Babble On

Babble On is now running on a single Amazon EC2 ’small’ instance, along with all my other websites. It’s taken a couple of weeks to get it right, but it’s been very interesting working out how to get the best from EC2.

Since EC2 was originally launched, there have been several obstacles in the way of using it for traditional web hosting and as a replacement for a shared server or virtual private server (VPS). For my purposes, there were always three main issues putting me off getting up and moving from my comfy VPS:

• Lack of static IP address
• Lack of persistent file system storage
• Uncertainty as to whether emails sent from the server will be flagged as spam

Elastic IPs, which have now been around for a few months, completely solve the problem of not having a static IP address. Having been an avid follower of the latest AWS developments, it was the announcement of Elastic IPs in particular that started me thinking about moving my hosting to EC2.

For my purposes, I don’t really see persistence as an issue. As long as you can live with a minor amount of data loss (which I can as none of my sites are critical) then regular backups to S3 are painless and cheap and go a long way to mitigating any problems. If it really bothers you then hang on a few months for Amazon’s new persistent storage volumes, which are probably exactly what you are looking for.

Emails I have discussed previously. For now, I will observe with keen interest.

On the whole the move has been a very positive and interesting experience. I now get 1.7 GB RAM as opposed to 512 MB for only 2/3 the price. And the persistence ‘issue’ really forced me to get my backup/restore solution working as well as it could. Backups are kicked-off automatically by cron and dumped on S3 - and my restore script provides a fully automated means of transforming any instance of my AMI into a running clone of the original machine - right down to the point where the services get switched on and started up.

The best thing about EC2 is that upgrading my web server becomes trivial, risk-free and inexpensive. I just fire up another AMI instance, run my restore script and within ten minutes I have an identical server to work on - without any danger of bringing down my live sites or interfering with my live environment at all. Should I then want to replace the original server, it’s just a case of re-assigning the Elastic IP and within two minutes the new system is live. Who said that EC2 wasn’t suitable for traditional web hosting? Perhaps it’s time to stop thinking about things the traditional way.

Mac OS X 10.5.3 is now available on auto update. I am about to reboot and install, but before I do will cross my fingers and hope that between this and the recent Office 2008 service pack, the annoying issue with Spaces and Office is now resolved.  Let’s find out…

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…that’ll be a resounding NO then. It just doesn’t work - especially if you have multiple Office windows open (for example, Word in addition to its Formatting Pane). As you move from Space to Space, windows jump around all over the place, either apparently following you or running away from you, resulting in a pretty dismal experience.

Also, Spaces in general doesn’t seem particularly polished to me. When I leave one Space for another, do a bit of work and then head back to my original Space, I want it laid out exactly as it was when I left it. This is quite often not the case, however: if, say, I have Finder windows open on multiple Spaces, clicking any of them will bring them all to the foreground - even those on the other Spaces. I also encountered other minor niggles whereby certain dialog boxes (if that’s what they’re called in the Mac world) would vanish behind other windows after a simple flick between Spaces with no other interaction with the OS.

So it seems that Spaces still cause more problems than they solve for Office 2008 users, and perhaps have a few issues that need ironing out in any case, which is why I am leaving them disabled until a glorious future date.