Introduction

We have been working hard over these months to bring you some sweet features that will make the developer experience on Artifakt even sweeter. 

With the next Artifakt Console, deploying a cloud instance is as simple as running the “artifakt create” command. It will give you an up-to-date dev environment for continuous delivery and DevOps flow that rolls out a new code to staging or production with zero downtime in one command. You can also pick from one of the community-supported Docker images with just one command — no need to maintain an ever-growing image library like with other PaaS. Finally, if needed, you can always connect Artifakt PaaS directly to your Gitlab or Github account and use already existing build pipelines and release flows to automate your deployments to the cloud.

Looking for a flexible and scalable solution for your web applications? OK, here is what we have for you! Let’s take a closer look at the future features that will make Artifakt a great choice for your projects.

1. Bring Your Own Docker Image

Artifakt Console replaces the need for deploying virtual machines and installing server software. It will use your existing Docker image to run on Artifakt’s cloud platform. This removes the need to maintain an on-premise build and release pipeline, as you can use your existing infrastructure.

In the past, you could only run your app in Artifakt on a per-server basis. You needed to have all the builds and dependencies available locally to production, which is a hassle for sysadmins and SREs. It also meant that in order to scale your application, you had to move services from one server to another manually.

We are changing that by allowing you to use any Docker image as your runtime! All you need to do is connect your code to our Artifakt Platform, from the git provider of your choice like Github, Gitlab or any git-compliant service. Then, when you build, and deploy your app, Artifakt will pull the image and run it on the cloud automatically! To make sure this works, we’ve introduced two new concepts: Build Assets and Runtime Assets. Build Assets are all the necessary files for building your application (Dockerfile etc.). Runtime Assets are the artifacts that are required from runtime (secrets, application configuration etc.). With these assets in place, running in console mode is as easy as choosing a runtime from the list of our available languages or frameworks and clicking deploy!

Of course, it will grant you the benefit of using a Dockerfile, as all your existing build tools remain intact — the Artifakt platform does not interfere with existing configuration and processes. In fact, it doesn’t really matter what’s inside a container at all, just that it’s software running in a sandboxed environment.

2. Artifakt shell version of the console

Have you ever wondered how to deal with a case where you need to stop the current coding session, select a browser window, navigate through the clutter of browser tabs, click on one of them and log again to finally get access to the information you were looking for?

If only there was a better way…

Well, today we are excited to introduce the future release of Artifakt Shell. As other world-class providers before, we are augmenting our PaaS with new possibilities through your beloved terminal. It looks similar in terms of features but it gives you access on a whole user experience level. Before we show you how it works, let’s talk about why we decided to do this.

The first reason is that most developers are confused by too many dashboards. Let’s face it, it’s hard to adapt to an ever-changing web frontend, plus they hate switching windows and fiddling with clicks and screens just to make their PaaS work. They prefer having everything at their fingertips, so they can focus on actual development.

The second reason is that many people want to automate their development process or run their tasks in parallel, so they don’t sit idle. We all hate waiting for something, don’t we?

Artifakt Shell is a CLI for Artifakt PaaS (Platform as a Service). Think of it as a tool with built-in powers of automation and integration. You can use it to manage your apps, deploy new versions of your apps, and make automated scripts to augment your delivery pipelines. Good news, this tool was designed with the keyboard-loving developers in mind by our own in-house keyboard-loving developers: core actions and events will be accessible through all shells and platforms. 

That means, yes, the Command Line Interface allows running Artifakt commands without leaving your favorite Windows/Linux terminal: just write your command, press “Enter” and get instant results, no more browser page reload delays, and no more switching through multiple browser pages!

Shell edition allows you to keep scripts in local files or import them from GitHub repositories. With this tool, you’ll never run out of ideas on how to automate more of your workflows!

Artifakt CLI will be available for Linux, MacOS and Windows.

3. Artifakt Kubernetes Engine

For those of you that are not aware yet, Kubernetes is a tool for container orchestration. It has become the de facto standard now and its adoption rate has been growing day by day.

However, with Kubernetes being a very complex platform, operating your own clusters often is a nightmare — launching it, but also managing the monitoring, alerting, data, and connectivity. Do you really need to spend hours and days running your infrastructure?

In today’s fast-paced world, slow deployments make you fall behind in the competition. This means fewer bugs fixed, or fewer features pushed to customers. Moreover, if you have to manage your servers and containers yourself, you will waste a lot of time on networking and other low-level stuff that could be automated or require expertise, resulting in loss of business and growth of technical debt.

As a result, we have been working on a new Kubernetes deployment engine for Artifakt that will dramatically improve the speed of your deployments and decrease your costs, without needing a dedicated Kubernetes expert in your team.

We are proud to introduce the new Artifakt Kubernetes Engine. It runs everything faster, while still supporting auto-scaling, easy maintenance and easy upgrades. It handles routing and load-balancing for you in a transparent way without requiring a single line of code from you. Speed is guaranteed by using our exclusive infrastructure layers.

With the new engine we are building for your infrastructure, you will find up to 5x speed on deployments. You can also keep an eye on our upcoming freemium plan that will give you the opportunity to safely experience your new superpowers.

Artifakt Kubernetes Engine frees you from installing and managing servers. It helps with creating environments that are both automated and portable infrastructures, meaning that deploying with Artifakt is now anytime, anywhere, any app.

Conclusion

We are a group of focused, diverse and motivated developers. We like what we’re doing, we take pride in our work, and so do you. That’s why we look back at 2021 with joy, as we remember some major improvements to our flagship product: 

• A new public API
• The “any-app” mode, a.k.a Bring your own Dockerfile
• Support for major languages, from Python to Java
• Support for advanced ecommerce platform, like Magento, Sylius and OroCommerce

Our team has also been busy building more market-fit with:

• March: An exciting series A funding of $4M
• June: a turn-key “Artifakt Partners Program” for web agencies
• September: Becoming an official AWS Independent Software Vendor partnership

Even with all of that in mind, we’re trying to go even further to make the 2022 version of Artifakt a definitive game-changer, closer than ever to what developers have always wanted: an easy, reliable and speedy PaaS engine. It runs in the browser, has a dedicated CLI and comes with the most powerful orchestration engine to date. Ready to onboard? That’s great! Why don’t you give us a call? No strings attached.

If you are ready to make the move to the cloud but you’re not quite sure what to expect and how to prepare for it, check out this blog post about the phases of cloud migration. You can also reach out to us to find out how Artifakt and our team of experts can help you with seamless cloud migration.