MOAR Server Changes

[gravy]

Okay!

Another big change. The short is that we're now running under a pretty different configuration than before. Everything should still be fine but if youd do experience any problems please report them here

Feedback on notification mails would be handy in particular and also general speed of the site

Longer Version
When I set this up last week I was pretty new to the whole thing and did so by buying a pre-configured AMI that had LAMP already installed along with phpBB3. That was cool but what I didn't like so much was:

• Apache again (had a bunch of historical issues with the forum where too many concurrent logins borked it)
• The image came with some minor charges on a per house basis. It's okay but I know how to configure this stuff anyways
• Really odd file layout. The guys that made their image had a very non standard way of putting it all together that wasn't like any other linux distro I'd seen

So. I've changed it all. We're now running on a micro EC2 instance with no persistent data that I built. The http server is now nginx, about the same speed as Apache but much more frugal in terms of memory and CPU usage. The database and html for the site live on it's own EBS that's mounted by the EC2. Makes it a lot easier to sort the backups the way I want.

There's a chance that using a micro instance is a bit optimistic. We'll see. I can easily change that if it ends up being the case

Once again utterly bowled over by how this stuff works, the flexibility it provides and the ease in pulling things about and trying stuff out with what turns out to be an excellent saftey net.

gaz

[Istar]

The only real differences between t1.Micro and m1.Small are a smaller RAM allocation (0.6GB instead of 1.7GB) and a variable CPU allocation. I'd be surprised if YY loaded it beyond capacity. And if it does, stop/change/start. I have bigger stress deciding whether to have plain or hazelnut coffee.

[gravy]

I've just chucked on a PHP cache thing that seems to have helped general speed and will also keep CPU usage minimised

This stuff rocks

Quite liking Nginx as well. Seems a lot more logical and easier to configure than Apache.

So yeah, it's weird: cheaper, faster and better. Not often you get solutions of that ilk

[KlaxonCow]

Feedback on notification mails would be handy in particular and also general speed of the site

I'm not getting any notification emails, I'm afraid.

But, otherwise, it all seems smooth and snappy on the forums themselves.

[gravy]

Could you try replying to this topic please?

[KlaxonCow]

Yes, that worked. I was brought here by a notification email, so it seems to be fine now.

Thanks for sorting that out.

[gravy]

No probs So if the instance reboots it wont send mails no more. I'll have to take another snapshot of the server to some point soon which will make the change persistent. Just means the forum coming down for around 10 mins

[sack]

If one of those grumpy QA bastards can post and it doesn't break then you've probably got it set up right

[Surfr]

No probs So if the instance reboots it wont send mails no more. I'll have to take another snapshot of the server to some point soon which will make the change persistent. Just means the forum coming down for around 10 mins

sendmail/postfix/whatever not configured to come up on boot in the default runlevel?

[gravy]

Nah it's a configuratio thing with php-fpm. The defualt ini file doesn't specify a command for php to use for mail.

I've changed it so it does but the AWS works is that you can EC2 instances that just boot from the equivalent of a custom linux live CD, it has no persistent store

I need to remake the image it boots from to include the ini change. That'll mean the sever being switched off, cloned to an image and then rebooted

[Surfr]

Ah right. Sounds interesting. I've been playing with RedHats new PaaS offering, Openshift this week but never actually looked at an EC2 instance.

[gravy]

Worth a try, the micro instances are free for a year with a new account