I am looking for a "free" IaaS service as an alternative to EC2 which will let me SSH into a system with full user permissions (create/delete files, install services, libraries and applications from the repository).
Tried OpenShift but ended up leaving due to strict permission policy on the SSH. Heroku, dotCloud, CloudFoundry.com, Stackato are PaaS providers. Rackspace and Linode might have what I need but are not free.
Is my own home server or EC2 are the only two options that I have? For the curious, I want to deploy my entire .vim folder and .vimc file for development on the cloud from a computer when I am not at home.
It seems like you want something for free that is not provided anywhere for free. I know its a shame, but it is reasonable that companies would charge for such a thing. Given that you want it for free I am guessing that you don't need much power or anything large scale. In that case I would look into the cheaper end of Virtual Private servers or a micro instance on EC2. VPS servers start at around $20 a month and a micro server starts at $14. Of course for the microserver you will have to pay a little extra for bandwidth and probably and EBS volume. Additionally AWS offers a free tier which pretty much allows you to run a micro instance with EBS for the first year.
Related
So I have installed netdata on my machine using this tutorial https://www.how2shout.com/how-to/how-to-install-netdata-on-windows-10-wsl.html
I started it in my browser via the provided command 127.0.0.1:19999 and it only monitors and sends performance of my local machine (the laptop I'm using)
I own a website so I tried to enter my website IP + 19999 at the end but of course that did not work.
I'd like to set it up so I can measure live performance from my website.
Any idea how I can do that?
Your website runs on a server that your hosting provider owns. To use Netdata, Netdata would have to already be installed on your provider's hosting infrastructure, or you would require sufficient (effectively administrator) access to your hosting server (or servers) to install it yourself, which many hosting services would be unlikely to provide. If you are using a hosting provider that manages your website hosting you likely don't need Netdata to monitor your website performance - monitoring then is considered to be part of what you pay for.
On the other hand, if you are managing your own cloud infrastructure, it should be easy (and a good idea) to install Netdata to monitor any website servers that run on top of it.
I downloaded Redis server and cli to my local machine and it working good.
I just wanted to know if I can use it also in production server:
Are there any critical limitations? For example: Can I use 100 GB for free? (It will be on my computer).
I know that Redis labs cost money per month but if I download the redis to my machine and not using the redis labs, would it be free? (and the cost will be only the storage of the machine I using).
Redis is an open source software, licensed under BSD. That basically means you can do anything you want with it, without owing anyone anything.
Redis Labs, the home of open source Redis and the provider of commercial products that leverage on it, offers a wide spectrum of solutions - whether hosted, as-a-service, downloadable, remotely managed and so forth. You can (and should sometimes) use them, but that's definitely not a requirement.
Disclaimer: I work at Redis Labs and with the open source project.
I would like to access my Amazon S3 buckets without third-party software, but simply through the WebDAV functionality available in most operating systems. Is there a way to do that ? It is important to me that no third-party software is required.
There's a number of ways to do this. I'm not sure about your situation, so here they are:
Option 1: Easiest: You can use a 3rd party "cloud gateway" provider, like http://storagemadeeasy.com/CloudDav/
Option 2: Set up your own "cloud gateway" server
Set up a dedicated server or virtual server to act as a gateway. Using Amazon's own EC2 would be a good choice.
Set up software that mounts S3 as a drive. Two I know of on Windows: (1) CloudBerry Drive http://www.cloudberrylab.com/ and (2) WebDrive (http://webdrive.com). For Linux, I have never done it, but you can try: https://github.com/s3fs-fuse/s3fs-fuse
Set up a webdav server like CrushFTP. (It comes to mind because it's stable and cheap and works on any OS.) Another option is IIS but I personally find it's harder to set up securely for webdav.
Set up a user in your WebDav server (ie CrushFTP or IIS) with access to the mapped S3 drive.
Possible snag: Assuming you're using Windows, to start your services automatically and have this work, you may need to set up both services to use the same Windows user account (Services->(Your Service)->[right-click]Properties->Log On tab). This is because the S3 mapping software might not map the S3 drive for all Windows users. Alternatively, you can use FireDaemon if you get stuck on this step to start the programs as a service all under the same username.
Other notes: I have experience using WebDrive under pretty heavy loads, and it seems to work well. Under tons of pounding (I'm talking thousands of files per hour being added to a 5 TB WebDrive) it started to crash Windows. But I'm not sure if you are going that far with it. Also, if you're using EC2, you may not have that issue since it was likely caused by a huge transfer queue in memory and EC2 will have faster transit to S3 and keep the queue smaller.
I finally gave up on this idea and today I use Rclone (https://rclone.org) to synchronize my files between AWS S3 and different computers. Rclone has the ability to mount remote storage on a local computer, but I don't use this feature. I simply use the copy and sync commands.
S3 does not support webdav, so you're out of luck!
