Amazon EC2 testing

Today's blog entry's purpose is to record a few bits of information I gathered playing around with Amazon's EC2 service.

As always, I investigate the latest and greatest in tech. This enables me to best advise clients' - even if the market here in Vancouver lacks enough clientele progressive enough to implement SaaS style services in earnest - I push on in the name of the next epoch of computing - the cloud!

Here is a quick summary of my test.

• I signed up for S3 (I'm already an avid JungleDisk user) and EC2 services with Amazon AWS.
• Installed Elasticfox and S3Fox Organizer plugins for Firefox
• Created a keypair - and saved the .pem file to my hard disk
• Setup a security group
• Setup a persistent volume - EBS Volume
• Created 2 instances of the 64bit version of Win2k3 Datacenter
• Using the .pem file, I was able to get the Administrator password for both machines and RDP into them
• I made both machines members of the same workgroup
• I was able to copy files back and forth their \\10.x.x.x\c$ shares
• Attaching the EBS Volume, instantly made that drive appear on the paired instance machines Disk Management area under Computer Management - then simple to format and attach that drive to a drive letter
• I then setup a Bundle as AMI job on one of the instances - this needs to be stored in an S3 bucket - created using the S3Fox Organizer
• After this new custom AMI was created - I fired a few instances up
• Passwords, and all changes were carried over - a perfect clone

I do see further testing is required for clients who need a quick solution for "on demand" render farms. The challenge would be -

• Would we connect the VMs to the local network via VPN connections?
• Would we get all render nodes to access files and element data via VPN?
• Or is it better to have it setup as a standalone setup?

voip.ms + Linksys PAP2T + X-Lite

I have been using voip.ms as my VoIP provider now for a few months and have a few clients using them. Loving the pay as you go model.

There are a few little challenges I have had on the way to have everything running smooth for my clients so they can have a trouble free experience, and a dirt cheap phone bill to boot!

First thing was, when setting up extensions, you have to make sure that ALL extensions are using the SIP servers, eg: sip.ca1.voip.ms

If you have them on separate servers, the extension to extension phone calls will not work. These timed calls are the cheapest (a tenth of a cent or so!), so its pretty important to get it working!

Next was the Phone Adapters I have been using for my clients:

The Linksys PAP2T

The phone adapter would work fine for a "while", then it would not accept incoming calls. Outgoing calls were fine though...

What was needed, is a tweak of the default factory settings. Specifically, log into the adapter, go to the Advanced View, then Ext1.

Set - NAT Mapping Enable: Yes

Set - NAT Keep Alive Enable: Yes

Once this was done, incoming and outgoing calls worked, and the adapter didn't go "offline" for the incoming calls.

X-Lite

With this free SIP softphone, I have had success with the following settings:

• In X-Lite - goto SIP Account Settings - Properties
• Put in the voip.ms User Name
• voip.ms password
• Use the same voip.ms for Authorization user name
• Domain - use your preferred voip.ms server
• Tick - Register with domain and receive incoming calls
• Tick - proxy - Address - use your preferred voip.ms server

Linksys/Cisco SPA921 phone is SIP compliant - sitting next to Linksys PAP2TLinksys SPA921

The Linksys/Cisco SPA921 is a cheap, 2 line SIP phone for desktop use. Settings are very similar to the PAP2T. The more expensive units have more lines, fancier LCD display, and an ethernet bridge, so you don't need 2 ethernet ports at the desk. This would be a fine SIP phone for 99% of users. Good news this puppy can be had for less than $100CAN, and isn't locked into to any vendor specific system since it is SIP compliant!

NexentaStor - n00by tips and tricks

I now have a full licensed version of NexentaStor up and running for a client.

During the testing phase, I had run the trial software to make sure it had all the features as advertised and functioned in a way that would be practical for contractors like us, that prefer a slick solution that minimizes the tweaking around as much as possible!

