Category: Cloud Management

Top 6 Factors to Consider Before Cloud Storage

Posted on by Kallala

cloudCloud storage has become an essential part of every business organization. Data stored in local computers are extremely important of businesses, so it is necessary to take back up on a regular basis. It offers enough space for storing all the files at a highly secure location.

Having all the critical data contained in a remote server outside the local system, it ensures that all the data is safe even if the hard-drive gets crashed. It doesn’t require any additional remote administration.

There are a number of cloud storage services like AWS (S3, Glacier), Rackspace (Cloud Files), Google (Google Drive), Microsoft (SkyDrive) etc. But before choosing any cloud service, there are several important aspects to look at. Here are some of the major factors to consider for choosing any cloud service.

      1. Security:

Security is one of the major factors to consider when getting into cloud storage. Select a service provider who will handle the information with discretion. Check that the service provider includes a minimum of 256-bit encryption for data protection.

      2. Block level back up:

A cloud backup solution with block level back up technology should be used. This technology splits huge files into smaller ones and facilitates users to modify them. This in turn saves time and bandwidth.

      3. Customers support:

Some of the customer support services should also be kept into consideration. Like, the user must have access to files, almost immediately when needed. User could reach the vendor through email or telephone for assistance. The service must be offered for 24/7 throughout the year. The service provider must be offering customer reviews to prove the quality of the cloud service.

      4. Restore options:

The vendor must have multiple restore options for restoration of deleted files and even restoring from original files. Restore options must include both mobile devices and web interfaces .It should have the ability to restore data to its original storage location.

      5. Speed:

The online backup service should use disk de-fragmentation technology for faster storage. A slow back up service can decrease the level of productivity largely.

      6. Cost:

The cost of a cloud storage service is another important aspect that should be checked in detail. Numerous cloud vendors who are providing similar services with varying cost. All the vendors should be compared based on their pricing, to choose the right option. It should also be checked that there are no hidden fees before proceeding to the payments.

Getting acquainted with cloud technology can be troublesome. At Andolasoft we are specialized in providing Cloud Computing Services to our customers. Here we have a huge team of skilled personnel to provide monitoring and support services for 24×7 across the world.

Role of Cloud Testing in Applications

Posted on by Anurag Pattnaik

QA

All business applications are now becoming more dynamic and component-based. Industries are now shifting towards cloud computing for better productivity. But to ensure the functionalities of these cloud-based applications, Cloud testing plays a major role in the Cloud industry. 

Cloud testing is the testing processes which are executed with the use of cloud resources. It is helpful when the testing process includes many test machines like several workstations for load testing. It is also helpful while testing application that operates over a LAN or the Web like on a client’s server.

Now let’s take a look at some of the major requirement of Cloud testing

  • Sufficient test models and criteria

QA engineers should be provided with sufficient test models and criteria that support cloud and web application testing. These test models and criteria should be in areas like SaaS and Cloud-based application. This scalability model is used to validate or measure the performance of the system. It also requires Integration models and criteria to address cloud-based connectivity protocols and APIs for end-to-end application integration across the cloud.

  • Proper test methods and solutions

The requirements and features of cloud applications are in continuous change, for which it requires newer test methods and solutions. Methods like continuous validation and regression testing solutions for the applications which change continuously due to bug fixing and feature updates. Application tester should also be given automatic testing facilities for the multi-lease feature of cloud computing.

At Andolasoft we have expertise team of quality annalist and testing engineers with strong market specific testing experience to provide extensive Quality Assurance services throughout the product life-cycle. We also execute cloud-based testing to provide the best in quality product services.

 

CloudLinux’s Recent Integration of PHP 5.5 Alpha 2 Version

Posted on by Anurag Pattnaik

Shared hosting operating system provider CloudLinux has expanded their PHP offerings by declaring the availability of PHP 5.5 Alpha2 version to its PHP selector tool.

With the ability to select PHP versions, PHP selector allows the users to get the latest feature updates

and preferred PHP version like PHP 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, and now, 5.5 Alpha2 from their web hosting control panel. CloudLinux places each individual website in a virtual private server.

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Each account is then assigned a specific amount of hardware resources and a desirable PHP version, by using the PHP selector tool.

PHP 5.5 Alpha2 version includes new features like the most awaited password hashing API and providing users the ability to use bcrypt along with loop-controlling generators.

Igor Seletskiy the CEO of CloudLinux has expressed that the availability of PHP selector has made it easier to get access to PHP features. He quoted “PHP is possibly the most widely used aspect of any shared web hosting plan.”

Igor Seletskiy also added “Like the rest of the web hosting community, we are excited to start exploring the new features of PHP version 5.5.

However, many hosting companies and their customers would not usually deploy an Alpha version on a large-scale, server-wide basis.

CloudLinux and PHP Selector make it possible for hosting providers to assign individual accounts their own PHP version without affecting other sites on the same hardware.” Integrating such features in CloudLinux has helped PHP development to become easier and more productive

Cloud Services’ Popularity among Small Businesses.The Major Factors

Posted on by Kallala

Cloud ServicesRecently it’s been found that around 80% of private businesses who are involved in foreign trade are small in size and startups.

Many of these are growing or looking to expand their company by choosing innovative solutions to provide better services to their customers.

Cloud computing can be a viable option for startup companies that can boost their business productivity.

The foremost reason to choose a cloud management service is to get the benefits of big business infrastructure.  In the recent past, servers were configured in the office, which was troublesome and required a lot of resources like expensive.

