DEV Community: Lauren Morris

Lagoon v2.26: Enhanced User Experience and Platform Reliability

Lauren Morris — Fri, 27 Jun 2025 11:42:15 +0000

This release improves how you interact with Lagoon through better email notifications, easier navigation, and important infrastructure updates that make the platform more reliable and secure.

Better Email Notifications

Lagoon now sends you emails when important stuff happens:

When you're added to an organization or project
When your SSH keys change
When your role permissions change

You can turn these on or off in your user settings. The emails include your organization's branding if configured.

Improved User Experience

Organization links in project views - Easier navigation between org and project pages
Better download tracking - We now log who downloads what files (useful for audits)
Enhanced email preferences - More control over which notifications you receive

Platform Updates

RabbitMQ updated to v4.1.0 - Better message processing and reliability
Keycloak updated to v26.2.5 - Authentication improvements and security updates
Amazon S3 library updated - More reliable file storage and handling

What This Means for You

You'll have better visibility into what's happening with your projects and organizations through improved notifications and navigation. The infrastructure updates provide a more stable foundation for your applications.

Beta Features for Select Customers

This release includes some experimental features for cross-project service sharing that are available to select customers in beta. If you're interested in testing these capabilities, reach out to product.

For technical implementation details, check the full changelog.

Lagoon v2.25: Enhanced Infrastructure Security and Performance Optimization

Lauren Morris — Fri, 09 May 2025 20:43:04 +0000

This release of Lagoon focuses on infrastructure security, performance improvements, and enhanced insights capabilities while streamlining the platform's feature set to ensure operational reliability.

Security and Infrastructure Enhancements

Broker Service TLS Support

The Lagoon Core broker service now offers optional TLS encryption
All Lagoon Remote services have been updated to support TLS when configured
This strengthens the security posture for inter-service communication
TLS may become enabled by default in future releases

Deployment Improvements

Fixed a race condition that could trigger duplicate deployment notifications
Extended multiple docker host support to improve build load distribution
Prevented build cache invalidation across deployments
These improvements enhance reliability and consistency during the deployment process

Performance Optimizations

UI Performance Enhancements

Significantly improved loading and response times for organization pages
Optimized data handling for complex organizational structures
Better overall user experience when managing multiple projects

Insights Performance

Accelerated insights gathering speed for Java-based services (e.g., Solr)
Reduced resource consumption during insights collection processes
More efficient data processing for environment analysis

Enhanced Visibility and Integration

Environment Insights Expansion

Environments with insights gathering enabled now display System Details on the overview page
Reworked and expanded collection of environment facts for better operational awareness
Experimental support for sending gathered insights to external tools like DependencyTrack
Creates opportunities for deeper integration with your security and compliance workflows

Platform Streamlining

Deprecations and Removals

The Lagoon Workflows feature has been completely removed
Project-specific patterns for Kubernetes namespaces have been disabled
Relevant parts of the Lagoon API have been marked as deprecated
These changes simplify the platform architecture and reduce maintenance overhead

Looking Forward

These improvements continue Lagoon's evolution as a secure, high-performance application delivery platform. By enhancing our infrastructure security while optimizing performance, we enable organizations to deploy with confidence while ensuring consistent, reliable operations.

For detailed technical information, view our full changelog.

Lagoon v2.24: Enhanced Developer Control with Modernized Infrastructure

Lauren Morris — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 12:34:12 +0000

This release of Lagoon strengthens the platform's core infrastructure while delivering powerful new capabilities that give developers and organizations greater control over their environments and workflows.

