Linux Distributions vs PHP
Mar 24th
The splintering of Linux distributions seems to be continuing!
This week, I have had requests for PHP versions 5.3 and 5.2 on both Red Hat EL 5 and CentOS 5 – though never distribution supports higher than 5.1.6 in the official repositories.
PHP 5.2 has been out quite a while. Ubuntu Hardy LTS has it and it is 2 years old. Ubuntu Lucid LTS is coming out in April has 5.3 by default. I bet Debian Lenny is at 5.2 or higher already. SUSE is at 5.3 (for version 11.x where X != 0)
“Why” seems to be the question of the day – why doesn’t RHEL do some updates to something people feel they ‘require’ for their PHP web applications? CentOS would then follow.
Even old/stodgy FreeBSD (my personal favorite) is all over the 5.2 camp for PHP since 6.x, and the *BSD people do not play the version of the day.
If I have to run Linux based systems, I choose Ubuntu. Not always the latest version but at least this distribution keeps up with customer wants (and sometimes…needs).
Goodbye VISI, it had been good
Mar 22nd
Today, a Minnesota company has been purchased by a corporation outside of Minnesota, for the second time.
A Brief history…
Vector Internet Services, Inc. started in October, 1994.
In July of 1996, I went to work at Vector (as it was known then) along with some of my old Winternet crew.
In May of 2000, VISI.com (as it was called) was sold to DSL.net out of New Haven, CT. Details of this sale are available to anyone who can use Google and has a little bit of time (ticker was DSLN).
In May of 2004, I left VISI.com out of boredom – DSLN really didn’t allow for any growth in the business or employee potential. Yes, I have a small chip on my shoulder about DSLN.
In December of 2005, Digital North purchased VISI.com for $3.3M and later renamed itself to VISI.
In March of 2010, VISI sells to TDS Telecom for $17.8M out of Madison, WI (Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. is out of Chicago and is the parent organization)
My largest competitor in the local market has been sold for its 3rd time, though I don’t know if that’ll be the charm.
I am sad to see them go. I’ll also miss the competition in the local marketplace for ‘largest locally owned & operated service provider in the state of Minnesota’, though I can think of worse ways to go
Best wishes and good luck to everyone still employed with VISI, and to the customers who continue to use VISI today and in the future.
References:
- Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. acquires VISI Incorporated (from TDS)
- Telephone and Data Systems, Inc. acquires VISI Incorporated (from VISI)
- VISI sold to Wisconsin Firm; no layoffs planned (twincities.com)
- Managed-hosting firm VISI sold for $17.8 million (finance-commerce.com)
- TDS Partnership to Fuel VISI Growth (from blog.visi.com and Mike Sowada)
- news.google.com search query
Example cost: Virtual Private Cloud (updated)
Feb 10th
Back in September, 2009, I had written a post with a quick overview of what a private cloud (or infrastructure) looks like and some basic costs and information, including why it is a great product (I am biased).
Since then, Dell has retired the PE2900III model server and items change, this is an update for the basic configuration.
Reminder graphic:
2 Servers, 1 firewall
So, originally, the physical servers were configured as:
- Dell PE2900III (reasonably priced, very reliable, I have spares on the shelf)
- 4 ethernet ports (2 built in, 2 port card installed, more can be added)
- 2 73GB SAS drives mirrored together for booting VMware vSphere 4
- 32GB RAM (48GB is max for this hardware platform)
New servers look like:
- Dell PET610 (reasonable price, very reliable, spares to go onto the shelf)
- 4 ethernet ports (all built in)
- 2 80GB SATA drives mirrored together for booting VMware vSphere 4
- 48GB RAM (192GB max available – very expensive)
The reason for the RAM change is that I am seeing a 2:1 (or higher) ratio of RAM to CPU usage in terms of percentage, and 48GB is a good place for this sized system. Also, the newer Xeon 55xx series processors uses RAM sticks in 3s instead of 2 or 4 at a time. 48GB is 12 4GB sticks of RAM. The newer 55xx series of processors also has working hyper-threading (or H/T) and I am seeing very nice performance on servers deployed using this processor family in our network.
Cost difference? The original posting listed had estimated the cost at $1,600.00 per month (see previous post), and I estimate this to be very close, inching up to approximately $1,700.00 per month, and this number should be high. (for accurate pricing, please contact ipHouse sales people, they can run up a quote based on real numbers)
Apache 1.3 – you were loved
Feb 4th
So, across my RSS feed today, I saw a blurb…
Apache terminates ‘outated’ web server
What?
I clicked the link and was sent off to The Register for their report on the issue.
Apache 1.3 was released in July, 1998 – 12 years ago, and still in operation today.
At ipHouse – we use 1.3 as the tried and true Apache webserver on our cluster. We’ve not had either issues or problems; and security updates are few and far between. I guess after 12 years no one cares anymore to hack such old code or something.
Goodbye Apache 1.3, we had a long relationship, but your sister is younger and better equipped for todays Internet. Don’t cry, we’ll remember you fondly.
Hello Apache 2.2 – we are look forward to a long relationship on our network behind our F5 load balancers.
*sniffle*
Summary: Apache 1.3.42 is the final release according to the Apache Software Foundation. They recommend moving to Apache 2.2.14. Apache 2.0 will end once Apache 2.4 has been released, and finally, Apache 2.3.5 is in alpha stage.
Reference:
Shell service available
Jan 29th
Been a long week and I had to deal with some red tape internally (of my own creation!), but finally have some working shell service to sell to people who want it.
I had posted last week about the issue(s) of shell services and decided that I would do the work to put this kind of service together as I have both the experience and gumption to do so. Even includes my smiley, happy-go-lucky support attitude!
So it is available and sales is ready to take the orders. I don’t expect a lot of people signing up for this, but it takes care of a sect of customers that still want to do things in a manner that isn’t web based, that isn’t all mouse driven.
I can relate to that!
- Ubuntu Hardy
- FreeBSD 8
- emacs, vi, joe
- mutt (no elm, no pine – all Maildir oh well)
- procmail filtering
- IMAP, POP3, SMTP, with SSL and STARTTLS goodness
- reasonable and ample disk storage quota on our NetApp gear
Let the nerding begin!
