I'm looking to setup Plastic SCM on a hosted server. Considering an Amazon EC2 instance for this. Any recommendations would be appreciated.
Minimum server specs for good performance
Tips on setup/config
Windows v. Linux
MySQL v. SQL Server v. SQL Express
Thanks!
We have extensively tested Plastic on EC2, in fact it is one of the main environments where we run Plastic SCM tests.
It all depends on the load that the server needs to handle.
Tiny server for occasional pushing and pulling
For instance, the demo server we use to handle the evaluation guide runs on a tiny EC2 instance, with Linux and MySQL and a total RAM of 512Mb. It is good for occasional pushing and pulling but of course not to be used under heavy load.
Big server for extreme load
On the other hand, we use a more powerful server to run 'load tests' with 300 concurrent bot clients doing about 2000 checkins per minute on a big repository. We detail the specs here. Basically, for higher perf:
20GB RAM
2 x Intel Xeon X5570
4 core per processor (2 threads per core) (2.7Ghz) – 16 logical cores – Amazon server running Windows Server 2012 + SQL Server 2012
Central vs distributed development
That being said, remember that if you setup a cloud server your bigger restriction for heavy load won't be the server itself but the network. If you plan to work in a centralized way (your workspaces directly work connected to the cloud server) then network will definitely be a consideration. Every checkin, every create branch, every switch to a new branch will mean connecting to the remote server and chances are that you won't get the same network speed you get on a LAN.
The other option is that you work distributed: you have your own Plastic repositories on the developer machines and you just push/pull to the central server. If that's the case it will work great and the requirements won't be high at all.
Specs for a 15-users team working distributed + Amazon EC2 server
If that's your case I'd go for:
Linux server + MySQL (cheaper than windows and works great)
Make sure you install the server with the packages we provide. We include our own build of Mono that will make wonders. Remember to set up the mono server to run with sgen (the latest Mono Garbage Collector).
Install MySQL (or MariaDB). Follow the instructions we provide here. Remember we do need to configure the max_allowed_packet in MySQL so it allows 10Mb packages (we use 4Mb but set it to 10). Everything is explained on the guide.
Use "user/password" security mode. Remember to configure the permissions so only your team can access :-)
For 15 users a m1.small instance will be more than enough (1.75Gb of RAM and a little bit of CPU).
Configure SSL and remove regular TCP so that your server is always secured. Check this.
We added an option in 5.4 that is able to store all data in an encrypted way, so even if the central repo is hacked in Amazon (unlikely) nobody will access your data.
Clients (I'll assume you're using Windows):
Install both client and server (remember we install a server to handle the local replicas of the repos).
Configure it in UP (user/password) mode.
Push and pull from the remote.
Alternatively you can also configure the SQLite backend (the one I've been using for 4 years now on Windows) which is extremely fast. By default, on Windows, a SQL Server Compact Edition (embedded) will be installed. It is ok too.
Connect to the server using SSL.
Hope it helps :-)
Related
I'm trying to set up a remote management system with VPro supported computers under the same network. I've done a good amount of research into this topic and now i'm trying choose the right path to suit my needs. The system needs to follow certain parameters.
Parameters:
Remote KVM control without User Consent
Power on, off, control bios of selected computers
Control a network of computer within a wired internet connection
Allow remote connection from outside the network to client PCs within the network (i.e at home)
Remote AMT Configuration with Admin Controls
I understand that VPro supports all of these actions, however it's the server system that handles them. I had looked into Intel SCS Lite, however i believe this is just a configuration tool and database for the profiles and i cannot actually control client actions. Tools like Microsoft SCCM look promising, however would it fulfill all my needs? Are their cheaper alternatives? There is also Intel VPro platform solutions manager. For this option, do i create a database of the AMT PC's with intel SCS console than connect to that through the platform solutions manager so i can operate on my client PCs? Any information regarding the setup and configuration of remote management of a compute network supporting VPro would be helpful.
Edit: This was a great site i found for anyone else who is researching VPro
http://windowsmasher.wordpress.com/2013/10/05/intel-vpro-the-basics-of-vpro/
I still welcome any additional information.
Blindly assuming that you're not bound to windows solutions and regarding your parameters, I think...
Remote KVM control without User Consent
Allow remote connection from outside the network to client PCs within the network (i.e at home)
You don't really need no enterprise tool integration for this... do you?
Just set up a html page that contains links like vnc://your-client-xxx and let
realvnc plus
handle the rest? For the KVM/VNC-Sessions, you don't need a middleman SCCM/whatever.
VNC will connect to your AMT-enabled client directly, using TCP port 16992 (or 16993 when
using TLS which you surely want...?).
Allowing remote connection from outside has nothing to do with SCCM or vPro... You'll most likely have a VPN connection to your 'work network'? The vPro-enabled clients will (by default) share the DHCP-obtained IP with the client, so you should be able to protect vPro access by a ('real') firewall as desired.
