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  • deploy LAMP config to new boxes with low/no effort

    - by user1444233
    I'm spending a lot of time setting up new Centos 6 instances. I use a VCS (Subversion) for most of the config files and all of the webapp source files (Github), but even with excellent package managers (like yum, npm, easy_install, etc.) it still takes time. I'd like to get to the point where I could try out a new potential web host by just signing up for an account, logging in and automatically sucking my standardised config onto the box. I know there are a set of tools that can help: Puppet Chef Vagrant and a set of services that sell solutions: [Jumpbox] http://www.jumpbox.com/ [BitNami Cloud] http://bitnami.org/cloud I don't mind investing time in learning a new tool, but as a no-budget start-up, I'm keen to keep monthly costs down. My biggest concern is that time spent on the server config is time away from the codebase, and that's where I think my team and I should be investing our energy, at least until we get funded and scale up a bit. I'd be grateful of some recommendations for which way to jump on config: stick with SSH and manual deploys, at least until you get big. bite the bullet and learn [say] puppet. You may only use it 8-10 times, but it pays to have such an easy tunable server bootstrap. don't bother, just pay the $100/month for a standard config service. It'll cost you $1000/year, but you should focus on the code. Other questions in this domain I use quite a complex stack (Drupal, Zend Server, MySQL, PHP, MongoDB, Python, django), but are there standard(ish) setups that include these or that I could build upon more quickly? Are the configs optimised for small, medium, large VPS (1GB, 4GB, 16GB)? How secure are they?

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  • Using dropbox / symbolic link combo successfully

    - by wim
    In the past I have kept some files on dropbox by copying them into my ~/Dropbox folder on Ubuntu. I don't want to move the original files into Dropbox synch folder or muck around with my directory structure. Then I have found I was using dropbox more and more, and wasting a lot of space this way by duplication of data. I use a small SSD locally for OS, any other data is kept on mounted shares from my NAS. I found I could successfully get files up to the cloud by using symbolic links like: ln -s /some/mounted/share/dir ~/Dropbox/dir And dropbox would carry on and sync those files remotely whilst only using up the space of the symbolic link locally. This worked well for me for a few weeks, until I turned on my laptop one day and saw '421 files have been removed from your dropbox' notification. They were still there in the original mounted share, but the symbolic links I'd made were completely gone for some reason. What did I do wrong? It is possible the share could have become unmounted, but I didn't expect this would cause all my files to be deleted from the cloud could it? How can I 'share' files on my dropbox in this way without the danger of the originals being modified from remotely?

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  • nginx inserting extra characters in Multi-status reply body

    - by user125011
    Here's the setup. I've got one server running apache/php hosting ownCloud. Among other things, I'm using to do CardDAV contact syncing. In order to make things work with my domain I have an nginx server running on the frontend as a reverse-proxy to the ownCloud server. My nginx config is as follows: server { listen 80; server_name cloud.mydomain.com; location / { proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host cloud.mydomain.com; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto http; proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr; client_max_body_size 0; proxy_redirect off; proxy_pass http://server; } } The problem is that when my phone does a PROPFIND on the server, nginx adds extra characters to the content body that throw the phone off. Specifically, it prepends d611\r\n at the front of the body and appends 0\r\n\r\n to the end of the content. (I got this from wireshark.) It also re-chunks the result. How do I get nginx to send the original content as-is?

