IT STARTED WITH A KICKSTARTER CAMPAIGN

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/224590870/the-guide-to-glorantha

Wild success, raised much more than expected!

Attracted a lot of traffic to the website

Shared hosting provider told us we were using too much CPU

After warnings, provider cut our service for 24 hours

We needed an alternative. Quickly!

RESCUED BY DRUPAL PLANET

Just before that happened, I flagged a blog posting by Randall Knutson

http://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/randall-knutson/create-high-performance-

drupal-server-just-30-month

I ended up not following his recipe exactly

WHAT I WILL COVER

Choosing a provider

Creating a server in AWS

Choosing an operating system

Installing and configuring the software stack on Ubuntu

DEFINITIONS

Virtualisation

Partitioning a ‘large’ physical resource in such a way that a user of a virtual

partition appears to have full access to and control of a smaller physical resource.

Computer – CPU + Memory

Storage

and much more, outside the scope of this discussion

VPS – Virtual Private Server

AWS – Amazon Web Services

PROVIDERS

Acquia – https://www.acquia.com/products-services/acquia-cloud – Drupal specialists, value add

layered on AWS

AWS (Amazon Web Services) – http://aws.amazon.com/ – datacenter in Singapore

Softlayer – http://www.softlayer.com/cloudlayer/ – datacenter in Singapore

Azure (Microsoft) – http://www.windowsazure.com/ – Windows, datacenter in Singapore

Rackspace – http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/overview/

many more

Decision criteria include

Pricing Functionality Performance: CPU & Memory

Service Flexibility & Scaling Performance: Storage IOPS

Location Reputation & Reliability Performance: Network and Internet

WHAT WE DECIDED

We ended up choosing a cheap provider, local to my friend’s business and home

A2 Hosting – http://www.a2hosting.com/

AWS – AMAZON WEB SERVICES

Amazon provide a number of different virtualisation services via the web

The base virtual computing service is EC2 or Elastic Cloud Compute

Can create configurations from basic up to multiple load-balanced servers

A basic EC2 instance can service a moderately loaded Drupal site

costs around US$30 / SG$40 per month

the first month should be free

Getting started documentation

http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/EC2_GetStarted.html

CREATING A VPS WITH AWS

Sign up to AWS at http://aws.amazon.com/ – have your credit card ready!

Go to the EC2 console at https://console.aws.amazon.com/ec2/v2/home

Choose a region by price (USA regions can be slightly cheaper);

or by location (close to users for performance or legal reasons)

Click on the “Launch Instance” button

Name the virtual server (important if you will have multiple servers)

Create (or re-use) an SSH key pair to allow you to login to the server

Choose the base operating system image (the Launch Configuration)

Click Continue

Optionally click Edit Details for advanced settings

Click Launch

EC2 – CREATE INSTANCE

EC2 – CREATE INSTANCE

YOUR NEW VIRTUAL SERVER

A short while later (half a minute), your new server should be up and running.

More to do, more to do…

Set up and assign a fire-wall policy, through Security Groups

If you want a publicly accessible server, create and assign an Elastic IPs address

If you want additional ‘disks’, create and assign volume(s) in Elastic Block Store

Connect to the new server, using SSH and the Key Pair generated earlier

Install the additional packages and configure services

CHOOSING AN OPERATING SYSTEM

Ubuntu

• Desktop and Server variants

• LTS (long term support) or

semi-annual upgrades

• Based on Debian

• Free

SUSE Enterprise Linux Server

• Paid support

Windows

• Paid Licensing and Support

• Not the usual webstack for Drupal

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)

• Paid support

• Reputation for high technical

excellence

CENTOS

• Based on RHEL from Red Hat

• Spotty record for timely releases

• Free

A possibility for AWS is an AMI (Amazon Machine Image), which is a pre-built

operating system and applications stack, such as BitNami Drupal

AMI – PRE-CONFIGURED APPLICATION STACKS

SETTING UP AN UBUNTU SERVER – BASICS

Command Explanation

apt-get update Updates the list of available software packages

apt-get upgrade Upgrades all installed packages to latest versions,

particularly security releases

The above two commands should be run in sequence as the first thing when

you first login to the server. Thereafter, run again about once a week to

ensure that the needed security updates are applied in a timely fashion.

I haven’t yet found a way to automate this.

Some package upgrades will require a server reboot.

SETTING UP AN UBUNTU SERVER – BASICS 2

Command Explanation

apt-get install <package-name>

Install a software package.

