Amazon EC2 & Performance Bottlenecks
About half a year ago I setup an EC2 node (small one) with a monitoring tool (PRTG) to monitor one of my clients who uses Akamai for their content delivery. The idea was to get an objective, outside view, of the site's performance.
As an interesting side effect I was also to able to monitor amazon's performance (see the graph below). Clearly there are many reasons why we see the sudden hike in the download time, but I can tell you that the site itself didn't change over that time frame and that therefore the load-time increase is either due to Akamai or Amazon. Based on the reports (or lack thereof) from the client I must assume that it's Amazon. It basically leads me to believe that something changed inside Amazon's EC2 product round and about September … interesting food for thought.
The graph above shows the load time for a full front-page download (HTTP), so this isn't just a 'ping' graph.
-niels
Sharepoint & Alternative Mappings
Ok, here some more rambling on sharepoint. The sharepoint configuration I have (MOSS 2007 + windows 2008) has two site: one on port 80 (the intranet site with normal windows authentication (not AD mind you) and the other on port xxxx (and extranet site using forms authentication using ADAM). I have two normal DNS domains names: intranet.com and extranet.com (how original). The problem I got stuck with was how to map the port xxxx for the extranet site to so that externals could simply use port 80 on MOSS to view the site. Of course there are host headers but then I still got error messages from sharepoint.
In the end it turned out that Alternate Access Mappings (AAM) was the right way to do this.
After the break are the screen shots of the configurations that worked for me
Dropbox, SugarSync, Live Sync
A while ago I had to look for an alternative for live-sync (the Microsoft synchronization tool between multiple computer) because Apple hadn't bothered to tell anyone in advance of certain changes between OSX 10.5 and 10.6. I chose Dropbox. Dropbox is a paid for service and it works pretty much like Live Sync, except that it also stores files on the Dropbox servers.
There is no doubt that many people find this attractive but it also collides with my companies security policies (I use the synchronization services to keep copies of all files on my Mac, Windows 7 desktop (yes I still have one of these) and my home servers (for storage & backup)). So recently I decided to look around again to see if MS has fixed the issues and it seems they have. However, i looked around and to my surprise there aren't many services that "just to sync" .... they all have "cloud storage", which I really don't like, imagine what would happen if Dropbox or Sugarsync got acquired and change the terms-of-service, they simply could decide to mine all the stored date for 'interesting opportunities', yes I'm suspicious I know but there are good reasons why ISO27001 forces companies to think about where they keep their data and who has access to it.
Apart from all this security and 'i-don't-want-to-have-my-live-in-the-cloud' stuff I also found a few problems with Dropbox and Sugarsync:
- Dropbox requires a single 'drop-box' directory from where the synchronization happens. I have several different directories on my machines in the various location and I don't want to move them to a single directory, I don't want to adapt my way of working for this program. Sugarsync doesn't have this 'problem'.
- neither Sugarsync nor Dropbox have an easy mechanism to have someone else's shared directories storage on my system in a location that I want. Dropbox will store it in the 'Dropbox' directory, Sugarsync doesn't store it at all, it just gives the user access to the 'cloud' directory
There is a third program I looked at: PowerFolder ... it does what live-sync does but at a rather steep price: $90/year. It does have the ability to keep files in the 'cloud', but if that is needed Microsoft Mesh might be suitable as well, though that is still in Beta and from what I've read not everybody is really happy with it.
So, in the end I'm reverting back to live sync for the 4 machines that I have and the 2 additional machines from my dad (for his photos) and my father in law (also for his pictures). It seems a service that works and is simple to use, which is a real benefit, I found both Sugarsync and Dropbox to have too many features for my liking.
Colibri – Quicksilver for Windows
I was looking for a quicksilver replacement for windows ... I'm a commandline person for launching applications, what can I say. So I installed colibri. It works great but for a few oddities with windows 7 64 bit: when I want to launch a 64 bit application (like photoshop) via a shortcut to the "C:\Program Files" directory (it works well with 32-bit application launch via shortcuts to the "C:\Program Files (x86)" directory) I get the following error message:
"Path to Shortcut"
The specified path does not exist.Check the path, and then try again.
after come looking arround I found a workaround (link):
1. create a folder somewhere on your disk.
2. hold down shift on that folder, right-click and select open command window here.
3. type: mklink /D foldernameyoucreate "full path to original folder in quotes"
example: i created a folder called x64Fix on my disk to hold all my symbolic links for the apps that aren't working. i created my symbolic link inside of it like so (using photoshop as an example):
C:\x64Fix>mklink /D Photoshop "C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)"
4. verify message that symbolic link was created (you should also see a shortcut arrow on the Photoshop folder).
