Tag: web hosting

Checking out Ansible. Sorry Puppet

It’s Thursday evening of a particularly difficult week at work.  Tomorrow is a public holiday, effectively making this – a Friday.  My brain is blank and exhausted, so I can’t do anything productive.  And I’m too tired to go out.  But I can still learn a thing or two.

First things first – cancel the external noise.  I want something loud, but not too intensive, and with no words in it.  So this 2 hour blues instrumental collection comes in handy.  Start the playback, put the headphones on, and push the volume up.

Now.  Here’s something I wanted to look into for quite some time – Ansible configuration manager.

Continue reading Checking out Ansible. Sorry Puppet

Cipherli.st – strong ciphers for Apache, Nginx and Lighttpd

Cipherli.st – provides ready to use cipher configurations for a variety of applications, such as Apache, Nginx, Lighttpd, HAProxy, Exim, Postfix, Dovecot, OpenSSH, and others.  This is a huge time-saver for those of us not well versed in cryptography and security.

Don’t forget to use Qyalis SSL Labs SSL Server Test tool for the complete analysis of where you went wrong.

VPN Comparison Chart

Reddit user ThatOnePrivacyGuy compiled this Google sheet with comparison of 130 VPN services.

vpn

It covers a whole lot of metrics for each – from pricing, encryption and configuration options to additional services, activism and jurisdiction. Enjoy!

Updated (May 22, 2017): If you want to learn more about different VPN providers, have a look at Anonymster.com.

AWS Database Migration Service

AWS Database Migration Service

AWS Database Migration Service is yet another one of those tools that you always wished that somebody created, but never actually got to checking if it exists.  Here is a recent blog post showcasing the functionality.

Do you currently store relational data in an on-premises Oracle, SQL Server, MySQL, MariaDB, or PostgreSQL database? Would you like to move it to the AWS cloud with virtually no downtime so that you can take advantage of the scale, operational efficiency, and the multitude of data storage options that are available to you?

If so, the new AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) is for you! First announced last fall at AWS re:Invent, our customers have already used it to migrate over 1,000 on-premises databases to AWS. You can move live, terabyte-scale databases to the cloud, with options to stick with your existing database platform or to upgrade to a new one that better matches your requirements.  If you are migrating to a new database platform as part of your move to the cloud, the AWS Schema Conversion Tool will convert your schemas and stored procedures for use on the new platform.

Upgrading Amazon EC2 instance type

By now everybody knows that one of the major benefits to using cloud services rather than hosting on your own hardware is the ease to scale quickly.  Many web applications and large companies benefit from this, but what about smaller customers?  How about a single server?

Well, today one of our web servers was experiencing some pick loads.  It hosts a whole array of small websites built with WordPress, CakePHP, and other popular tools.  There was no time to update all these projects to work with multiple web servers.  And even redeploying them to multiple individual servers would have taken a few hours.  Instead, we’ve decided to upgrade the server hardware.

Pause for a second and imagine the situation with your own server.  Or a dedicated hosting account for that matter.  So much to configure.  So much to backup and restore.  So much to test.

Here’s how to do it, if your projects are on the Amazon EC2 instance (our was also inside a virtual private cloud (VPC), but even if it wasn’t, the difference would be insignificant):

  1. Login to the Amazon AWS console.
  2. Navigate to the Amazon EC2 section.
  3. Click on Instances in the left sidebar.
  4. Click on the instance that you want to upgrade in the list of your instances.
  5. Click Actions -> Instance State -> Stop.
  6. Wait a few seconds for the instance to stop.  You can use the Refresh button to update the list.
  7. (While your instance is still selected in the list of instances:) Click Actions -> Instance Settings -> Change Instance Type.
  8. In the popup window that appeared, select an Instance Type that you want.
  9. Click Apply.
  10. Click Actions -> Instance State -> Start.
  11. Wait a few seconds for the instance to start.
  12. Enjoy!

The whole process literally takes under two minutes.  You get exactly the same configuration – hostname, IP addresses (both internal and external), mounted EBS volumes, all your OS configuration, etc.  It’s practically a reboot of your machine. But into a different hardware configuration (CPU/RAM).

Coincidentally, earlier this morning I had to pack up a rack-mountable server – screws, cables, dusty boxes, the whole shebang.  It’s been a while since I’ve done that last time.

But I can tell you that I much prefer clicking a few buttons and moving on with my day.  Maybe I’m just not the hardware type.