Also, S3 does not support hierarchial name spaces, so you cant directly map a filesystem onto it
There is an example java project here for putting a webdav server over Amazon S3 - https://github.com/miltonio/milton-aws
I would like to be able to give someone a "bundle" of software to be able to host anywhere. Is there a way to do this so that the person is charged by Amazon for the amount of time that they used but does not have to deal with setting up an EC2 account and installing an image?
Also, it doesn't have to be EC2. What I am looking for a way for people to host their own cloud service.
I'll split your question into two parts:
Not requiring your customer to set up an account on EC2 (or whatever)
Not having to install an image
For the first, I don't think you'll be able to find a solution where the person who is to be charged by the host provider can be charged without setting up an account!
For the second, I think you are mainly concerned about the annoyance of your customer having to do a full image install and then configure your software package into that image... VM/VPS setup can be a chore.
If this is the case, you can simplify this a lot by pre-preparing a full VM that has an OS installed as well as your fully configured software and support packages. Then simply give your "someone"/customer the entire VM as one .iso file and they can host it at http://www.elastichosts.com quite easily. ElasticHosts lets you set up completely arbitrary VMs, unlike most (all?) other VPS providers that currently limit you to a selection of OS images that you then need to install your software into.
I don't think you can get any easier, unless I completely misunderstand your question.
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on AWS and assign user accounts to developers that should have access to most (but not all) features.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the
idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent build from the server for development
on his local box. Basically, something like SVN. Is this possible?
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server? Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j - will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Thanks for your time.
To answer your questions:
Yes, kind of. There is Identity and Access Management offered by AWS, but it's not the easiest solution to use. Having said that, it can allow you to lock down some of the access activities on an account so that you have some control over your users. I would say that AWS is still very much a single-user environment for server administrators.
You could get away using only the management console. Your use of scripting may only be required if you want to run batch or periodic activities (eg. take a snapshot of all machines at 2am every night).
Costs for EC2 are low, especially for the Micro machine sizes. But keep in mind that the idea of cloud computing is the availability of on-demand resources for short term use. If you run dev machines needlessly over night then you will still be paying! And if someone launches an Extra Large machine (or 30 machine instances) then you will suddenly find yourself with bigger bills than expected.
(5. and 6. as well) Amazon EC2 is really about issuing you the boxes. What you do thereafter is fully up to you. You can create snapshots daily of your machines, you can deploy SVN and noSQL etc. etc.
I've been seriously into EC2 for a while now, and lots of companies are starting to look at the idea you propose. There are benefits to giving staff on-demand compute power, without having to manage any infrastructure in-house. But I will re-iterate my first point that EC2 is very much a single-user, server administration environment, which doesn't lend itself to being used as a dev playground without additional tools. (Or at least it becomes a challenging task if you have several devs spread around in your company).
I own a business that helps companies use EC2 for dev/lab/playground type of environments. I won't directly flog it here, but will show a quick demo we just put on DropBox: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/16347737/RequestEC2Machines.html Feel free to request a machine to see how adding process to EC2 can help meet your goals.
I run/develop a website using Amazon EC2 & SimpleDB and I have some comments for you on your questions
Hi.
We are a very small mobile company (building an application for the iphone) and we are currently considering hosting services. We are currently leaning towards Amazon's hosting/web services. Accordingly, I have some questions:
1) Can I create an admin account on
AWS and assign user accounts to
developers that should have access to
most (but not all) features.
In my experience, there doesn't seem to be a direct correspondence between Amazon users and users on a single instance. An instance's root account is connected to the amazon account indirectly through a key pair. Although, I must say that I haven't explored this question in detail.
2) Do we need to learn / use AWS APIs in the development of our product? I don't like the > idea of having to create hooks into a hosting service.
I manage everything through their web console and Eclipse IDE plugins. I've never had to touch the API yet for development and deployment.
3) It looks like the pricing for AWS scales with usage. So, since we are in
development and have only developers accessing the server right now, am
I right that the cost will be quite low if anything?
Micro instances cost the lowest and the cost is pretty good if you're just starting an instance for a couple of hours and then stopping it. I never think twice about starting a micro instance to try out something new
4) How does AWS do version management? We have several developers
scattered throughout the country. Each will need to checkout the the recent
build from the server for development on his local box. Basically, something like SVN.
Is this possible?
I haven't seen this feature being offered directly by Amazon. You can of course keep an instance always on for your repository with backups
5) I am guessing we need something like a dev, svn, and production server?
Is this right? If so, how do I set this up and find out the associated costs?
EC Pricing - http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/
Amazon Simple Monthly Calculator - http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
6) We are considering a few database options, among them NoSQL and Neo4j -
will we be able to do this using AWS? The server language will be Java.
Amazon instances can be what you want them to be, hence you can either use a pre-configured ami to launch an instance or start off with a bare bones Ubuntu Server or Windows Server e.g. and build a system with what you want. You can then save the snapshot of that system to launch more in the future or to re-launch if your instance crashes