Hardware, faster processors, dedicated server administrators, and 365×24×7 internet connection. To avoid such headaches, it is beneficial to opt for cloud-based computing power for more productivity at a lower budget.

As the servers are accessed remotely, it offers better flexibility than traditional IT infrastructures. The administrators can access remote servers from anywhere by using various mobile devices.

This flexibility in accessing the servers saves time, money, and also helps to fix issues immediately when required.

Cloud server monitoring also facilitates better collaboration with clients. It enables the company to share specific client-related issues with other departments, in order to solve the problem. Taking notes, sharing client files, and working together to solve the problem has become easier than before.

Data security is one of the most important reasons to use cloud management services.

The remote infrastructures provided by cloud service consider clients ‘data security’ as their top priority. Many people wrongly assume that cloud monitoring is less secure than native servers.

Due to this reason cloud server monitoring is managed by IT professionals who stress themselves to keep their data safe and out of the reach of hackers. But choosing cloud services can reduce these threats and the business can acquire various legal requirements regarding the security of data.

Planning anything on Cloud? Andolasoft provides Best-in-Class Cloud Management Services for Businesses of all kinds. Let’s have a quick discussion.

Advantages of Cloud Server over Standard Hosting Server

Posted on by Ajay Sahoo

Cloud DeploymentCloud server is nothing but the virtual server runs on cloud computing environment. Cloud server works like the physical server and can be controlled through an administrator.

It can be called as Virtual Dedicated Servers (VDS). There are various advantages of cloud server over the standard hosting servers.

Scalability:

On Cloud platform you can customize hardware selection appropriate for your application. Eg. Your application may need a small CPU but with high storage or something similar.

But in standard hosting servers you may not have an option to choose what exactly you want, rather forced to choose a pre-defined configuration.

Elasticity:

As cloud is highly scalable you can increase or decrease the hardware needs depending high/low traffic to your application. So, no need to pay unnecessarily for a fixed hosting plan.

Run what you want:

On cloud hosting, you can choose which Operating system you want to run. You can customize the OS as your requirement. But in the standard hosting plan, this option is not available.

Downtime:

On cloud hosting chances of downtime is very remote as multiple servers are used.  In case one server goes down the others takes take care of it and virtually there is no down-time as such. But in standard hosting, if a server goes down then it takes time to resume.

Control Services:

On cloud hosting, you can control your cloud services by the API or from the web-console. This means you can start, stop, increase or decrease any service through API. This feature is not available on the standard hosting server.

Costing:

On standard hosting, we have to choose a plan for ours hosting on a periodical basis (week/ month/year), which is a fixed cost. But in Cloud, just pay as you actually consume. So, cloud-based hosting is cost-effective than a standard hosting server.

Private/Public:

There are several OpenSource apps available to configure the cloud environment. You can set up your own private cloud using cloud apps Cloudstack, Openstack, and Eucalyptus. Also, you can use the public cloud for your application hosting. Eg: AWS, Rackspace, Linode, etc.

How to improve your Apache Web server’s performance?

Posted on by Mandakinee

Apache

The performance of web application depends upon the performance of the webserver and the database server.

You can increase your web server’s performance either by adding additional hardware resources such as RAM, faster CPU, etc. or you can get better performance on the same hardware through Cloud Management, by doing some custom configuration to the webserver.

Here are some custom configurations for better performances

  • Load only the required modules:

Apache server is a modular program which includes the functionality of selecting a set of modules. So it’s suggested to run Apache with only the required modules which will reduce the memory footprint and hence the server performance.

  • Choose appropriate MPM:

Apache comes with a number of Multi-Processing Modules (MPMs) which binds the network ports to the machine. But only one MPM can be loaded at a time, so choose the appropriate MPM for your application. It depends on various factors like, whether the OS supports threads, available memory, scalability versus stability, whether non-thread-safe third-party modules are used, etc.

  • DNS lookup:

Keep “HostnameLookups off” to reduce latency to every request since the DNS lookup has to be completed before the request is finished.

  • AllowOverride:

Make “AllowOverride all” to reduce additional file system lookups.

  • FollowSymLinks:

Add the option ‘FollowSymLinks’ to make the server follow the symbolic links in the directory.

  • Content Negotiation:

Option ‘Multiviews’ scans the directory for files, which causes latency.

  • MaxClients:

‘MaxClients’ is the limit on maximum simultaneous requests. It should be set to low so that new connections are put in queue.

  • MinSpareServers, MaxSpareServers, and StartServers:

The ‘MinSpareServers’ and ‘MaxSpareServers’ determines how many child processes should be kept waiting for request. Now you can adjust it as your requirement.

Listed below are some tweaks to help you around

StartServers—2

MinSpareServers—2

MaxSpareServers—5

ServerLimit—100

MaxClients—100

MaxRequestsPerChild—4000

  • KeepAlive and KeepAliveTimeout:

The ‘KeepAlive’ directive allows multiple requests to be sent over the same TCP connection. This is useful when HTML pages use a lot of images.

KeepAlive–on

Timeout–20

  • HTTP Compression & Caching:

Use mod_deflate module for HTTP Compression. Most of the browsers are supporting it.

  • Separate server for static and dynamic content:

For dynamic contents Apache server needs 3M to 20M of RAM, while for the static contents it consumes only 1M. To reduce latency use separate servers for static and dynamic contents.

  • Reducing network load:

Use ‘mod_gzip’ to compress the data in order to reduce bandwidth. Most of the browsers are supporting it.