Terraform – infrastructure automation and management tool. It complements configuration management tools like Puppet and Chef, as well as infrastructure building tools like CloudFormation. The beauty of it is that it is tool and cloud agnostic. You can use it to build and maintain infrastructure across multiple clouds.
Tag: cloud computing
Performance improvements
Just wanted to let you all know that I’ve made a couple of changes recently, which should result in a somewhat faster performance of this site.
Firstly, before the last weekend, I’ve moved all my DNS hosting to Amazon Route 53 service. This should result in faster DNS queries all around the globe and minimize the potential downtimes.
Secondly, I’ve installed and configured the JS & CSS Optimizer WordPress plugin, which now results in much fewer HTTP requests needed to load the page, as well as fewer bytes to be transferred around. I’m still tweaking the settings for this one to see how much I can squeeze out of it, but I already see an improvement.
As always, if you see any issues, please let me know.
Services Engineering Reading List
Services Engineering Reading List – A reading list for services engineering, with a focus on cloud infrastructure services
Akamai vs Incapsula – Comparison Review
Application Delivery Controllers (ADCs) are the current evolution of old school CDNs platforms tasked with responsibility not only for website’s performance, but also for its security and availability. By singlehandedly covering these mission crucial aspects of content and application delivery these technologies allow you to replace multiple appliances with one full service solution. With that, ADCs help eliminate many integration related issues, while also dramatically cutting down all setup, acquisition and maintenance costs.
In the world of ADCs, Incapsula is perhaps the most promising up-and-comer, a cloud-based service that seems to have the technology and the business sense needed to position itself at the same level as its legacy competitors.
It’s been almost two years since I last blogged about Incapsula. Now with recent announcement of its load balancing and failover features, I decided to update my review by pitching Incapsula against Akamai – a globally recognized CDN industry leader, who is also making a leap into the world of full service application delivery.
For this “head to head” comparison of Akamai vs Incapsula, I’ll be focusing on security, performance, availability and – of course – price of service.
You can find the full comparison here but for those of you who want to skip to the chase, here’s what I think about in a nutshell:
Akamai vs Incapsula: In a Nutshell
Incapsula simply offers more for less. You get all of the essentials you would expect, including a robust CDN, PCI compliant Web Application Firewall, DDoS protection and integrated high availability features (both load balancing and failover), all at very reasonable price point.
Not only that, but when compared with Akamai it looks like most of Incapsula features actually offer more, both in terms of their functionality and in term of their overall synergy. One great example is Incapsula’s Real Time view which complements its custom security rules engine and load balancing features by providing instant feedback on every action taken.
In fact, when looking at value for money, Akamai does not offer any tangible benefits – at least not for those who are looking beyond a CDN-only option.