5. You should then have a folder path like C:\x64Fix\Photoshop
6. Create your shortcut for the jumplist from C:\x64Fix\Photoshop folder path to the exe rather than the real path.
so, instead of your shortcut being:
"C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop CS4 (64 Bit)\Photoshop.exe"
it will be
"C:\x64Fix\Photoshop\Photoshop.exe"
This works it seems and now I can launch a 64 bit applicaiton from colibri. Anyway, colibri is great, look here: http://colibri.leetspeak.org/ and it works on windows 7
Popcorn hour C200
I got my new media streamer today: the popcorn hour C200.
I'm streaming all content from a windows home server (I've iso-ed all the kids movies - mostly to protect them since they will get scratched) from where I stream the iso and avi files through the C200. admittedly I've only had the device 1 hour but I noticed (or rather my daughter did) that the streaming (via SMB) can halt from time to time (I'm still finding out why), I think this has to do with the CPU load on the WHS machine, it seems to spike from time to time and judging from the network traffic from the WHS machine it seems to dip inline with CPU load ...
Update: I've been using the PCH for some time now and I'm really happy, the quality is great and its very easy to use, the remote control is radio based, so no line-of-sight is needed, which means I've put the device in a closed cabinet (I don't have HDD or blu-ray player so the device doesn't get too hot and I don't need to access it).
I've also figured out that the YAMJ (Yet Another Media Library) is a great tool to show the kids movie collection ... so I've spend the last week/weekend to encode all the 70+ kids DVDs to ISO and get the album art correct, but the result is fantastic !!
Update: the best tool to copy your DVDs from DVD to ISO: anyDVD ... Nero also does a good job. If you really need to convert it to a AVI/MKV format (or the likes), use FairUse, its one of the few tools where I get a consistently playable file (i.e. playable on the kids Archos' devices)
Securing wordpress blogs for home/family use
So I've been trying to secure my family blog (blog.hilbrink.org) ... my sister (and others) have expressed concerns that the content is a little too private, more so since the various kids are mentioned on the blog. So I looked into the problem and found and "Authenticator" plugin (link - its in german), it basically redirect anybody who wants to view the blog to a login page.
its good to make a littel change to the plugin though, arrond line 20 I replaced:
header('Location: ' . get_option('siteurl') . '/wp-login.php?redirect_to=' . urlencode($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']));
with
header('Location: ' . get_option('siteurl') . '/wp-login.php?redirect_to=index.php');<br />
This way it puts the main blog site infront of the user once they are logged in. At the same time I'm allowing people to register themselves (but I get notified) and I'm planning to put a whitelist of sort in place to avoid people logging from gmail and hotmail accounts (since there are not linked to ADSL accounts they are much harder to vet when it comes to abuse).
bluewin TV Box
Interesting, I started a port scanner from my mac (stroke) and I found two ports (8080 and 8086) and then the box reset itself in an infinite loop ... hmmm, then i tried to use firefox to connect to port 8080 (after it came back up again) and the rental movie that played on TV stopped and all sound went away.
Apart from some angry noises from my daughter it all seems to work fine now but it almost looks like there is some build in security (ping-ing the box is fine, not disturbance)
VMware Sizing
Found this article / presentation on VMware sizing of IBM server (x-series) equipment:
- download3.vmware.com/vmworld/2006/tac4057.pdf
basically it seems that on a loaded (X3850M2 with maxed-out memory (128 or 256) the system is CPU constraint. I think you can run over 40 VMs on such a box without interference (24 cores)
Quad Core on a P5B
The weekend project ... how to update my ASUS P5B (dual core 2.6Ghz) to a Quad-core (Q9550) ... here's what i did
- change the CPU, reboot the machine (windows 7 - 64 bit)
- forget the thermal paste and don't notice it
- after a heavy session of DVD conversion (24 hour) I finally installed a CPU temperature monitor ... oops almost 100 degrees for the last 24 hours ... I guess the Intel chips can handle it
- buy thermal paste and shutdown the machine
- apply the past and reboot ==> system won't reboot
- utter a few words in Dutch, French and English ... try again ... still no luck ==> Panic, think about the financial crisis and how you might just have to contributed to it (in a positive way ...)
- Finally notice that your memmory is running at 675 Mhz (odd number !), the systems board at 333 Mhz and the multiplier is 8.5 ... so by reducing the systems board to 270 the memory (2.5 x 270 = 675) but the machine is running a little slower 8.5 x 270 = 2.2 Ghz
- be happy that you don't have to explain this little stupid stunt to your financial controller ...
- buy new 800 Mhz DDR2 memory ... this is for next week
Ruby Soap Client
Now I'm playing with soap calls (to the webservices of Akamai and Limelight) from a ruby program. Here are some note on using SOAP Webservices with RUBY (as a client):
- install soap4r (link) - or simply type 'sudo gem install soap4r'
- install http-access2 (link) - I've noted that the gem install of soap4r also installs the httpclient
- example: a good article can be found on Brendon Wilson's blog (link)
more to come