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  • Huge or minimal performance hit running game servers on a Virtual Machine? [closed]

    - by Damainman
    I have a two dedicated servers to choose from depending on which one would do a better job. I plan on updating the Hard Drive space and RAM at a later date depending on how I move forward. Server 1: 500GB Hard Drive 8GB RAM 2x 64bit Intel Xeon L5420(Quad Core) @ 2.50Ghz Server2: 500GB Hard Drive 8GB RAM 2x 64bit Intel Xeon E5420(Quad Core) @ 2.50GHz I want to run a virtual machine that will host about 10 game servers, with about 16 active slots per server. It will be a mix and match from: Minecraft Counter Strike( 1.6, Source, Global Offensive) Battlefield Team Fortress I know the general consensus is virtualization is a horrible idea if you plan on running virtual servers on them. The issue is, the discussions I read do not really clearly state whether they are speaking about a virtual server running inside an OS(ie: VMware Player running on Windows with the game server in a VM) or a Hypervisor such as Xen Cloud Platform. I am trying to get a definite answer on how feasible the above would be and how much of a performance hit it might be if the VM running the game servers is on a hypervisor such as Xen Cloud Platform. My initial research lead me to believe that there wouldn't be a performance hit since the virtualization is different than running it via inside of a OS.

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  • Web hosting for multiple web sites providing system isolation

    - by Justin
    We have a small number of projects where we expect the client will not be maintaining the installed versions of applications we install to power the site (such as Drupal). Given that an important part of security is keeping things updated, we don't want to host these projects on our Plesk-powered dedicated servers that currently host lots of our other client's websites. Our goal is to find a host where we can deploy isolated instances (be these slices, virtual servers, grid servers, etc) for each individual (or groups of 2-3) web sites as we need them. These instances would be completely separate, so that if one web site were hacked it would not impact any other site. Typical hosting requirements: Linux Apache PHP 5 MySQL Supports Drupal Ability to setup a cron task (but we don't need SSH access) Daily backups Virtualized/cloud hosting (we want to avoid shared) Pricing per site is around $25/month OS is patched automatically Some options we have considered but won't work: MediaTemple: Two major data center-wide security incidents and recent downtime foster doubt about this host's technical ability. Slicehost: This would require us to manage the entire server, which we don't want to do. Rackspace Cloud Sites (formerly Mosso): No backup options. Do you have any recommended hosting options for given these requirements?

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  • Run command remotely on Windows computer

    - by Bilal Aslam
    I have a Windows Server 2008 instance on Amazon EC2 (Amazon's cloud compute platform, which provides VMs in the cloud). It has an external IP, and I have an admin account on the box. I would like to 'bootstrap' this instance remotely i.e. I want to run commands to download, install and configure apps on it, all without having to log on even once. Also, I cannot use psexec on the source computer. I have figured out how to do this to a remote, domain-joined computer using WMI. However, I have NOT been able to do for a remote computer on EC2. Here are some specific restrictions: The remote computer is not part of my domain, hence no Kerberos The remote computer does not have a cert I trust, or vice versa I am sure I am running into to some auth/trust restriction. Is there any way I can run a single command on the remote, given that I have admin privileges? I'm not tied down to using WMI, but I do need to run a command somehow. Feels like this should be a solved problem.

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  • Incorrect deployment of WSGI app to AWS using Elastic Beanstalk

