JTS - Silva Tech Solutions LLC

Rackspace Openstack Cloud On a Budget

April 29, 2013 by JTS

The more we have gained experience on the OpenStack platform, the more we began wondering how large of a Rackspace cloud we could build on re-sold enterprise level hardware. This would be perfect for POC (proof of concept) labs, R&D computing development, or even a small office computing cloud. The goal was to get a cloud up and running with little cost, without sacrificing enterprise server features, but also not expecting a full NOC center. We would assume that UPS’s or networking equipment are already provided and/or not necessary.

The only place we have found to purchase reliable second-hand equipment, is eBay. So we logged on to find out how big of a Rackspace OpenStack Private Cloud we could build on a $10,000 budget using just “Buy it now” pricing and flat shipping.

CentOs Crypt_GPG Decryption Failure – SOLVED!

April 24, 2013 by JTS

Recently we were working on a software integration project, whereby we were migrating a php based application onto a CentOS system from an Ubuntu system. The platform requires the ability to call out to GPG and decrypt certain text elements as part of its “data at rest” encryption policy.

Prior to the move, the system used the “PECL” based GNUPG module and it worked farily efficiently Moving to the CentOS platform presented a few challenges, one of which being that the underlying GPG software was upgraded to the latest version (2). This version does NOT work with the existing PECL module, as it does not know how to send the passphrases to the new GPG pinentry interface.

Thankfully, there is another PEAR based module that was purported to work with GPG2, called Crypt GPG. The install and setup was extremely simple and we used the latest beta version (1.4.0b4) because it had the necessary pass-phrase hand-off that we needed to get working again.

Move Apache2 .HTACCESS Redirects to HTTP.D

April 19, 2013 by JTS

After performing a performance analysis on one of our client’s enterprise magento websites, we noticed that their .HTACCESS file was very large compared to what we typically see.

Upon closer examination we noticed that there were more than 400+ redirects and re-writes that had been carried over from their previous ecommerce shopping cart systems.

Based on Apache’s documentation (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/howto/htaccess.html), they recommend only using .htaccess files when you do not have access to the main server file.

EC2 Swiss Army Knife

April 16, 2013 by JTS

A client asked us how we could back-port a small database from MSSQL2012 database back to a MSSQL 2008 database. We know there is direct method of doing this, other than through an obscure process called “Generate Scripts”. Essentially, it exports the database objects as SQL scripts, that are generic enough to be re-run on any version of MSSQL. (For MYSQL folks, this is the default export format from a mysqldump).

Global Botnet Attack Against WordPress

April 12, 2013 by JTS

Apparently there was some sort of global attack against a variety of hosting providers last night (4/11/2013) targetting users of WordPress. The massive botnet attack targeted WordPress accounts and went directly after the login screen.

The performance degradation you experienced today was caused by a global attack against websites running the WordPress content managment system. The attack was directed at the login page for these sites. We have blocked external access to the login pages and that has corrected the performance issues.

One of our providers gave us that update this morning. We are still continuing to research the issue and see how Cloudflare was able to mitigate the attacks.

Magento Enterprise To the Cloud

April 9, 2013 by JTS

The Magento ecommerce system is a very complicated architecture, fraught with hardware and software tuning, caching systems, and database tuning. On a dedicated server, this can be a challenge to manage on a day to day basis. Moving it to the cloud presents a whole set of factors that will need to be considered.

Magento is a very hardware intensive system that requires extremely fast disk speeds. This is why most Magento hosting providers tout SAN and/or 15k RPM disks on all of their hosting accounts. If you try and run it on an ordinary, shared hosting account, you will be in for a very rude awaking.

A SMB Office with Less IT and More Cloud

March 20, 2013 by JTS

If you are a start-up company that does not require intensive computing resources, you can easily design a full office computing network, complete with resilient backups and Disaster Recovery, for both low upfront and monthly cost.

The traditional model of having a server or two in house to serve files mail, security and backups is no longer necessary. There are appliances that serve files, handle your firewall, detect intrusions, filter filtering and secure your computer systems. Most if not all of them, can also be installed as software running in the cloud. Software packages are available that can encrypt and backup your file-server appliance into the cloud (S3, Rackspace, etc), giving you nearly unlimited backup storage medium for extremely low rates. There are software packages that can be installed on every client computer, allowing an external IT person secure access to the computers to fix helpdesk-related issues. Mail service is readily available in the cloud from a variety of providers (e.g. Google, Rackspace etc.).

Rackspace Openstack Cloud On a Budget

CentOs Crypt_GPG Decryption Failure – SOLVED!

Move Apache2 .HTACCESS Redirects to HTTP.D

EC2 Swiss Army Knife

Global Botnet Attack Against WordPress

Magento Enterprise To the Cloud

A SMB Office with Less IT and More Cloud

AWS SDK for PHP 2 – Example Program

Data File Processing, Data Mining and Report Normalization Tips

Ubuntu 12.04 Network Connection Issue

Reach out to us for a consultation.