Sean A. Walberg’s series on IBM developerWorks is a great primer:
Tuning LAMP systems, Part 1: Understanding the LAMP architecture
Tag Archives: hosting
A Reading List: High Availability for Alfresco ECM
Start with watching the Alfresco hosted webinar: High Availability Clustering with Alfresco to get a high level overview.
Then read thru rivetlogic’s comprehensive page that includes notes on disaster recovery: Deploying HA Alfresco on Linux. This is mirrored on the AlfrescoWiki. Not sure which wiki page is definitive.
Finally, put it into practice with a working example by following Jeff Potts’s walk-thru of a simple set up to get a feel for it: Alfresco 3.1 clustering easier with JGroups.
Reference details:
AlfrescoWiki: Configuring JGroups and Alfresco Clusters
AlfrescoWiki: Cluster Configuration V2.1.3 and Later
Alfresco Webinar: High Scalability with Alfresco WCM (great information about various options)
Special thanks to Jeff Potts who answered a related query of mine on Twitter.
I’ll be sure to post progress here once I’ve a few working examples.
Dealing with technical debt
codeartisan: Jon Moore: Cracking down on technical debt:
Generally, as the folks with the technical ability to recognize it, it is the development team’s responsibility to try to avoid accruing technical debt while producing product. Failing that, it is their responsibility to recognize/document existing debt and to advocate for its removal. However, note that there are often symptoms of technical debt, such as those I’ve listed above for architectural debt, that can be recognized by non-technical folks too.
On the flip side, business folks / product owners need to be able to trade off short term wins that accrue technical debt vs. taking longer to produce a product with less debt. Communication with the tech team is of vital importance here; undoubtedly there will be times when a short-term win will be important (especially with a first-to-market situation), but it needs to be accompanied by a plan to eliminate the accrued debt. i.e. Treat your technical debt like credit card debt that should be paid down ASAP, and not as a long-term mortgage.
The interest on your technical debt is probably not tax-deductible.
Very much related to my earlier post about Agile gone wrong.
Emacs Remote Editting Goodness
Using Ediff Mode on two open buffers and Tramp to access a remote box. Couldn’t be easier.
lang:groovy – extend your Spring app with scripting
The Spring Framework offers many ways to ease application development and maintenance, but one that gets my interest really going is its dynamic language support.
codehaus: Dynamic language beans in Spring
codehaus: Groovy and JMX
raible designs: Using Dynamic Languages with Spring with Rod Johnson and Guillaume LaForge
organic thoughts: Spring Meets Groovy!
An email I was happy to send….
Hello,
Due to down time that my users were subjected to – by a decision one of your staffers made in shutting down access to our database – I have migrated the sites and domains I maintain that were hosted and managed at New Dream Network and Dreamhost to a more robust and secure solution.
Previously, when your staffers worked with me to diagnose and solve a high CPU situation, they showed patience and willingness to find a solution to pass on your other customers. Dreamhost impressed me then. I was very much ready to sing its praises.
That patience and customer care was entirely missing in this episode.
Without warning there was the decision your staffer made to shut us down. He sent an email to me upon doing so. And then for the next 24 hours there was no reply to any emails I sent to you for details.
Adding serious insult to injury was the removal of all access to my database, not permitting me to diagnose the problem, or migrate to a new host with up to-date data. One of your staffers told me it was my responsibility to have a back up. Well duh.
I had come to expect better from Dreamhost.
I hope you can rectify the problems you are experiencing with your customer care. I hear more and more from others similarly dissatisfied.
Please cancel my account immediately.
– Karl
Philly Future Status: We’re on our new host!
I want to thank the folks at Firebright for being patient with us and getting our new hosting environment up and running when we needed to move. The new digs rock.
Philly Future Status: In Transition
DNS is still propagating so there are two status messages to pay attention to on Philly Future. Each alerts you to whether you are using the new Philly Future, and can resume posting and commenting, or the old.
Hopefully by noon we will be in better hosting environment, one that is more reliable, better performing, and can handle the growth in features and in scope I’ve been wanting to tackle.
Philly Future Status: All clear
Let me put this diplomatically (for now): I am in the process of resolving Philly Future’s hosting issues and expect, by morning, for Philly Future to not only be clear of the downtime that was inflicted on us, but for Philly Future to be blazingly fast as well. I expect there will be few lingering issues to resolve, but over the next few days, we should be able to tackle them and come out of this better than ever.
Philly Future Status: Dreamhost has re-enabled our database
Note however, things are still fluid. Dreamhost wants me to improve the performance of Philly Future immediately or they will shut us back down. Please see this post at Philly Future.