What's new on Cloudsmith

Cloudsmith’s support to proxy and cache images from upstream registries is now generally available 🎉 This feature allows you to seamlessly integrate with upstream registries including Docker Hub and manage your Docker images in Cloudsmith, enhancing your development and deployment workflows when you build software on top of these images.

🤩 Why is this important?

Upstream Proxying: With upstream proxying enabled, Cloudsmith allows Docker clients, such as your CI/CD tooling, to see and download packages from both your existing repository and any connected upstream repositories, such as Docker Hub or Chainguard. This simplifies access to a wide range of Docker images, ensuring your development process is smooth and efficient, and that your developers have access to the latest images.

Caching: Fetches made for images resolved to an upstream can be cached and synchronised to your Cloudsmith repository. This caching capability protects your builds from outages, improves visibility, and enables you to apply fine-grained access controls for your teams, customers, and users.

Security Scanning: Storing Docker images and dependencies within Cloudsmith gives you a greater ability to scan for vulnerabilities, check licensing implications, and monitor the usage of images.

Enhanced Resilience: If the upstream repository is down or is otherwise unavailable, your developers won’t notice - they can still access the cached versions of the packages stored in Cloudsmith. This ensures your development and deployment processes remain uninterrupted.

🔐 Authentication required

Docker Hub requires that requests to their service from a downstream registry be authenticated. As such, when you configure an upstream to Docker Hub in Cloudsmith, you will be required to provide credentials for authentication.

If you configured a Docker Hub upstream during early access, your existing upstreams will continue to sync packages without without authentication during a short transition period. However, you will be required to reconfigure the upstream to include credentials for authentication by October 1st, 2024.

To reconfigure your Docker upstreams with authentication, please follow these steps:

1. Create or Use Existing Docker Credentials: Ensure you have a Docker Hub account. If you don’t have one, you can create one
2. Update Your Configuration: Modify your Cloudsmith upstream configuration to include your Docker Hub credentials.
3. Test Your Configuration: After updating your configuration, test it to ensure that your upstreams are working correctly with the new authentication requirements.

Read more on getting started with proxying and caching Docker images in our documentation.

As always, we'd love to hear your feedback on this new feature. 🚀