Platform Modernization

Updated Database Compatibility

API and Keycloak services now support both MariaDB and MySQL 8 databases
MariaDB remains the default internal pod database
Foundation laid for future managed database service integration with Lagoon Core

Core Technology Updates

Keycloak updated to version 26
Golang upgraded to version 1.23
NodeJS upgraded to version 22
These updates improve security posture and ensure compatibility with modern dependencies

Enhanced Developer Control

Improved Environment Variable Management

Enhanced security for environment variables in hosted environments
Added ability to delete variables (previously required unsetting or support intervention)
More intuitive variable management experience across interfaces

Organizational-scoped Environment Variables

Organization admins and owners can now add default environment variables to all projects
Centralized configuration management for multi-project organizations
Accessible and manageable through the UI

Enhanced Cronjob Controls

Set maximum duration for cronjobs to prevent runaway processes
New concurrency limits to prevent identical cronjobs from overlapping
Improved reliability for scheduled operations

Operational Visibility

Extended Audit Logging for Platform Owners

Comprehensive audit logging now natively available in all Lagoon installations
Accessible exclusively to users with platform-owner permissions
Expanded event capturing provides deeper insights into system activities
Logs now stored directly in the database and queryable via GraphQL
No longer requires OpenSearch for access to audit information

Improved Task Management

Task system now offers feature parity with the builds system
Durations displayed in the UI for better tracking
Quality of Service (QoS) implementation in remote controllers automatically distributes tasks
Prevents overloading and resolves concurrency issues across projects

UI Enhancements

Copy functionality added for project and environment name breadcrumbs
Easier integration with CLI or GraphQL tasks
Organization-level variables now manageable directly via the UI
Streamlined navigation and information access

Looking Forward

These improvements support Lagoon's evolution as a developer-focused application delivery platform. By modernizing our infrastructure components while enhancing developer controls, we enable organizations to maintain complete control over their deployment processes while ensuring platform stability and security.

For detailed technical information, view our full changelog.

Lagoon v2.24: Enhanced Developer Control with Modernized Infrastructure

Lauren Morris — Fri, 14 Mar 2025 12:30:38 +0000

Platform Modernization

Updated Database Compatibility

API and Keycloak services now support both MariaDB and MySQL 8 databases
MariaDB remains the default internal pod database
Foundation laid for future managed database service integration with Lagoon Core

Core Technology Updates

Keycloak updated to version 26
Golang upgraded to version 1.23
NodeJS upgraded to version 22
These updates improve security posture and ensure compatibility with modern dependencies

Enhanced Developer Control

Improved Environment Variable Management

Enhanced security for environment variables in hosted environments
Added ability to delete variables (previously required unsetting or support intervention)
More intuitive variable management experience across interfaces

Organizational-scoped Environment Variables

Organization admins and owners can now add default environment variables to all projects
Centralized configuration management for multi-project organizations
Accessible and manageable through the UI

Enhanced Cronjob Controls

Set maximum duration for cronjobs to prevent runaway processes
New concurrency limits to prevent identical cronjobs from overlapping
Improved reliability for scheduled operations

Operational Visibility

Extended Audit Logging for Platform Owners

Comprehensive audit logging now natively available in all Lagoon installations
Accessible exclusively to users with platform-owner permissions
Expanded event capturing provides deeper insights into system activities
Logs now stored directly in the database and queryable via GraphQL
No longer requires OpenSearch for access to audit information

Improved Task Management

Task system now offers feature parity with the builds system
Durations displayed in the UI for better tracking
Quality of Service (QoS) implementation in remote controllers automatically distributes tasks
Prevents overloading and resolves concurrency issues across projects

UI Enhancements

Copy functionality added for project and environment name breadcrumbs
Easier integration with CLI or GraphQL tasks
Organization-level variables now manageable directly via the UI
Streamlined navigation and information access

Looking Forward

For detailed technical information, view our full changelog.

Lagoon v2.23: Enhanced Enterprise Controls & Platform Stability

Lauren Morris — Tue, 31 Dec 2024 14:40:25 +0000

With this release, we strengthen Lagoon's foundation for enterprise deployments through improved platform management capabilities and enhanced security controls.