    - by Dzmitry Zhaleznichenka
    cross-link to AWS forums I have developed a simple Python web service using WSGI and would like to deploy it to AWS cloud using Elastic Beanstalk. My problem is I cannot make all the options I specify in Elastic Beanstalk configuration to be correctly configured in the cloud. For deployment, I use Elastic Beanstalk CLI utility. I have run eb init command and set up the required parameters. After this, a directory named .elasticbeanstalk was created in my source tree. It has two config files that are used for deployment, namely config and optionsettings. The latter one among the other options contains the WSGI configuration that has to update /etc/httpd/conf.d/wsgi.conf at the instances. After some of my adjustments the file has the following settings: [aws:elasticbeanstalk:application:environment] DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE = PARAM1 = PARAM2 = PARAM4 = PARAM3 = PARAM5 = [aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python] WSGIPath = handler.py NumProcesses = 2 StaticFiles = /static= NumThreads = 10 [aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:staticfiles] /static = static/ [aws:elasticbeanstalk:hostmanager] LogPublicationControl = false [aws:autoscaling:launchconfiguration] InstanceType = t1.micro EC2KeyName = zmicier-aws [aws:elasticbeanstalk:application] Application Healthcheck URL = [aws:autoscaling:asg] MaxSize = 10 MinSize = 1 Custom Availability Zones = [aws:elasticbeanstalk:monitoring] Automatically Terminate Unhealthy Instances = true [aws:elasticbeanstalk:sns:topics] Notification Endpoint = Notification Protocol = email It turns out that not all of these options are considered when I start the environment or update it. Thus, when I update NumThreads or NumProcesses, the respective parameters get changed in wsgi.conf as expected. But whatever I write to the WSGIPath and StaticFiles parameters, I'm not able to automatically change the respective values of wsgi.conf, they remain Alias /static /opt/python/current/app/ WSGIScriptAlias / /opt/python/current/app/application.py which drives me nuts. Moreover, when I deploy my application using git aws.push and having the following contents of .ebextensions/python.config file, neither of options I specify in it affects the deployment. option_settings: - namespace: aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python option_name: WSGIPath value: mysite/wsgi.py - namespace: aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python option_name: NumProcesses value: 5 - namespace: aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python option_name: NumThreads value: 25 - namespace: aws:elasticbeanstalk:container:python:staticfiles option_name: /static/ value: app/static/ I wonder what I should do to force AWS use all the parameters I specify in the configuration, namely the WSGI Path and path to my static data.

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  • Run command remotely on Windows computer from C#

    - by Bilal Aslam
    I have a Windows Server 2008 instance on Amazon EC2 (Amazon's cloud compute platform, which provides VMs in the cloud). It has an external IP, and I have an admin account on the box. I would like to 'bootstrap' this instance remotely i.e. I want to run commands to download, install and configure apps on it, all without having to log on even once. Also, I cannot use psexec on the source computer. I have figured out how to do this to a remote, domain-joined computer using WMI. However, I have NOT been able to do for a remote computer on EC2. Here are some specific restrictions: 1) The remote computer is not part of my domain, hence no Kerberos 2) The remote computer does not have a cert I trust, or vice versa I am sure I am running into to some auth/trust restriction. Is there any way I can run a single command on the remote, given that I have admin privileges? I'm not tied down to using WMI, but I do need to run a command somehow. Feels like this should be a solved problem.

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  • Hosting websites in our Workplace custom-built datacentre

    - by i.h4d35
    I'm faced with unique learning opportunity at work at the moment. Due to the slowdown (amongst other reasons), the powers that be at my office have decided to abandon our shared hosting providers (both shared and dedicated hosting) and have decided to host the websites at our office's datacentre. We're running 7 websites, wherein the average unique hits per day at the moment is about 900. We have 2 servers set aside for this - one is a DELL POWER EDGE 1850 (Intel Xeon 3 GHZ*2, 4GB RAM, 73GB HDD and the other is an HP DL 380 G3 (Intel Xeon 2.8 GHz, 6 GB RAM, 73 GB HDD) a) I would like to know the pros and cons of going ahead with this project.All the sites will be hosted on a single IP. In all probability, the OS is going to be CentOS. b) Do you think I should consider Virtualization into this equation (KVM/Xen)? I was thinking in terms of separate instances of the DB server and the frontend though I do not know if this is the best way to go. c) Should I be trying to use cloud stacks like OpenStack and try to make it look like websites hosted on some sort of Public Cloud? (something that I checked out here). Here is something else I came across, which looks similar to what needs to be done at our office. About the websites - Of the 7 websites, 4 are basic static websites which basically gives a whole lot of information about a few local institutions. The remaining 3 are local product-based websites developed in PHP wherein end user can view products and order them online. I am trying to take this as a learning experience wherein I can learn to build something from scratch and save the company a little something in the process. The migration needs to be completed by Easter so I guess it gives us some time (or am I being overly optimistic??). I am confused here and would appreciate all the help I can get. Thanks in advance.

