Hey, fellow server dweller 👋

Ivan here with an exciting iximiuz Labs update! The month isn't over yet, so it's not quite time for the traditional monthly roundup. However, there have been so many updates on the platform in the past couple of weeks that they couldn't possibly fit into a single email. So, let's dive in 🚀

Backend Revamp: Faster, Smarter, Stronger

Over the past few weeks, I rolled out a significant backend rewrite at iximiuz Labs, and I couldn't be more excited to share the improvements with you:

• Device Mapper-powered VM drives (in all regions): By switching to copy-on-write storage, I’ve bumped up the playground disk limit and shaved 1-3 seconds off boot times. A win-win for speed and flexibility!
• Smarter playground orchestration: Fleet servers now gracefully reject playground start attempts when overloaded or not ready, and the Foreman orchestrator retries across all regions, starting with your preferred one.
• Almost instant Bender daemon restarts: This is more on the operational side, but it makes managing the labs much smoother.
• Automatic playground updates: New playground root filesystem versions are now rolled out without requiring the Bender daemon restarts. Behind-the-scenes magic that makes everything more reliable.

These last two might not be visible to you, but they're major steps toward a more robust platform: reliability++ and operations--!

And if you're wondering wtf is Foreman and Bender, you might find this archive post on iximiuz Labs architecture interesting:

More and Better Playgrounds

Some big upgrades are now live:

• ​New Python Playground: Whether it's running quick experiments or testing out fun tools like Simon Willison's latest creations, you can experiment freely without worrying about comprising your main system while running uv scripts from remote URLs 🙈
• Two new flavors of the Kubernetes Omni Playground: calico and static networking setups for an even more comprehensive learning experience.
• Double the storage for every playground: All playgrounds now come with 40GB of disk space per VM (up from 20GB).
• Increased CPU and memory limits for premium tiers: Certain playgrounds - like Docker, K3s, K3s Bare, Go, Node.js, Zig, and more - now have roughly double the CPU and memory resources for Premium users. Enjoy!

Custom Playgrounds with labctl

​Custom playgrounds are gaining traction 💪 And the most popular request from the playground creators so far has been the ability to manage custom playgrounds from the command line. So now you can create, view, and update custom playgrounds in the command line with Kubernetes-styled YAML manifests:

• Create a new playground: labctl playground create
• View a playground manifest (even for base playgrounds): labctl playground manifest
• Update an existing playground: labctl playground update

👉 Check out the latest release of labctl.

Reminder: New "Asia" Region

If you're using iximiuz Labs from locations like India, Singapore, or nearby, don't forget to try the new Asia region! Switching your region on the dashboard page can significantly reduce latency for your web terminal. Happy hacking with smoother connections!

New Challenges to Tackle

It's been a while, but I've got two fresh DevOps challenges ready for you 🎯

​CKA Practice: Configure Network Policies To Restrict Traffic Between Pods - generously contributed by Adam Leskis, this exercise focuses on configuring Kubernetes network policies to ensure pods with specific labels can communicate - and nothing else. A must-try for anyone preparing for CKA certification!

​Troubleshoot and Fix Out-of-Memory Issues in a Go Application Deployment - too hot off the press, this challenge walks you through debugging resource constraints in a containerized Go application. Learn to keep your app stable under moderate traffic without crashing.

Wrapping Up

That's it for today. I hope some of the updates were relevant to your particular way of using the platform, and as always, thank you for being part of iximiuz Labs! Your support keeps the lights on and the playgrounds running. Happy learning!

Cheers,

Ivan

P.S. This is your traditional reminder that iximiuz Labs are even better at the premium tier. The year is about to end, and if your company has a "use it or lose it" learning budget, getting an iximiuz Labs Premium membership is a perfect opportunity to invest in your professional development.