Enterprise Control & Security

Streamlined Platform User Management

New platform-wide role management capabilities eliminate need to access Keycloak directly
Enhanced user search functionality supports filtering by email, ID, and role
Introduction of platform-organization-owner role enables granular access control

# Example: List platform owners
query allPlatformUsers {
    allPlatformUsers(role: OWNER) {
        email
        platformRoles
    }
}

Enhanced Authentication

Improved email authentication handling across cases
Modernized client authentication implementation
Public/private key handling refinements

Platform Stability

Infrastructure Updates

RabbitMQ upgrade to 3.13
Enhanced build failure visibility across interfaces
Improved database transaction handling

Developer Experience

Streamlined local development configuration
Enhanced testing framework
Expanded documentation coverage

Looking Forward

These foundational improvements support Lagoon's evolution as an enterprise-grade platform. By strengthening our core infrastructure and security controls, we enable organizations to maintain complete control over their deployment processes while ensuring platform stability.

For detailed technical information, view our full changelog.

Lagoon v2.22: Enhanced Security, Performance, and Service Types

Lauren Morris — Mon, 18 Nov 2024 14:09:10 +0000

We are excited to announce the release of Lagoon v2.22, bringing significant improvements to security, build processes, and performance.

Enhanced Security Features

We're introducing important authentication improvements that lay the groundwork for future enhancements:

New OIDC (OpenID Connect) client for UI authentication - enabling more secure, standardized user identity verification
OAuth client for CLI, preparing for browser-based authentication flows
Refined permission scoping following least privilege principles

These changes are foundational updates that won't impact current workflows but enable more secure and flexible authentication methods in upcoming releases.

Improved Build Failure Handling

We've significantly enhanced build failure visibility across all interfaces:

More detailed build failure information in the UI, CLI, and notifications
Enhanced GraphQL reporting
New administrator controls for deployment validation, allowing customization of how validation errors in docker-compose.yml and lagoon.yml files are handled

$ lagoon list deployments -p example-project -e main
ID      NAME                    STATUS      BUILDSTEP                       STARTED             COMPLETED
4836    lagoon-build-rl1hm      complete    insightsCompleted   2024-11-08 06:36:06 2024-11-08 06:39:56
4835    lagoon-build-xhd5ec     complete    deployCompletedWithWarnings     2024-11-08 05:56:48 2024-11-08 06:01:41
4834    lagoon-build-ohk03c     failed  finalizingBuild     2024-11-08 04:26:19 2024-11-08 04:30:54

New Service Types

basic-single: Flexible Persistence for Any Workload

We're introducing a powerful new service type that gives you more freedom in how you architect your applications:

Deploy any persistent service that requires dedicated storage
Perfect for custom databases, specialized caches, or any stateful service that needs to maintain data between restarts
Provides the same robust persistence capabilities as our database-specific types (like mariadb-single and postgres-single), but without being tied to specific technologies

This new service type reflects our commitment to flexibility - you can now bring any persistent service to Lagoon while maintaining the same reliable deployment patterns you're used to. Whether you're using a niche database technology, specialized caching solution, or any other service that needs dedicated storage, basic-single has you covered.

Here is a simplified docker-compose example that recreates the postgres-single type using basic-single - note that the port and persistent storage both need defining

postgres-16:
    image: uselagoon/postgres-16:latest
    labels:
      lagoon.type: basic-single
      lagoon.persistent: /var/lib/postgresql/data
      lagoon.persistent.size: 100Mi
      lagoon.service.port: 5432
    ports:
      - '5432'

valkey-single

A dedicated service type for valkey-based images:

Functions identically to the current redis service
Optimized for cache management

Major Performance and Reliability Improvements

Scalable Build Infrastructure

We've introduced a more robust and distributed build system:

Multiple docker-host services now operate across availability zones
Intelligent traffic distribution ensures build loads are balanced
Built-in redundancy means more reliable build processes
While initial builds might take slightly longer due to cache warming, subsequent builds will benefit from improved distribution and reliability

Note for existing users: Your first few builds after this update might take a bit longer while the system warms up its caches, but this is a one-time occurrence that will resolve itself with normal usage.