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  • internet-based sync software that will keep running after Windows Live Sync stops doing PC-to-PC-syncs?

    - by Warren P
    According to the wikipedia page, Microsoft Live Sync will shortly stop offering the PC-to-PC sync service. There are lots of apps to sync two PCs on the same LAN, but I want to sync two PCs that are in different cities, across the internet, traversing two different NATs, and that requires some kind of service running in the internet that both connect into. There is already a few questions about syncing folders and files, but this is not a duplicate because none of them answer this basic question: Microsoft Live Sync works better than RSYNC, or any of the linked SYNC solutions in any of the "not really duplicates" because it works even when the two PCs have NAT and firewalls between them that forbid direct connectivity, because Windows Live Sync has a free always-on internet server that all the client PCs connect into. I'm looking for a FREE (no-fees) Microsoft Live Sync work-alike PC-to-PC sync solution that works between PCs and Macs, at least, as well as between PCs, and works behind NAT and firewalls at least as well as Microsoft's solution. (Note that Microsoft's solution makes only outbound socket calls to a microsoft server, so this solution must necessarily include a server-hub component that is hosted publically on a free site and which does not require that I set up and manage and pay for my own public internet hosting site) Hint: None of the answers in the linked duplicate are equivalent (PureSync,FreeFileSync,BestSync 2010,SyncButler,Comodo BackUp,QuickShadow,Gbridge) in that none of them work for the PC to Mac situation, where firewalls and nats prevent direct connection, or else they require money to be paid. When Microsoft Live Sync / Live Mesh finally kills direct PC-to-PC mode, the limitation will be that you will have to pay for more than 25 GB of cloud service, and you can then only sync PC #1 to PC #2 if you first sync to the cloud, then down to other clients. I can currently sync 100 gb of data from one computer to another, only temporarily "moving the data" through Microsoft's data servers without using up my Skydrive storage quota.

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  • Windows 8 folder to folder sync software

    - by Danny
    I'm looking for direct folder to folder synchronization in Windows 8. I was previously using Live Mesh to accomplish this, but now it looks like that is no longer an option. Note that I'm talking about direct folder to folder sync between different computers, not syncing to the cloud. I'm aware of products like Google Drive, SkyDrive, Dropbox, etc. The problem with them is the space limitation. Basically, I was syncing important files before between my desktop and all of my laptops. One folder for example is My Pictures. This folder has almost 40 gigs of files, which is why the options listed above are not going to work for me. Just need direct syncing, nothing stored on the cloud. I was told by a Microsoft employee that SkyDrive would be replacing Mesh and would provide all the same functionality. So far this looks to be completely false, since the ability to remote desktop is gone along with folder to folder sync. Unless I'm just missing something?

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  • How to move Mdadm RAID drive (EBS based) to different AWS Instance

    - by Stanley
    We have a media-rich web application that is hosted on AWS. We have several Web Servers and we have an NFS server. On the NFS server (Linux server) we have several EBS volumes that are mounted and we've used mdadm to implement the different mounted volumes as a single RAID volume. The Web Servers simply access the NFS storage through a mount point. Amazon has now let us know that they will be performing power maintenance on this server in a couple of days time. Since all our media is on here it would render our site unusable for the hours while Amazon is working on it. We want to try and prevent this downtime. I was thinking that we can prevent server downtime by perhaps setting up a new server temporarily and attaching the EBS drives (raid volume) to that server and have our web servers point there during maintenance. This is a very high risk operation since this involves several terabytes of our production data. What would be the safe way to move over our logical raid drive (md0) to a new amazon instance? I was hoping that I could start with building the new server, mounting the ebs volumes and assembling the RAID partition using mdadm --assemble --scan before unmounting from the existing instance so that I can first test that everything works and thus having it mounted on two instances at the same time, but I don't believe that is possible with the way that filesystems work. How do I move a Linux software RAID to a new machine? suggests a way to move drives, but isn't really a cloud-based question. Perhaps there are simpler ways to prevent system downtime with our solution being hosted on the cloud? I have considered taking an EBS snapshot, but that tries to replicate all the many terabytes of mounted storage, so this is not a practical solution. Any ideas?

