May 2023 Summaries

Nhost has introduced a new mechanism for managing and configuring projects that enhances consistency between local and cloud instances by eliminating environment-specific issues. The updated workflow provides detailed control over a project's runtime configuration and marks a significant improvement in performance and stability with the release of CLI version 1.0.0. Previously, only certain elements such as database migrations and API schema changes were synchronized, but the new configuration file, compatible with both Nhost Cloud and CLI, supports comprehensive configurations including resources, environment variables, and settings specific to Hasura or Auth. This new approach integrates a Git-based workflow allowing for local testing and seamless synchronization with cloud projects, which is particularly beneficial for team collaboration. The configuration format now uses TOML for its simplicity and clarity, and CUE for validating data and configuration, ensuring projects adhere to necessary rules. This development emphasizes the importance of consistency and control in the development process, making the new Nhost Config an invaluable tool for developers, especially those working in teams.

A recent update enhances the metrics feature, which now includes a comprehensive dashboard for users to monitor their functions' performance. This dashboard offers insights into how frequently functions are called, their response times, and error rates, along with details such as endpoints accessed, HTTP methods used, and response statuses returned. By analyzing response times, users can identify application bottlenecks and outliers, while error rates provide a window into potential application issues. The tool aims to improve application performance monitoring, and user feedback is encouraged for further enhancements.

Nhost has launched a Beta for Nhost Metrics, a feature that leverages Grafana to enhance project monitoring and optimization for users on the Pro plan. This managed Grafana instance provides comprehensive visibility into Nhost projects through default dashboards that display infrastructure metrics such as vCPU/memory usage, throttling time, Postgres volume usage, and networking data. While the current focus is on infrastructure metrics, future updates will include application and database metrics, along with centralized logging via Loki and integrated alerts in Grafana. Nhost chose Grafana for its advanced monitoring capabilities, which have been used internally, and aims to offer a comprehensive solution for metrics, logs, and alerts. Users can access their Grafana instance through the Metrics option in the Nhost Dashboard, aligning with Nhost's recent initiatives like Dedicated Compute and Service Replicas to provide a robust toolkit for project management and optimization.