Encryption at Rest for Cloud Servers is now available. Encryption is supported both in MaxIOPS and HDD block storage tiers.

Encryption can be activated on any storage device upon creation, ensuring that all data written to the storage device is encrypted using AES-256. The management of encryption keys is handled entirely by UpCloud. This feature is provided at no extra cost.

With this enhancement, all data stored on UpCloud can benefit from encryption. Encryption at Rest is supported across block storages, Managed Databases, and Object Storage services.

Say hello to Network Peering: The new way to privately connect Cloud Servers on different accounts using Software-Defined Networking (SDN). With Network Peering, you can securely link cloud servers from different accounts, allowing resources across them to communicate privately as if they were part of a single, unified network.

Key benefits:

• Cross-account connectivity: Network Peering enables seamless connectivity between cloud servers across different UpCloud accounts, making it easier than ever to collaborate and share resources with partners, clients, or different departments within your organisation.

• Unified networks: Combine Cloud Servers from multiple accounts into a larger, seamless private network, expanding your infrastructure’s reach and flexibility.

• Hybrid cloud connectivity: Network Peering extends beyond UpCloud, enabling you to establish secure, private connections between your UpCloud environment and compatible external cloud providers like Aiven.io.

• Enhanced security: By ensuring that traffic between peered cloud servers never touches the public internet, Network Peering significantly improves your security posture, reducing exposure to potential threats.

• Improved performance: Enjoy low-latency, high-bandwidth connections between peered cloud servers, ideal for efficient data transfers and seamless collaboration across different cloud environments.

With Network Peering, UpCloud empowers you to build more connected, secure, and performant cloud environments across multiple accounts, unlocking new possibilities for your applications and workloads.

You can access Network Peering from the Network tab of the UpCloud Control Panel. For detailed instructions on how to set up and enable Network Peering, visit our Network Peering documentation.

We’re excited to announce that our Managed Load Balancer service can now be seamlessly integrated into your Private Cloud environment. This means you can now enjoy the full benefits of our powerful load balancing solution within the secure and customisable environment of your Private Cloud.

Our Managed Load Balancer service brings a host of advantages to your Private Cloud setup. It enhances the availability and performance of your applications by distributing traffic efficiently across your Private Cloud instances. This optimises resource utilisation and reduces latency, ensuring that your services remain responsive even during peak traffic periods or in the event of server failures.

Getting started is easy. Simply create a new load balancer in the same physical location as your Private Cloud. During the creation process, you’ll have the option to select a network from your Private Cloud, ensuring seamless integration with your existing infrastructure.

To learn more about setting up and using the Managed Load Balancer service, please refer to our documentation.

In our ongoing commitment to enhance the security of your cloud infrastructure, our Managed Database services can now seamlessly integrate with your Private Cloud environment using Software-Defined Networking (SDN). You can now establish a direct, completely internal connection between your Private Cloud and any of UpCloud’s Managed Database services.

This private connectivity option adds an extra layer of protection to your sensitive data by ensuring that all traffic remains within UpCloud’s secure internal network. By eliminating exposure to the public internet, you significantly reduce the risk of unauthorised access, data breaches, and other potential security threats.

Implementing private connectivity for Managed Databases is particularly advantageous for organisations operating in regulated industries or dealing with highly confidential information. It provides an additional level of assurance, helping you meet stringent compliance requirements and maintain the utmost data privacy.

We’re thrilled to announce that Kubernetes 1.28 is now available on UpCloud’s Managed Kubernetes service. This latest update brings a range of enhancements and features that will empower you to manage your Kubernetes clusters with greater flexibility, resilience, and efficiency.

What’s new in Kubernetes 1.28:

• Expanded supported skew between control plane and node versions: Kubernetes 1.28 extends the supported skew between core node and control plane components from n-2 to n-3, providing more flexibility in managing node upgrades.
• Recovery from non-graceful node shutdown: The ability to recover from non-graceful node shutdowns is now a stable feature, ensuring improved resilience and minimising the impact of node failures.
• Changes to console output in Kubernetes clusters: The kube-apiserver no longer returns formatted text responses when requests are made to /logs/, /portforward/, /exec/, or /debug/, simplifying the development of clients and tools.
• Updates to persistent volume deletion behavior: When the PersistentVolumeClaimDeletePoilcy feature gate is enabled, the DeleteClaim reclaim policy now removes the persistent volume claim (PVC) and persistent volume (PV) in the background asynchronously.
• Enhancement to the HPA API: The v2 autoscaling API now supports pod prioritisation, enabling custom pod ranking to determine which pods to scale down first during resource contention.
• Updates to the container runtime interface (CRI): CRI now supports four new features: multi-container pods, exec probe timeouts, named ports, and container image registry configuration.
• and more …

To explore the complete set of features and improvements in Kubernetes 1.28, please refer to the official Kubernetes release notes: https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/release/notes/

You can leverage Kubernetes 1.28 on UpCloud’s Managed Kubernetes service by deploying a new cluster in the UpCloud control panel.