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  • Vagrant doesn't detect chef-solo unless re-installed

    - by nightowl
    I am using Vagrant to test my Chef recipes in Amazon AWS, and I am encountering an irritating issue: I initially assumed that Vagrant would install chef itself (as it does when using Virtual Box as the provider) but it seems that this needs to be done using the cloud-init script. However, even after I successfully installed the chef gem via cloud-init I was still getting the following error: The chef binary (eitherchef-soloorchef-client) was not found A quick google of this error suggested three probable causes: Chef had failed to install It had installed, but the directory was not in the $PATH environment variable It had installed and in the $PATH but with incorrect permissions I logged in and double checked; chef-solo and chef-client were installed; The path variable for the user, sudo and root all included /usr/local/bin and permissions were all fine. I managed to solve this problem by uninstalling and reinstalling the gem using sudo gem install chef. I don't understand why this should resolve the issue and it is a bit of a problem if I have to ssh into a test box and manually install the gem every time. Does anyone have any suggestions why this might be happening?

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  • How to make the ec2 ami work on the Xen on Debian

    - by user67103
    Hi. Here is the scenario. We are creating a cloud App. We have a Debian on which we create a customized image and upload it to the Amazon EC2. After uploading it to the cloud we have made some more customizations and are trying to rebundle it. We are facing some issues in rebundling it. We would like to know if we could do something like this. a. Create an AMI Image on Debian b. Load it on to the Xen Hypervisor which would be over the Debian c. Customize the image d. Save the customized image e. Upload it to EC2. The issue is that I am unable to find a proper solution on how to install Xen on Debian and will the AMI on Xen work on EC2. Any suggestions/Help would be greatly appreciated. thanks. Krishna

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  • XenServer VMs can't reach network

    - by toto
    I'm currently trying to setup a small cloud architecture , I'm using in the installation CloudStack 2.2.14 which need two node : a management server (as node1) to provision the cloud and a hyperviser XenServer 5.6 SP2 to host the VMs (as node2). I succeded to create both node1 and node2 into an ESXi 5 VMWare as VMs. So The ESXi 5 is hosting two VMs node1 + node2 , and node2 which is the XenServer will host also VMs (such as ubuntu or Centos). Both node1 and node2 can ping each other and can get the internet connection from Esxi5 ,but My problem is : that VMs into the node2(XenServer) can't reach the network (can't ping node1 or Esxi or get an internet connection but they can ping VMs IN the node2(XenServer). So I tried to: 1-Setup a DHCP server as node3 in ESXi5 and connect node2(Xenserver) to him , but always the VMs into to node2 can't reach the outer network. 2-Setup a DCHP server into node2 , but always the same problem. So , 1-is there any other configuration i'm missing in node2 (considering that I'm sure about DNS , GW , NETMASK configuration)?. 2-Is it the problem because i'm Creating VMs into node2(XenSever) which is a VM into ESXi 5 ?

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  • Device CAL, User Cal or Processor license needed for SQL 2008 (architecture explained inside)?