If a package depends on other

packages, then the system will prompt

to confirm whether to download and

install both the requested package

and also the additional dependencies

You may be asked additional

questions during the installation of

some packages. For example, the new

root password for MySQL

apt-get install <p1> <p2> <p3> Install a list of packages

UBUNTU 12.04 “LAMP” STACK PACKAGES

Package Description Version

apache2 Apache webserver 2.2.22

mysql-client MySQL database client software 5.5.29

mysql-server MySQL database server software 5.5.29

libapache2-mod-php5 PHP in Apache 5.3.10

php5-cli PHP command line 5.3.10

php5-mysql MySQL library for PHP

memcached Memory cache server – PERFORMANCE

64Mb should be more than enough for a

small site

1.4.13

drush Drupal command line utilities 4.5

ADVICE: SETTING UP AN UBUNTU SERVER

• Try to locate Ubuntu packages rather than installing software from other sources

• Installing from other sources may compromise your ability to cleanly upgrade

the operating system in future, with potential security implications

• Exceptions: Drupal and other web-facing packages written in scripting

languages

• Try to avoid directly updating the settings files created by Ubuntu

• For major packages, Ubuntu provides simple ways to safely override settings

• Directly updating settings files may compromise your ability to cleanly upgrade

the operating system in future, possibly leading to your important changed

settings being lost during an upgrade

UBUNTU POSSIBLE PACKAGES - 1

Package Description

php5-curl Files via internet library

php5-gd Graphics library

php5-geoip IP geography library

php5-imagick Graphics library

php5-mcrypt Encryption library

php5-memcache Memory cache library – PERFORMANCE

php5-memcached Memory cache library – PERFORMANCE

php-apc Keeps 'compiled' php in memory – PERFORMANCE

UBUNTU POSSIBLE PACKAGES - 2

Package Description

awstats Webserver statistics - requires manual configuration

curl http utilities

diff Comparison utilities

geoip-database Database linking ip addresses to countries

git Version control software

less Tool for looking through logs

patch Software management utility, part of a VCS

UBUNTU POSSIBLE PACKAGES - 3

Package Description

phpmyadmin Web front end to manage MySQL databases

php-pear Tool to install the PEAR and PECL libraries for PHP

unzip File compression management

vim Programmers’ editor

webalizer Webserver statistics – needs manual setup

wget Tools to get files via the internet

NOTES:

• The listed packages are hints, some of which you will not need.

• You may need many more packages depending on your requirements!

PHP

• Create files with settings overrides in /etc/php5/conf.d

• Typical PHP overrides – exact values depend on your requirements

• upload_max_filesize = 4M

• memory_limit = 256M

• include_path = ".:/usr/share/php“

• APC settings

• apc.shm_size = 64M ; add 48 - 64M per additional Drupal site

• apc.apc.stat = 0

• Memcache settings

• memcache.hash_strategy="consistent"

APACHE

• Enable modules by adding symbolic links in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled to the required file(s) from /etc/apache2/mods-available

• There may be 2 settings files for 1 module: eg. alias.load and alias.conf

• Remove unwanted modules by removing the link(s) in /etc/apache2/mods-enabled

• Create your site definitions in /etc/apache2/sites-available and enable the site by creating a symbolic link in /etc/apache2/sites-enabled

• Particularly useful when creating several virtual hosts

• Create files with settings overrides in /etc/apache2/conf.d

NEARLY THERE

Install uploadprogress; type the following commands pecl install uploadprogress

echo 'extension=uploadprogress.so' > /etc/php5/conf.d/uploadprogress.ini

I haven’t found an Ubuntu package for this

The 2nd line is an example of how to cleanly set up a PHP override

Reboot the server

Start setting up Drupal in the default location of /var/www

After Drupal is set up and confirmed working…

ENABLE MEMCACHE

Drupal 6: add the following lines to sites/default/settings.php

$conf['cache_inc'] = 'sites/all/modules/memcache/memcache.inc';

$conf['memcache_key_prefix'] = 'something_unique';

Drupal 7: add the following lines to sites/default/settings.php

$conf['cache_backends'][] = 'sites/all/modules/memcache/memcache.inc';

$conf['cache_default_class'] = 'MemCacheDrupal';

$conf['memcache_key_prefix'] = 'something_unique';

Only important

if you are

hosting multiple

sites

WEB ADMINISTRATION

Webmin – http://webmin.com/

Not packaged

Moderately complex to install

More focused on server administration

ISPConfig – http://www.ispconfig.org/

Not packaged

Difficult to work out and install all dependencies

Very complex to install, required a lot of research and hand editing to complete

Easier to use for common tasks, such as to create virtualised email and websites

within the virtual server

BACK-UPS

I have yet to do this correctly!

I am currently only backing up database and keeping the backups on the virtual

server!

Drupal Planet and Randall Knutson to the rescue again

http://www.leveltendesign.com/blog/randall-knutson/yet-another-simple-amazon-s3-

backup-script-drupal

QUESTIONS AND DISCUSSION