PHP 7 support and portable public IP addresses now available on Layershift Jelastic PaaS
We’ve just added 2 more great features to our Jelastic PaaS to help you to deploy and run your sites with maximum performance and efficiency.
PHP 7: Max performance, minimum cost
Hot on the heels of introducing PHP 7 to our Cloud VPS hosting plans, we’re happy to follow it up by announcing the immediate availability of PHP 7 on the Layershift Jelastic PaaS as well.
Until now, our Jelastic PaaS was a great place to check your code for PHP 7 compatibility, via the Docker(R) based container images – available since the PHP 7 project launched its release candidates, but from today PHP 7 has graduated to a first class citizen of our Jelastic PaaS.
Why is PHP 7 so exciting? Besides an assortment of new language features to take your productivity to the next level, PHP 7 offers substantial performance increases whilst also using less memory.
Thanks to our unique auto-vertical scaling – where you only pay for resource consumption, not instance size – this means using PHP 7 saves money. I’ll say that again, very slowly:
Merry Christmas to All!
“Our hearts grow tender with childhood memories and love of kindred, and we are better throughout the year for having, in spirit, become a child again at Christmas-time.”
― Laura Ingalls Wilder
Time flies by and yet again Christmas is upon us. At this very special time of year, it is important to us to ensure that you don’t have to worry about server downtime or any hosting problems, so you can take your time to appreciate the most important things in life.
We want to make sure that you have time to become a child again and experience the true spirit of Christmas!
Using New Relic on our Jelastic PaaS made easy
In the wake of Black Friday / Cyber Monday, you’re probably not alone if you’re scratching your head wondering how to make sure your January Sale runs a little smoother!
New Relic is one of the most popular tools to monitor application performance and identify troublesome code bottlenecks. Such deep insights are invaluable because they enable you to focus your effort on the parts that need you most.
The immense flexibility of our Jelastic PaaS means it was always easy to install New Relic on a Java based environment, but now we are pleased to offer an easy solution for PHP environments too!
All Layershift Jelastic PaaS customers can now install New Relic on their PHP environments with just a few clicks.
New Relic – A watchdog you want to keep safe
There are many application monitoring services that will keep vigil and inform you if something goes wrong, but unlike most New Relic is not focused on your uptime. It focuses on performance.
Almost uniquely, this tool enables you to drill down through your code, so you know which specific function calls or SQL queries were executing slowly – not just that the overall response to the end user was slower.
Of course this is combined with a lovely sprinkling of RUM (real user monitoring) features and general performance tracking alerts to round out the solution.
Overall we think this makes New Relic a really useful companion for any production server, as it allows you to keep a close eye over your app performance AND know what steps to take if performance starts to degrade. This is crucial when it comes to maintaining user experience during those seasonal traffic peaks.
How to run Slack alternative Mattermost in 5 minutes on Layershift Jelastic PaaS!
Mattermost is self-hosted team communication service bringing messaging and file sharing into one place, accessible across PCs and phones, with archiving and search. It integrates with an array of applications and because it is an open source project, you can build whatever new functionality you need atop its core features.
Although the Mattermost developers publish a Docker image, they do not recommend it for production deployment. So we’ve done the hard work for you and created a pre-packaged production-ready Mattermost environment using nginx and postgres nodes.
To install Mattermost, simply log into your Jelastic Dashboard, open Marketplace and search for ‘mattermost’:
Enhanced Docker® Lifecycle Support on Layershift Jelastic PaaS
The latest platform upgrade on the Layershift Jelastic PaaS delivers three great headline benefits that every Layershift customer should take advantage of today.
1. Docker® on Jelastic PaaS is now GA
Unless you’ve been hiding under a rock, you’ve probably heard of Docker®. That little fish has made big waves.
Back in April, we announced how Layershift’s private cloud customers were already using Jelastic together with the Docker® packaging standard to use this technology in advanced real-world DevOps workflows.
We just made this a whole lot easier and more flexible with support for volumes. Volumes allow you to dispose of your container without disposing of your data – hence you can upgrade your container to a later version (e.g. switch Docker® image tag).
With this feature we are also making our Docker® feature GA (generally available) to all paid public PaaS account customers by default, marking it out as a first-class citizen available for all to use and enjoy.
This is a great moment to briefly recap the main benefits of using Docker® powered nodes within your Jelastic PaaS environments:
- Instant access to 100,000+ pre-defined server templates, giving you the ability to deploy a wider range of server software than ever before.
- Define your own server templates – including standing on the shoulders of giants by basing your template atop of any existing one (for example, if you just need to make a minor modification or addition).
- Deploy the same server template on your laptop (e.g. via Docker® Compose) as you use in production on our Jelastic PaaS.