    - by nycgags
    So we have a number of servers in the Amazon cloud running SQL Server Standard edition to aggregate data. For that purpose we are fine, the licensing is handled by our contract with Amazon, no problem there. For the beefier work, we want to install Enterprise Edition (EE) on our servers processing raw data so that we can take advantage of table partitioning. We currently have 3 servers aggregating data from about 40 node servers, all 43 of these servers are running standard edition which is fine. We also have 4 servers running standard processing the raw data, but I think we can get away with 2 (for redundancy) running Enterprise Edition. We have 2-3 dba's that access these DW servers for maintenance (using the same windows login via remote desktop). So visually: 40 -- 3 -- [2] -- 2 -- 1 nodes -- aggregators -- raw (which we want to run EE) -- calculators -- datawarehouse Nodes PUSH to aggregators, Raws PULL from aggregators, Calculators PULL from Raw, Calculators PUSH to datwarehouse I am specifying the push vs. pull in case that changes how the # of licenses is calculated. Q1) how many device (or user) CAL's do we need? Q2) do I need to speak with someone from MSFT to find out if it is ok to install in the Amazon Cloud (Amazon said we need to verify it is ok in our license terms)? Q3) what happens if another device tries to access a server with the limited number of device CAL's? Q4) Are the device CAL's simultaneous number of devices or total? Q5) Do Device and User CAL's cost the same or is there a difference? Q6) Would we need to buy a processor license (we are hoping not to)?

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  • email attachments [closed]

    - by Alan Doolan
    My company currently use software on a local machine that will take an email from the email server, extract the attachment, rename it and then add it to a folder on a webserver using ftp. This works well but they are currently asking if it can be done 'in the cloud' or what they really mean, not local. Is there any thing that would do this on the server itself? I should clarify a bit. The attachements are various reports that are being sent to different email addresses (mostly google corporate and free accounts). We need the reports to be on a folder on a webserver so that internal pages can take the information in the reports (csv) and use it on the webpages or adds them to a separate database. The key part being that the files need to be in the particular folders. Though it does work to have a computer running software that will take the files, renames them to the required name and uploads them to the folder it relies too heavily on one computer working all the time. This is not something we can depend on at this point. I'll be honest, I'm a web developer and not strong with server systems past my particular standard requirements so this is beyond me. though yes, I am aware that my boss is not 100% sure what 'cloud' means but likes the word.

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  • Is there anything like Heroku for PHP and/or .NET?

    - by Wayne M
    In my area PHP is very widespread, so is .NET. Ruby not so much; most places have never heard of it. For some personal things I am "forced" to choose Rails because I want to take advantage of Heroku - the ability to deploy and scale on the cloud very easily is the main reason. Also, they offer a small FREE plan, with no ads or strings attached, that I can use for demo sites or, in this case, for my business' static page; as a totally bootstrapped startup I have maybe $50 or so in initial capital and cannot afford to pay monthly fees while I'm getting started. Are there any similar offerings for other languages? Specifically, I really like the small, 5MB site for free that Heroku offers - is there anything like that for PHP and/or .NET? I'm not even that concerned about the "cloud" part, but that would be a nice bonus. If there is, I might be able to kill two birds with one stone and pick up a useful skill as I'm doing my own thing instead of using something that nobody else knows or cares about. I should add I'm specifically interested in something that offers a free plan. As I said, Heroku has a 5mb plan that you can have as many as you want for free; I have yet to find anything similar for any other platform (most of the "free" sites require you to have ugly banners on your page, or don't allow you to use your own domain name), and to be honest I'm not too thrilled about using Ruby on Rails for everything simply to take advantage of this. I'm asking this here because I already asked it on StackOverflow and someone suggested it would be better suited here.

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  • Autossh startup on Ubuntu 10.04 - fails after powering off

    - by grant
    I'm using upstart to keep a reverse ssh tunnel alive using auto ssh similar to Using Upstart to Manage AutoSSH Reverse Tunnel. This works fine, except after a manual power down I can no longer connect to the machine through the "central server" using the tunnel. I receive "ssh_exchange_identification: Connection closed by remote host". The autossh process is running on the client. I can connect again after re-starting networking. I'm trying to figure out why this is failing consistently after a manual shutdown. Is it possible that I need to do some cleanup on startup that would allow the tunnel to work in this situation, or are there some other debugging/troubleshooting steps I can take to determine the problem? Machine A is the client machine, using autossh. This machine sits behind a firewall and uses the following command in upstart to create an ssh tunnel: /usr/bin/autossh -fN -i /keyfile -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no -R 20098:localhost:22 user@centralserver Machine B we'll call the "central server", which sits in the cloud and is the host. This machine is "centralserver" in the command above. When Machine A is hard powered off, and back on, I cannot connect to it by SSH'ing from my machine (C) to Machine B in the cloud, then using the following command to get to Machine A: ssh -p 2098 user@localhost Again, after a reboot of the client (A), this works fine. It is only after a hard power down that the problem occurs. There are autossh processes that are running on the client machine (A) after powering down and back up, but they just don't seem to doing their job.

