Feathur's (Open Source Virtualization Control Panel) New Design & Improvements

[BlueVM]

I felt like posting about some if the new features and the new design we have implemented into Feathur lately. Before I begin I'd like to clear up a few misunderstandings within the community about what Feathur is...
 
Quick FAQ / About
 
Q: What is Feathur?
A: Feathur is an open source VPS control panel for providers and enthusiasts.
 
Q: Is Feathur free or do I have to pay for it?
A. Feathur is 100% free. You are under no obligation to pay for it in any way. You can choose to contribute to our project by purchasing a support license. The support license allows you to submit support tickets to our help desk and get one-on-one assistance in troubleshooting Feathur. You can use Feathur on as many servers as you like for free without ever needing to buy a support license.
 
Q: Why is Feathur free? Why did you release Feathur? Couldn't you have made money from it instead?
A. Feathur is free because simply put I love the community and felt like the community deserved a free control panel. I could have easily slapped a sticker on it and sold it, but I wanted it to be released for the benefit of all. When I started developing Feathur there were literally two major panels on the market (one of which was being abandoned and the other had a security exploit almost every week or so it felt) and I felt the community deserved a open source panel that was easy to use, clean and friendly.
 
Q: Why would anyone pay for a support license?
A. The majority of the people that do have a license have one because they want to support Feathur's development. Believe it or not it does cost money to develop a project like this and it takes a good bit of time and patience as well. I will never personally make any money on Feathur. If Feathur ever became really large I'd hire a full time programmer (or several) and consider other tools I could release for the community. Feathur is a labor of love for me and those supporting it. 
 
Q: What virtualizations does Feathur support?
A: Currently OpenVZ and KVM, however it is designed in such a way that it should be fairly easy to add another virtualization type.
 
New Design
 
We've been working on a new design for a while and today we pushed it onto the Testing repo. It's possible there are some minor bugs, but overall it's been pretty well tested. The old design is still available for those admins who preferred it. Anyway on to the screenshots...
 

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE SCREENSHOTS OF THE NEW DESIGN​

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Hopefully some of you like it, but feel free to give me any feedback you have.

Old screenshots for those of you who want to know what it looked like before: http://feathur.com/screenshots.php

I would greatly appreciate it if we could keep the thread on topic. Anything outside the topic feel free to PM me about.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

Looking good! 

Any demo available out there with the new design?

Lets talk a bit about the back-end.  What's some of the new features that's been accomplished since the last major update? (or I guess last time since you posted about Feathur?)

 

[AMDbuilder]

It's very clear some effort has gone into this project, the screenshot alone look very well done.

I'll also second HEP's question, what has changed on the backend or is this just a facelift?

 

[BlueVM]

Any demo available out there with the new design?

Lets talk a bit about the back-end.  What's some of the new features that's been accomplished since the last major update? (or I guess last time since you posted about Feathur?)

& @ AMDbuilder =>

Demo... at the moment you'd have to PM me and ask for one or you can PM me with a VPS login (Debian 6/7) and I can setup a copy for you.

As for new features... where do I start? Off the top of my head:

- At least 500 random/minor bug fixes since the last time I posted about Feathur.

- New server uptime tracking system. (greatly improved)

- New VPS template manager, better template usage throughout the system... still some work left to do though.

- Updates to the API, better WHMCS module support, server groups (GUI not done yet).

- Better rebuild system, cleaner rebuilds, abort rebuild, etc...

- 70% of the way to IPv6 support (should be ready before 0.8 which should launch around October 18th?)

- Better forgot password system (pretty sure DrMike persuaded me on the evils of not stating explicitly if the email does/doesn't exist).

- Better IP management.

- Better CPU limit calculations in openvz.

- Tons of code cleanup.

There's likely a ton of stuff I forgot... but yeah.

 

[HalfEatenPie]

- At least 500 random/minor bug fixes since the last time I posted about Feathur.

- New server uptime tracking system. (greatly improved)

- New VPS template manager, better template usage throughout the system... still some work left to do though.

- Updates to the API, better WHMCS module support, server groups (GUI not done yet).

- Better rebuild system, cleaner rebuilds, abort rebuild, etc...

- 70% of the way to IPv6 support (should be ready before 0.8 which should launch around October 18th?)

- Better forgot password system (pretty sure DrMike persuaded me on the evils of not stating explicitly if the email does/doesn't exist).

- Better IP management.

- Better CPU limit calculations in openvz.

- Tons of code cleanup.

There's likely a ton of stuff I forgot... but yeah.

Sweet IPv6.  Also, pretty funny on the bit with @drmike.  Better IP Management, better CPU limit calculations, all nice.  

Looking forward to... well... taking a look at this! 

 

[rmlhhd]

New design looks awesome, would be good if you could add support for IPv6 subnets (ability to allocate /64's to VPS's) when v6 is implemented.

 

[blergh]

very nice, good job!

 

[Kruno]

It looks very good. Glad to see you continued with development and keep up the good work

 

[D. Strout]

New design looks awesome, would be good if you could add support for IPv6 subnets (ability to allocate /64's to VPS's) when v6 is implemented.

This. 100% this. For a change, SolusVM (the latest version) has set the bar such that proper subnet allocation is an expectation with any new(er) panel. Do it right to start - you'll save yourself a lot of headaches.

New design is nice too, though

 

[BlueVM]

This. 100% this. For a change, SolusVM (the latest version) has set the bar such that proper subnet allocation is an expectation with any new(er) panel. Do it right to start - you'll save yourself a lot of headaches.

New design is nice too, though

I'm not sure how SolusVM does it so I'll describe how Feathur is being designed to hand out IP space and you can make suggestions from there.

Typical use case: An admin has a /48 and wants to allow users to have a /64. The admin would add the /64 in Feathur and set the default assignment to a /64. The user would then see a new tab in Feathur labeled IPv6. From this tab they'll be able to 'request' a /64. Presuming there's enough free space on the /48 their VPS will be 'assigned' a /64. The user can then choose which IPs out of that /64 to actually route to their VPS. 

Feathur will be able to handle up to a /32 per range down to a /64 and assign clients IPs from a /48 to a /128.

 

[D. Strout]

I'm not sure how SolusVM does it so I'll describe how Feathur is being designed to hand out IP space and you can make suggestions from there.

Typical use case: An admin has a /48 and wants to allow users to have a /64. The admin would add the /64 in Feathur and set the default assignment to a /64. The user would then see a new tab in Feathur labeled IPv6. From this tab they'll be able to 'request' a /64. Presuming there's enough free space on the /48 their VPS will be 'assigned' a /64. The user can then choose which IPs out of that /64 to actually route to their VPS. 

Feathur will be able to handle up to a /32 per range down to a /64 and assign clients IPs from a /48 to a /128.

Bingo. That is exactly how it should be handled.

 

[BrianHarrison]

Very clean design and a solid set of features. I look forward to trying this system out.