Streamlined Deployment Sequence

We've optimized how deployments progress through their lifecycle:

Pre-rollout tasks now execute right before deployment, ensuring configurations are fresh
Significantly reduced maintenance windows during deployments
Minimized risk of configuration mismatches or database inconsistencies
Your applications spend less time in maintenance mode, meaning better availability for your users

Technical Updates

Several infrastructure improvements have been implemented:

Upgrade to RabbitMQ 3.12 for improved throughput and reduced latency
NATS 2.x update in ssh-portal services
Build and task CRDs updated to v1beta2

For Lagoon Administrators

If you're running your own Lagoon installation, please note:

Configuration changes required for NATS updates
CRD updates needed for latest version compatibility
See lagoon-charts release notes for detailed upgrade instructions The full changelog can be found at:

Looking Forward

These improvements set the foundation for future enhancements, particularly in authentication flows and managed database support. We're committed to continuously improving Lagoon's performance, security, and usability.

Stay tuned for more updates, and as always, reach out to our support channels if you have any questions about these changes.

Keeping Your Lagoon Dependencies Up-to-Date: A Developer's Guide

Lauren Morris — Tue, 29 Oct 2024 13:15:02 +0000

As developers, we understand how challenging managing dependencies in development can be. As Lagoon users ourselves we want to help you stay current with package updates ensuring you have access to security, performance, and new features.

How to Check for Application Updates

The simplest way to check for available application updates is using your package manage commands

Composer: composer outdated

Yarn: yarn outdated

Python Pip: pip list --outdated

Ruby Bundler: bundle outdated

(Notice the theme here! Your package manager of choice probably also includes this functionality too!)

This command will show you if you're running an older version and what updates are available.

Automating Your Update Workflow

Although you can check updates manually, automated tools deliver the biggest productivity benefits. We recommend implementing an automated dependency manager to handle this for you. Some popular options that our team has tried and tested include:

Renovate Bot- Free Community Plan
Dependabot- Integrated with GitHub
Violinist- Free Version available, only supports PHP/Composer

These tools can:

Automatically detect new package versions
Create pull requests for updates
Integrate with existing CI tooling
Include changelog information in the PR
Maintain your desired update schedule

Understanding Lagoon Updates

Uselagoon Images

We wrote a blog post a couple of years ago about this - check it out at https://dev.to/uselagoon/moving-lagoon-to-semantic-versioned-docker-images-57d0. We recommend pinning to specific image tags if your project is under constant development and you’re using automated update tools. If your project has infrequent development, using the :latest\ tags is usually a better option to avoid inadvertently exposing yourself to vulnerabilities.

Drupal Modules

Our Drupal modules, such as Lagoon Logs are packaged through the Drupal.org package system, and updates will be notified through the UI or via composer show\

Drupal Integrations

Our Drupal integrations package, like other components, follows semantic versioning practices. Each release is documented on GitHub with detailed changelog information and published to packagist, making it easy to understand what's changed and whether you need to update (hint, you likely always need to update!).

Lagoon Tools

The tools we manage to help with Local Development are also updated regularly:

Lagoon CLI - available on Homebrew for Mac&Linux, as a binary and as a Docker Image
Lagoon Sync - currently only available as a binary, but we’re working on the others
Pygmy Stack - available on Homebrew for Mac&Linux and buildable from source

We usually recommend running the most recent versions of these tools - and are always on the lookout for any bug reports or improvements.

Lagoon examples

From time to time, we introduce new thinking into our example repos - either to take advantage of newly-available functionality in Lagoon, or to reflect a change or update in best practices. You should keep an eye out for these changes from time-to-time, and look to see what you can incorporate into your projects. Note that there is no automated way to do this, so it’s back to side-by-side eyeballing!

Best Practices

Pin your dependencies to specific versions for predictability
Set up automated testing to run when dependency updates are proposed
Configure your chosen update tool to group related updates
Review changelog entries before merging updates

Getting Started

To begin automating your dependency management:

Choose an update manager that fits your workflow
Configure it to watch your Lagoon-related packages
Set up appropriate test automation
Define update schedules that work for your team

Remember, while automation helps, it's still important to review updates before applying them to production environments. The goal is to make the process more efficient while maintaining control over your application's stability.

Staying current with updates helps ensure your applications remain secure, performant, and feature-rich. We encourage you to explore these tools and find the workflow that works best for your team. Your success as a Lagoon user matters to us, and we know that managing dependencies is just one part of your development journey.

If you come across any awesome tools, please let us know!