previously set to a maximum of 1GB (as many apps are). It turns out that if you have a big queue, and /config fills up, NBZGet doesn't tell you, but fails when adding new NZBs, resulting in a confusing and complicated fault-finding process!

Consequently, NZBGet's /config volume is now expanded to 2GB!

(There's a related, as-yet-unfixed bug preventing the dashboard from highlighting this full-uppage to you in a big, red banner!)

Today's scoreboard

Summary

As always, thanks for building with us!