[GRLUG] Cloud VMs, Hosting, & CMSs [Was: NOT LINUX - broadband]

[Michael Mol]

On Thu, Sep 3, 2009 at 11:53 AM, Adam Tauno
Williams<awilliam at whitemice.org> wrote:
> On Wed, 2009-09-02 at 21:54 -0400, Michael Mol wrote:
>> > Oh, I enjoy mucking with it.  I don't enjoy *supporting* it!   It will
>> > inevitably fail on a Friday afternoon, during month-end, or as I'm
>> > wrapping up a large project.
>> Same applies to supporting and configuring software. :-|
>
> True, but I can fix software from home, or even the beech!  As an admin
> that is one of the best upsides of virtualization - even if the "server"
> refuses to boot I can fix it from wherever I am and don't have to run to
> the data center and stand there on the tile floor.

No argument there.  The biggest reason I might conceivably go colo is
that it lets me design and build my own box--and building good
hardware with little money is something I've found I'm good at.  On
the other hand, I haven't been able to find any good colo option in or
near Grand Rapids, and I'd rather not drive to Chicago or Battle Creek
(assuming there are good options there) because of the inevitable
hardware failure.

>> Here's my detailed explanation of the last couple weeks...
>> http://rosettacode.org/blog/?p=238
>
> <quote>
> onveniently, mod_php doesn’t time out within  any time frame that the
> average Web user will notice.  Inconveniently, mod_php will not work
> with Apache’s mpm_worker (Would someone mind making mod_php and
> extensions thread-safe?), so the server is still stuck with a separate
> copy of all of PHP’s static runtime
> </quote>
>
> I wouldn't hold your breathe.  My solution has been to just try and get
> as much stuff off of PHP as possible - PHP is going nowhere as a
> platform.  If they did clean up the mess that is currently PHP I'd image
> they would break so many applications one might as well jump ship
> anyway.

Asking for multi-threaded support inside PHP was a tongue-in-cheek
request anyway; I'm intimately familiar with threaded programming, its
dangers and difficulties.

>
>> > Have you ever looked at Concrete5? <http://www.concrete5.org/>
>> Haven't heard of it.
>
> Hmm.  I honestly haven't really found a CMS I like, or more
> specifically, trust.

A system that renders to static files after a post, and where those
static files are all most users ever see, already takes some of the
biggest attack vectors and makes the window small.  A system
consisting <em>entirely</em> of static files on the server would be
nice, but that puts the onus on the post authors to create them before
uploading them, and I don't see how it would support a comment system
without pulling from a comment server app. (Though the idea of
separating a page and its attached comments is something I've pondered
for a year or two...)

-- 
:wq