Power on, off, control bios of selected computers
Control a network of computer within a wired internet connection
Again, no need for a paid tool. For the requirement "power on/off",
you might consider amttool, at least
for pre-AMT-9.0-systems (as 9.0 dropped the older vPro SOAP protocol EOI in favour of DASH). DASH was supported since vPro 6.0 IIRC, so you could also use
AMD's free dashcli.
Shell tools are great for scripting (read: scheduled power management / cron) but
you surely were looking for a nice GUI tool. You may want to look at amtc / amtc-web, its demo site or github-wiki. It should be easy
to add vnc:// links to that currently power-management-focussed (fast!) webapp.
Ahh, and I never used it myself, but there's also vTul, a PowerShell based GUI...
If it's all about really rarely power-cycling a single machine: Don't forget that vPro comes with a web-interface, which also allows to do this...
Remote AMT Configuration with Admin Controls
As stated by ChileAddict, SCS Lite should be fine. AFAIK it will also take care
of certificate renewals for TLS-enabled clients. And you can use it to push/update
AMT configuration.
Any information regarding the setup and configuration of remote management of a compute network supporting VPro would be helpful.
Check with your PC supplier. They can deliver your hosts with RCFG (Remote Configuration) enabled. The new clients will then send HELLO packets to your provisioner.example.com,
where example.com is taken from the DHCP reply received. The provisioner must have
a certificate installed that is accepted by AMT, see intel's page.
An alternative is to deploy configuration using USB sticks -- or by hand. Where by hand will not allow TLS-secured communications...
You have definitely done your homework and that windowsmasher site sums things up nicely. Unfortunately, the free tools, like the AMT Commander, the Platform Solution Manager, the Web UI that is part of AMT, etc are not enterprise level solutions and do not have databases to hold the information for each system in your environment. (I think the AMT Commander uses your registry to store system information and you can connect to many systems and not have to input them every time you start it. However you can't do an operation on multiple systems, for example "shut all my systems down and apply some patch".) It's a one system at a time deal.
You can provision multiple systems using the Intel SCS and when I was last using it, there was a database involved. I do not know much about SCCM. There are other Enterprise-level tools such as Landesk that offer management of many systems simultaneously (not free, of course.)
If you wanted to be able to manage multiple systems at a time without purchasing the software, you would have to write your own management console using the AMT SDK. (Sorry!)
You might want to look at Meshcentral.com (same developer who wrote the AMT Commander/Open Manageability Toolkit) he is always adding new features and you can also download the source code.
I hope this helps.
Lots of time, We build a web application in our own personal system, with a local server that comes in packages like WAMP, XAMPP. But, the configuration we have on our system hardly matches 100% with the server where we host that application. This adds up to the debugging complexity a lot. Specially when the server you host is configured to hide the errors. Relying on error logs to debug everything, is a uncomfortable options, which is also not guaranteed to be available.
What are the measures we can take to minimise such differences?
You guys might say, it depends on web server as the configuration might be different from server to server. Even in this case, or shared hosting, I would like to know of the pointers to take, before hosting a application or even start building it.
We use a staging server that is a clone of our deployment server. Running code by the staging server (using version control) is both fast and a reliable way to ensure that the new code/code changes work as expected on the live environment.
That said, we use Ubuntu servers and I've opted to use Ubuntu as my development environment as well, makes stuff so much easier.
I’m hoping some of you with experience using amazon EC2 could offer some advice… of course it’ll be subjective which is fine, I’m pretty sure your guestimate would be better than mine.
I am planning on moving all my client’s websites from shared hosting environments to Amazon EC2. They’re all pretty low traffic sites (the busiest site receives around 50 unique visitors a day). There’s about 8 sites, but I may expand this as I take on more projects and host more sites… current capacity planning is for say 12 sites.
Each site runs on ASP.Net (Umbraco CMS), and requires a SQL Server database.
My thoughts are one of the following:
Setup a Small Instance (1.7gb RAM, 1 EC2 Compute Unit), and run IIS and SQL Server Express on that server.
Setup 2 Micro Instances (613MB Ram each, Up to 2 EC2 Compute Units) – one for IIS, the other for SQL Server.
Which arrangement do you think would work the best for my requirements. I’ve started setting up a Micro instance with Server 2008, SQL Server Express, etc… and finding it not coping with the memory requirements, hence considering expanding. I could always configure on a Small instance, then export the AMI and fire it up in a Micro instance after, and do the same every time any serious changes to the server are required. I guess I could even do all updates etc on a spare Small Spot instance, then switch load that AMI up in a Micro and transfer the IP Address across, so I don’t need to do too much work on the production servers. I figure if I store all my website data files on EBS Volumes, then it should be fairly easy to move hosting between servers with minimal downtime, while never working on a production server.
I’m interested to know what you all think, and what strategies you employ for such activities as upgrades, windows updates, software installations, etc.
And what capacity do you think I’d need for my requirements.
Cheers
Greg
Well, first-up, Server 2008 doesn't play well in the 613MB RAM the Micro instance gives you. It runs, but it's a dog, and it barks louder the more services (IIS, SSE, etc) you layer on top. We using nothing smaller than a Small for Server 2008, and in fact typically do the environment config in a Medium and scale down to Small once the heavy lifting is complete and the OS is ready to use. Server 2003, however, seems to breathe easier on a Micro - but we still do the config on a larger instance and scale down.
