Operating modern applications on Kubernetes is powerful – but it also comes with complexity. Databases, identity services, collaboration platforms and developer tools all require careful lifecycle management, upgrades, monitoring and security configuration.

That’s exactly where VSHN AppCat comes in.

With the latest release of AppCat, we’re introducing several improvements that further strengthen the reliability and operational consistency of the applications running on the platform.

While many of the changes happen behind the scenes, they directly improve the day-to-day experience of teams running production workloads on Kubernetes.

What is VSHN AppCat?

VSHN AppCat is the VSHN Application Catalog – a curated collection of production-ready applications that can be deployed and operated on Kubernetes with minimal effort.

Instead of installing and maintaining complex software stacks manually, AppCat allows teams to deploy widely used services such as databases, identity providers, collaboration platforms or developer tools as fully managed applications.

AppCat provides:

• Production-ready Kubernetes deployments
• Automated operations and lifecycle management
• Built-in monitoring, backup and maintenance processes
• Consistent deployments across Kubernetes environments

This means platform teams and developers can focus on building and running their applications while VSHN takes care of the operational complexity behind the scenes.

👉 Learn more about VSHN Application Catalog

Smarter Alerting for End Users

Reliable operations require good alerting – but alerts should be actionable, not overwhelming.

In this release we improved end-user alerting behaviour, reducing alert noise while keeping important signals visible. For example, alerts for storage capacity issues previously triggered every minute. While technically correct, this behaviour often resulted in unnecessary alert noise.

The new configuration adjusts the interval to 15 minutes, reducing alert flapping while still giving users enough time to react to potential issues.

If you haven’t configured alerting for your AppCat instances yet, we strongly recommend enabling it.

Improving PostgreSQL Reliability

Several improvements in this release focus on making PostgreSQL operations more robust.

One issue could occur when multiple databases were created simultaneously. In rare situations this could lead to race conditions during user management. By adjusting the database bootstrap process and using a more suitable template database, this issue has now been resolved.

These kinds of improvements might be invisible to users – but they are essential for making platform operations reliable at scale.

CloudNativePG for Keycloak

We also improved the PostgreSQL backend used by the Keycloak identity service in AppCat.

New Keycloak instances will now use CloudNativePG, a Kubernetes-native PostgreSQL operator designed specifically for cloud-native environments.

Existing Keycloak installations remain unchanged and continue to operate normally. The new backend will automatically be used when new Keycloak instances are created.

👉 Learn more about Keycloak

Updates to Developer Collaboration Platforms

This release also includes updates to Forgejo and Codey, ensuring that these services run on supported upstream versions.

What is Codey?

Codey is VSHN’s European code collaboration platform, built on the open-source Forgejo project.

Instead of operating their own Git platform, teams can run fully managed Forgejo instances operated by VSHN, including monitoring, backups and lifecycle management.

Codey provides features such as:

• Git repository hosting
• Pull requests and code reviews
• CI/CD compatible with GitHub Actions workflows
• Package and container registries
• Integrated project management tools

Codey runs on European cloud infrastructure, including Switzerland, helping organizations maintain control over their development data while benefiting from a fully managed service.

👉 Learn more about Codey

Improved Security for Nextcloud

The release also includes improvements to the security configuration of the Nextcloud cronjob.

Previously the job could run with incorrect user permissions in some Kubernetes environments. The new configuration ensures the job runs with the correct security context, improving compatibility across Kubernetes platforms such as vanilla Kubernetes and OpenShift.

👉 Learn more about Nextcloud

Consistent Maintenance Scheduling

For services that include PostgreSQL dependencies – such as Keycloak and Nextcloud – we fixed edge cases where maintenance windows could slightly deviate from the configured schedule.

Maintenance operations are now handled more consistently across dependent services.

Continuous Platform Improvements

Operating applications reliably on Kubernetes requires constant refinement of automation, observability and operational processes.

This AppCat release focuses on exactly that: improving reliability, consistency and operational experience across the platform.

While many improvements happen behind the scenes, they ultimately help teams run critical services more safely and with less operational overhead.

If you’re looking for a simpler way to run production-ready services on Kubernetes, VSHN AppCat provides a proven foundation.

👉 VSHN AppCat Changelog