Trail software was successfully run on:

• VMWare Player/Fusion
• Sun VirtualBox
• ASUS P5W DH Deluxe mobo - with additional PCIe Intel E1000 nic (onboard nics not supported)
• SuperMicro X6DVA series mobo

Had no problems joining it to a Windows 2003 Active Directory (mixed mode - with a legacy Windows 2000 DC), setting ACLs, snapshots, browsing the .zfs folder, etc, etc.

When it came to running on production hardware, we were unsuccessful getting it to run on:

• HP Proliant 160 G5
• We were able to install the Solaris nic drivers, however it would hang post install
• see: http://forums.opensolaris.com/message.jspa?messageID=2351
• suspect a video chipset issue!

Next we tried:

• SuperMicro X7SBL-LN1
• This was put into a Supermicro 4ru Jbod chassis - 16 x 1tb drives
• LSI SAS HBA - LSISAS3081E-R - set in jbod mode
• If you need help with SAS cables - these guys are great help: http://www.cs-electronics.com

No problems at all booting into NexentaStor now!

During this time, the production network did have a domain controller upgrade. The old Windows 2000 and Windows 2003 domain controllers were demoted and fresh new Windows 2008 domain controllers took over AD tasks for the network.

This is when I had the next challenge - I was able to get Nexentastor to join, and sometime NOT join the domain. Everything I did, could not get a AD user that was logged into a Windows box to access a CIFs share on NexentaStor.

After hitting a Nexenta support, DNF Storage support, and reading every detail in the Nexenta User Guide, I figured there was a problem with our AD upgrade. Soooo, if you have a domain joining issue, I urge you to check every bit of your DNS server setup in AD.

Even though in the forward zones, _msdcs.domain.lan all the relevant entries were correctly populated, the _msdcs zone within the domain.lan zone was incorrectly populated with old DCs entries.

Once this was created, everything was good to go.

One more gotcha... When setting ACLs on the CIF shares, don't just click every box in haste! If I did, I was still denied access to the share.

Set as follows:

• execute
• read
• create
• write
• delete
• but NO inherit

the inherit permission seemed to lock out access...

Rogers Wireless bringing HTC Dream & Magic / G1 to Canada

So it is coming to Canada - If you look closely at the pic, the buttons look different, soooo, I am guessing that this will be different to my T-mobile version, and have a 3G radio that runs on the correct frequencies for Rogers/Fido 3G networks here in Canada!

Looking forward to more hardware options for Android - need longer battery life!

From: http://androidcommunity.com/rogers-wireless-bringing-htc-dream-magic-to-canada-20090507/

Flash Nifties - XML Slideshow 2.1 + Squarespace

Flash Nifties XML Slideshow 2.1 is a real easy and quick way to put up a simple Flash slideshow on your website.

I put one up for the Kookaburra Lodge website, and since they are on Squarespace, I needed to tweak things a little to get it to work.

First was to setup the slideshow.xml file the way I wanted, and load up the sample slideshow.html that Flash Nifties provide.

Once this was done, I loaded up the files Flash Nifties files (the xml, swf, js files, and the images folder - with my images) to a folder on the Sqaurespace account.

Next thing needed was to put -

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://website.com/storage/scripts/flashdetect.js"></script>

under the Website Settings - Code Injection section.

Next was -

<div id="flashcontent">
<h1>Oops!</h1>
<p>It looks like you don't have flash player 6 installed. <a href="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" >Click here</a> to go to Macromedia download page.</p>
</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
var so = new SWFObject("storage/slideshow/slideshow.swf?file=storage/slideshow/slideshow.xml", "gallery", "630", "429", "6", "#ffffff");
so.write("flashcontent");
</script>

Note that I used a relative path for the swf file AND the xml file - found this tip on the Flash Nifties forum here.

Also needed to use relative pathing for the images in the XML file:

<image img="storage/slideshow/images/slide1.jpg"/>

Update on Thursday, May 14, 2009 at 12:09PM by Victor Hong

Here is an alternative I will investigate next time I have a similar need:

Name: Flash Gallery
URL: http://www.flash-gallery.org/
Short description: Free application that allows you to create a slideshow on your website. Easy installation, automatic slideshow generation, customizable design and other cool features.

Cheers, Vic