We're running low-traffic websites on Server 2003/IIS6 in a Micro, with a Server 2008/SS install on a shared, separate, Small instance. We do also have one Server 2008/IIS7 Micro build running, but only to remind ourselves why we don't use it more widely. ;)
Larger websites run Server 2008/IIS7 in either Small or Medium instances, but almost always still using that shared separate SS instance for database services. We try not to deploy multiple SS installations, since it makes maintenance and backups more complex.
Stashing content and config on EBS Volumes is of course good practice, unless you like rebuilding the entire system whenever an Instance disappears. Snapshotting your Instances periodically is also good practice, since you can spin-up a new Instance from a baseline AMI and swap the snapshot in as a boot Volume for fast recovery in the event of disaster.
I am working on this quiet a while, but still no conclustion.
I want to do horizontal scaling of Tomcat instances in Microsoft Azure (1,2,3,... Tomcat instances for one service). I read lots of articles about session replication, clustering,... with Tomcat. Since Azure does not support Multicasts, there is no easy way to cluster Tomcat. Also sticky sessions is no options, because Azure does round robin load balancing. Setting up two services - one with Terracotta or Apache mod_jk - and the other with Tomcat instances seems overkill for me (if even doable)...
Is this even possible?
Thanks in advance for reading and answering my question. Every comment/idea is highly appreciated.
There is the new appFabric caching service you could use, or there are examples of using Memcache on Azure, would that help?
http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/winazurememcached
Why do you feel that running 2 services is overkill, exactly? If you have no issue with scaling out to n Tomcat instances, adding another service for load distribution is a perfectly acceptable solution in my book. By running that service on a minimum of 2 instances, that service itself meets the Azure SLA requirements: your uptime will be as good as it is going to get on Azure, and you avoid a SPoF (single point of failure).
You could go with a product like terracotta, but it is also pretty straightforward to write a simple socket server to route HTTP sessions back to a particular instance running in Windows Azure. You would have to be aware of node recyles, but that is quite doable.
Be aware that memcached requires an additional Azure service as well (web roles), the appFabric caching service does not (but also has cost associated with it). I do not know Tomcat, but for IIS you can easily move session state from in memory to persisted (either SQL Azure or Azure Storage). Something to be aware of: for high volume sites, the transaction cost to Azure Storage can actually become a cost driver for your deployment if you store session info there. SQL Azure could well be the more cost-effective solution, but on the other hand might not be supported out-of-the-box for your solution.
I do not think that you can run Tomcat on Azure. Even if you could (using the virtual machine role) it is probably cheaper to run it on a Linux VM on Amazon EC2.
Edit
I see that this is possible using the Tomcat Solution Accelerator. But look at the disclaimer:
This solution accelerator is provided
for informational purposes only and
Microsoft or Infosys makes no
warranties, either express or implied
This is an unsupported solution. I know that it is often difficult to question management decisions. But using unsupported software for production systems, when a cheaper supported alternative is available, is generally not a good idea.
Recently I stumbled across mongoDB, couchDB etc.
I am hoping to have a play with this type of database and was wondering how much access to the hosting server one needs to get it running.
If anyone has any knowledge of this, I would love to know whether it can be set up to work when your app is hosted via a 'normal' hosting company.
I use Mongo, and so I'm really only speaking for Mongo, but your typical web hosting environment wouldn't allow you to set up your own database. You'd want root-level (admin) access to the server to set up Mongo. To get that, you'd want something like a VPS or a dedicated server.
However, to just play around with Mongo, I'd recommend downloading the binary for your OS and giving it a run. Their JavaScript shell interface is very easy to use.
Hope that helps!
Tim
Various ways:-
1) There are many free mongodb hosting available. Try DotCloud.com. Many others here http://www.cloudhostingguru.com/mongoDB-server-hosting.php
2) If you are asking specifically about shared hosting, the answer is mostly no. But, if you could run mongoDB somewhere else (like from the above link) and want to connect from your website, it is probably possible if your host allows your own extensions (for php)
3) VPS
How about virtual private server hosting? The host gives you what looks like an entire machine... hard drive, CPU, memory. You get to install whatever you want, since it's your (virtual) machine.
In terms of MongoDB like others have said, you need the ability to install the MongoDB software and run it (normally as a daemon). However, hosted services are just beginning to appear, such as MongoHQ. Perhaps something like this might be appropriate once its out of beta (or if you request an invite).
It appears hosted CouchDB services are also popping up, such as couch.io or Cloudant. I personally have no experience with Couch so I can be less certain than with Mongo, but I'd imagine that again to run it yourself, you'd need to install the software (and thus require root access).
If you don't currently have a VPS or dedicated server (or the cloud-based versions of the aforementioned), perhaps moving your data out to a dedicated hosted service would be an ideal way to go to avoid the pain and expense of changing your hosting setup.
You can host your application and your database in the different hosting servers.
For MongoDB you can use mongohq or mongolab with space 0.5 Gb for free