Announcing the JupyterHub Helm Chart v0.5

· Chris Holdgraf · JupyterHub Kubernetes

JupyterHub makes it possible to serve Jupyter instances to multiple users. The JupyterHub Helm Chart makes it possible to run this setup on kubernetes, making JupyterHub more scalable, stable, and flexible.

We, the JupyterHub team, are proud to announce the next version of the JupyterHub Helm Chart: version 0.5. This post describes a bit of what’s new in this release. We’ve nicknamed the releases of the JupyterHub Helm Chart after famous cricketers, in this case world-class bowler Hamid Hassan*.

tl;dr: The release bumps JupyterHub to 0.8, adds better HTTPS support, and improves scalability to ~4,000 simultaneous users. See the Helm Chart Changelog for more information.

New Features

The following major features have been added to v0.5:

JupyterHub 0.8

Version 0.8 of JupyterHub was released earlier this year. It is full of new features, many of which directly benefit the Kubernetes deployment of JupyterHub. Below is a list of relevant points along with the relevant sections of the Helm Chart configuration:

  1. Lots of performance improvements. We now know we can handle up to 4k active users.
  2. Limit the number of users who can try to launch the hub at once. This can be tuned to avoid crashes when hundreds of users try to launch at the same time. It gives them a friendly error message and asks them to try later. See hub.concurrentSpawnLimit.
  3. Limit the number of simultaneous active users . The Active Server limit can be used to limit the total number of active users that can use the hub at any given time. This allows admins to control the size of their clusters more effectively. See hub.activeServerLimit.
  4. Memory limits & guarantees can now contain fractional units. So you can say 0.5G instead of having to use 512M.
  5. No more ‘too many redirects’ errors at scale. This fixes an annoying race condition causing users to get stuck in a redirect loop when starting their servers.

Easier HTTPS

Version 0.5 of the helm chart makes it easier for admins to set up HTTPS for their users with Let’s Encrypt. Users often access a JupyterHub instance from a public URL. To avoid nefarious behavior and increase security, using HTTPS is important. You can now choose to use Let’s Encrypt or a valid HTTPS certificate and key. You can also use your own HTTPS certificates & keys rather than using Let’s Encrypt. You can find the new instructions here.

More authenticators

Authenticators allow you to control who has access to your JupyterHub. The following new authentication providers have been added in 0.5:

  1. GitLab
  2. CILogon
  3. Globus

You can now also set up a whitelist of usernames that have access to the hub (in addition to other authenticators in use). Do so by adding to the list in auth.whitelist.users.

Hub Services support

Services let you connect your JupyerHub to other web services (for example, in mybinder.org). You can now add external JupyterHub Services by adding them to hub.services. Note that you are still responsible for actually running the service somewhere (perhaps as a deployment object in Kubernetes).

More customization with jupyterhub_config.py

Sometimes it is useful to be able to run arbitrary extra code when setting up your deployment. You can put extra snippets of jupyterhub_config.py configuration in hub.extraConfig. Now you can also add extra environment variables to the hub in hub.extraEnv and extra configmap items via hub.extraConfigMap. This makes it cleaner to customize the hub’s configuration in ways that are not yet possible with config.yaml. You can find more information in the documentation.

More customization options for user server environments

More options have been added under singleuser to help you customize the environment that the user session is spawned in. You can…

More information

For more information about the JupyterHub Helm Chart, and the JupyterHub ecosystem more broadly, see the following links:

*Hamid Hassan is a fast bowler who currently plays for the Afghanistan National Cricket Team. With nicknames ranging from “Afghanistan’s David Beckham” to “Rambo”, he is considered by many to be Afghanistan’s first Cricket Superhero. Currently known for fast (145km/h+) deliveries, cartwheeling celebrations, war painted face and having had to flee Afghanistan as a child to escape from war. He says he plays because “We are ambassadors for our country and we want to show the world that Afghanistan is not like people recognize it by terrorists and these things. We want them to know that we have a lot of talent as well.”

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