Posted on: March 31st, 2011 by Famous Phil

First, I’d like to wish you a happy April Fools day!  I’ve never really been into the pranks that most people do on this day, and the idea I had fell through due to the lack of time (go figure).  The good news is that there is always next year!

For a project I had to do in a Distributed Computing class, I ended up having to configure a Tomcat 7 server running on CentOS 5.5 (a Redhat Linux derivative).  I always document my actions when I charter into unknown waters, so I thought I’d post my documentation for the public to see.

Before I begin, this project required the use of Amazon Web Services for deployment.  Being previously unfamiliar with AWS, I thought I’d outline some pros and cons to the service compared to traditional VPS hosting.

I like AWS because I can quickly create servers and delete servers on the fly without having to pay up front or rely on a support member who can only work so fast.  AWS also has the ability to expand dynamically for the load to a server.  For example, if you are hosting a site on AWS, and they detect your site is under a high load that the server can’t handle, more servers will be deployed on the spot to handle the increased traffic through an automatic load balancing mechanism.   Also, unlike most VPS providers, AWS provides a physical firewall that is in front of your AWS server, so you don’t necessarily have to worry about configuring a software firewall which might not always work perfectly.  Finally, the AWS servers are very fast, I have never seen any kind of a speed issue with them.  On other providers, this isn’t always the case, especially if the server is virtualized using OpenVZ (where the provider can oversell the server resources easily).

The biggest disadvantage of using AWS in the long term (for hosting) is the pricing scheme.  AWS uses a simple pricing scheme that charges you for every hour your server is running and is active.  This adds up to roughly $5-$100/month depending on what you get.  Then on top of that, AWS also charges for bandwidth by the GB.  Although this pricing scheme is fine for very little traffic or a lot of traffic, for the average amount of traffic (about 1-2TB / month), this pricing scheme isn’t the best compared to other providers.  For example, the virtual server that hosts my website costs me $20 per month, it has so much disk space and bandwidth (2TB included).  If I were to ask AWS for the same thing, I’d pay $10 for the server, and then roughly $100 for the bandwidth every month (if I were to use it all). Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: amazon, apache, AWS, CentOS, EC2, Tomcat, Web
Posted in Hosting / Server Administration, Technology
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Posted on: May 7th, 2009 by Famous Phil

I just finished up my last final for this semester of college and it feels good to be done.  That is why I haven’t really been blogging much for the past few days, and it might be a few days more until I get my next blog out.  Now its basically wait for a few weeks for my professors to be not-so-lazy and post my grades and grade the finals.  I am confident that my courses will come back as high marks (none below B).  In past semesters, I haven’t been able to say the same, so that’s a good sign.

Anyways, I have a short rant about the bookstore on campus.  As you probably know, most bookstores for colleges are a huge ripoff operation focused at making maximum profit because they know they can do that and get away with it.  Anyways, I thought I’d just talk a little bit about my experience every semester and what I started doing this semester to fix the problems that I’ve noticed.

The first semester I came here, I wasn’t sure about what books I needed until the final week, so I figured that I would get them from the bookstore.  That semester, I know I spent close to 500 dollars.  That is just outrageous for a mere 4 books.  Pretty sad, isn’t it?

After that semester, I began planning ahead and finding my book titles / isbn numbers out ahead of time.  The bookstore isn’t very helpful with this either.  The bookstore hates to post the book picture on their online store, so I end up always going to the bookstore about a week before class with a pen and paper to write down everything I need.  This works fine unless the professor hasn’t yet decided on the book they wish to use.  I’ve found that the bookstore also hates ordering books early, so they rarely have all of the books until the first day of class  (even when the professor ordered them ahead of time).

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: amazon, bookstore, ebay, edition, education, grades, higher education, international edition, isbn, online, rip off, ripoff, school, us edition
Posted in Student Life
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