Beta Testing of new interface begins

Today we started beta testing of our new interface. 100 accounts were transferred over to the new server architecture this morning and things have been running pretty smoothly so far (touch wood).

Beta testing will last for up to 2 weeks before we begin the (slightly daunting) process of migrating over 5000 users over to the new systems.

Some of the new features beta testers are familiarising themselves with today are:

• Easier user management
  
• Advanced and intuitive permissions configuration
• Advanced security settings (including individual repository firewalls)
• Repository activity views and reports
• In place editing throughout
• More intuitive UI with better feedback and control
  
• Group permissions
• Easier repository creation including dump and file upload and svnsync

And that's just client side. We are now running a completely new server architecture with better redundancy, replication and load balancing built in.

Anyone interested in getting involved in beta testing, please drop us an email at support@myversioncontrol.com.

Green Servers: Commissioning begins..

We have begun the process of commissioning new servers for the upcoming release of the latest version of the myVersionControl Control panel. The servers are true monsters clustered together with 4 2.xGHz Opteron processors per server and a minimum of 4GB physical memory. It is amazing how far technology has moved on in three years when we bought our first server for myVersionControl. It was a single 3GHz Intel Pentium 4 with only 2GB memory. Amazingly this server continues to work as part of the myVersionControl server family but will finally be given the rest it deserves some time after go-live to make space for something faster!

Our servers are entrusted to 1and1 and are currently based in Europe with super fast connectivity around the world. If your business has a renewable energy policy (or are a forward thinking personal user) you will be pleased to know that myVersionControl servers are all powered by wind, water and solar power. We are personally very passionate about the environment and are very pleased to be partnering with a similarly inclined supplier.

Blowing away the clouds

Amazon's elastic cloud (EC2) technology is brilliant and used by some online subversion hosts however myVersionControl have no intention of moving your service to Amazon's servers.

At first glance the benefits of the service are compelling, huge redundancy and massively scalable - we can easily see why our competitors have chosen to use the service over old fashioned 'real' servers in datacentres. What EC2 cannot provide at this time is:

• Provide a cast iron guarantee (SLA) that they will keep the service alive all the time. In fact they reserve the right to switch it off at any time (Amazon terms and conditions 7.1). This means that downtime will be both indeterminable and out of our control. This represents an unacceptable situation for us. Our servers are distributed across datacentres and have multiple redundancy built in to our own design and satisfaction. No-one may switch off our servers without prior authorisation and we are not affected by unknown threats posed by Amazon's other EC2 customers.
• Amazon cannot guarantee the security of the data they store (Amazon terms and conditions 7.2). Lets be frank here, within our own terms and conditions we have some get outs however you can be sure that we go to extraordinary lengths to keep your data private. All our servers are physically secure, the datacentres we choose for our servers have 24 hour manned security including CCTV, patrolled boundaries and multiple levels of authorisation. Decommissioned servers are also securely disposed of with the data disk receiving 'special attention'. We are both the architect and custodian of our security procedures and have complete control over how we implement this. We believe that we are better placed to police our gates than some unknown entity.

What it all boils down to is that we do not believe that cloud computing yet (and may never) provide the control and reliability that we demand for our clients. Using the cloud would increase profit margins but we believe that real servers in real datacentres that meet our strict vetting requirements represent the best possible solution for our versioncontrol clients and will not be jumping on the cloud computing band wagon!

Record rise in new users

Following last month's announcement of space increases on our 'Personal' and 'Team' products we are very pleased to report a 150% monthly increase in new sign ups, taking our registered users way past the 5000 mark. Buoyed by how well the improvements have been received we are very excited by the next phase, which includes a space increase across the rest of the streamlined product range and the new control panel which is set for release middle of June.

We will release the new system onto a new suite of cutting edge hardware including redundancy, load balancing and clustering bringing the new myVersionControl server count to seven with more in the pipeline. This new architecture will promise even faster response times and greater levels of reliability for all our customers.