I started to look round for SVN clients to update our internal repos - windows and linux ones are easy, Mac however is bit harder.
So far the testing includes:
Going to use them for a while and see which one pans out.
Distributed IT Network Backups?
I am currently building the foundation of my companies new IT network, its looking very open source heavy, very Cisco based and also very distributed. Think five sites and only little old me to do most of the “heavy lifting”.
I have a great second but sometimes we need time off - thats fine and good but what happens to our backups? Well at the moment there really is only one server of any importance that we need to backup & so I gave this job (mainly because the server is in his office) to my assistant. Well what happens when he goes on holiday and the worst of the worst comes I cant get to the site to change tapes?
Well because its a one tape backup - the backup just keeps on writing to the same tape - backup ok, good course not!
We use Rackspace for our customer facing servers & so I keep tabs on them. Their CTO of webmail.us recently blogged that they use Amazon’s EC2 for backup & it got me thinking. Thats quite a nice solution for me too - all the backups of various things in all the various offices can all just backup straight to EC2.
Um.. going to chew on that for a while
Best Mac tool ever!
Seriously - I have been getting really really REALLY annoyed with the lack of support for Alt-Tab Windows style, so after a few googles i found:
This thing is going to save my Mac! I was thinking of switching to Ubuntu…
Keeping your RHEL5 Xen Guest systems up2date
If you are wondering how you update your guest RHEL5 systems see this KB from RedHat
Getting Redhat Virtualization Up and Running
So today I started the companies migration to Linux - Redhat EL 5 Linux to be exact from our entirely Microsoft based systems into a 99% Linux run IT system.
Heres the plan:
- Servers all Redhat
- Desktops 99% Ubuntu - Accounting needs Windows for internet banking :-(
- All networking Cisco
Why RHEL5 - well because it offers commercial support of virtualization and great support of HP server hardware out the box. Basically it just needs to work & work properly. I feel that I can get the best of all these with Redhat.
For the desktops Ubuntu simply because its a quick install, minimal software in-fact its almost perfect for a company desktop PC.
So where to start - well first I need to setup one of the Redhat servers with virtualization.
After reading the Fedora wiki and then the first thing to do is copy the install media to the hard drive and share via NFS - I don’t like NFS so install I opt for the HTTP installed option and copy everything (excluding CD6) on to my MacBook Pro and setup a web server.
After everything is copied over then time to run the install wizard
on the RedHat machine run the command
virt-install
This starts a very simple and easy to follow wizard that will baby you through the whole installation process.
ChannelAdvisor buy Marketworks
I have been using ChannelAdvisor for nearly two years now & when I was choosing which auction management system to use I knew about Marketworks but they were not in the same league - it was more aimed at lower volume sellers and how the dizzy heights I could see the company I am working for reaching.
Anyway ChannelAdvisor bought Marketworks - see their press release here
I had always assumed that there were more customers than that to make such a high GMV figure!
Wordpress 2.3 Upgrade
The upgrade was smooth as with all Wordpress upgrades - the only problem is that my theme does not support 2.3! Ah well off hunting for a new one…
Online Backup
So this morning I was as usual reading my subscribed blogs & found out about this company that just got bought for some stupid amount of money & so I thought I would have a nice little look and see why they are worth the money. I still don’t know to be honest why they were worth so much cash but I don’t mind because I found a nice and cheap backup system for my Apple which if you are a Apple user you will know that finding a cheap but good online backup system that support Mac is well… hard!
At this time the Mac support is beta but I really don’t mind too much as long as it does backup my stuff!
$4.99 for “unlimited” backup space - um…. I thought where is that signup button
And with probably 90% of techies out there you have a parent who depends on you for help, so I pinged off an email to my Mum to subscribe too!
OFBiz, PostgreSQL and a worldwide audience
So we were starting to talk to Netsuite about replacing our systems with theirs, I have to admit I do like the idea of one complete system from one person. It was just before they were going public so they wanted all the business they could muster and we had a “good” price until we got into extra storage space. I mean what does 1GB of storage space cost these days even if you do run Oracle databases like they do to at Netsuite. Well it just made the whole deal crazy the scale out plans made the deal practically blow up and this is with me supporting the integrated system totally and really thinking about the cost savings, it just no longer made sense.
Well fortunate as luck would have it we bumped into someone using OFBiz to run their warehouse here in China. To cut a long story short we then started working out how we could use it including getting me up to speed on Java which is a technology I have never touched. The fun begins we hire our first developer, we think which databases to use and we work out if this thing scales.
The database is an easy choice after a short amount of reading, PostgreSQL is a clear winner - why? Well really it comes down to data integrity. We are not building a social media site so really we are not going to end up with huge amounts of database writes after all, instead we are going to end up (in a few short years) with TB’s of data.
The interesting part of the mix is that we need to have multiple database sites which include USA, UK, Hong Kong and China. The USA, UK and HK sites will be the ecommerce backbones and then also China as we need to ship the goods - the packing stations in the warehouse get PDF files of the address which can be quite large so a local server there keeps the speed and productivity up.
Let me explain why three data centers - first you always have a primary data centre so for us this will be Hong Kong as this is physically closest to Shanghai so for any internal tool this need to be as fast as possible. We build out tools such as Alfresco and Clearspace in Hong Kong plus also a copy of OFBiz as all the customer and order information is inside, this node can also provide service to any Asian ecommerce customers.
The US and UK sites are the main points of ecommerce so these sites primary function is to host anything customer facing and provide services using global load balancing to ensure that each customer is getting just about the fastest response from our servers.
Having customers in 9+ primary and 50+ secondary countries really makes delivering a great experience to them all hard.
Thats all for now - lets see how this gets on.
eBay and VeRO
Over the last couple of weeks I have been deeply involved with something that eBay calls VeRO - basically this is a way that eBay pushes the responsibility of checking for fake, patent or trademark infringing goods back onto the owners of those trademarks. The rights owner simply sends in an email to VeRO and eBay removes the item and warns the seller of those goods to contact the rights owner and sort it out.
For the most part the system works - except when you want to fix the “infringement” and get it removed from your eBay history. At this point eBay basically make you get the rights owner to contact their VeRO contact and tell them that they made a mistake. You see eBay cant get involved in the fight - but the strict hoops they make you and the rights owners go through to get it removed is just well silly.
If the rights owner emails my eBay account manager that does not count, if they email customer support at eBay that also does not count - it has to be directly to VeRO. What a pain! Come on eBay - if a rights owner contacts you any how does it really matter - making them jump through more hoops just is senseless - especially when nearly all the rights owners don’t even know their own contact at VeRO.