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  • What other ways can I load balance EC2 servers without using Elastic Load Balancing?

    - by undefined
    I have a web application that consists of a web server managed by a web hosting firm, a set of EC2 instances in amazons cloud and a MySQL database (hosted on the webserver). MySQL is behind a firewall and is set to allow access from Localhost and from a single IP address which is an Amazon Elastic IP address that is attached to the EC2 instance I have been running up to now. The problem is that I want to look at my scaling up and load balancing strategy for my EC2 instance. To this end I have been investigating the Elastic Load Balancers and Autoscaling tools that Amazon provides and have managed to set this up fine but for one thing - connecting to the MySQL database running on my webserver. I realised (thanks to answers on Serverfault) that I needed to check firewall settings and add the IP address for the load balancer, however Elastic Load Balancers provide you with a DNS name, not an IP address and infact the IP addresses change over time so this will not work. I have been told by the company hosting the database that the way the firewall works is to look up the IP address of the DNS name and store the IP rather than the DNS name. so basically this will not work and the only way to allow access would be to open up the SQL port to allow access from anyone! Is this a viable idea? Should I look at moving my database into the cloud? Is there another firewall that the server company can use? Should I find another way of load balancing (if so what?) tricky one eh? any help appreciated!

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  • Upload File to Windows Azure Blob in Chunks through ASP.NET MVC, JavaScript and HTML5

    - by Shaun
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/shaunxu/archive/2013/07/01/upload-file-to-windows-azure-blob-in-chunks-through-asp.net.aspxMany people are using Windows Azure Blob Storage to store their data in the cloud. Blob storage provides 99.9% availability with easy-to-use API through .NET SDK and HTTP REST. For example, we can store JavaScript files, images, documents in blob storage when we are building an ASP.NET web application on a Web Role in Windows Azure. Or we can store our VHD files in blob and mount it as a hard drive in our cloud service. If you are familiar with Windows Azure, you should know that there are two kinds of blob: page blob and block blob. The page blob is optimized for random read and write, which is very useful when you need to store VHD files. The block blob is optimized for sequential/chunk read and write, which has more common usage. Since we can upload block blob in blocks through BlockBlob.PutBlock, and them commit them as a whole blob with invoking the BlockBlob.PutBlockList, it is very powerful to upload large files, as we can upload blocks in parallel, and provide pause-resume feature. There are many documents, articles and blog posts described on how to upload a block blob. Most of them are focus on the server side, which means when you had received a big file, stream or binaries, how to upload them into blob storage in blocks through .NET SDK.  But the problem is, how can we upload these large files from client side, for example, a browser. This questioned to me when I was working with a Chinese customer to help them build a network disk production on top of azure. The end users upload their files from the web portal, and then the files will be stored in blob storage from the Web Role. My goal is to find the best way to transform the file from client (end user’s machine) to the server (Web Role) through browser. In this post I will demonstrate and describe what I had done, to upload large file in chunks with high speed, and save them as blocks into Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Traditional Upload, Works with Limitation The simplest way to implement this requirement is to create a web page with a form that contains a file input element and a submit button. 1: @using (Html.BeginForm("About", "Index", FormMethod.Post, new { enctype = "multipart/form-data" })) 2: { 3: <input type="file" name="file" /> 4: <input type="submit" value="upload" /> 5: } And then in the backend controller, we retrieve the whole content of this file and upload it in to the blob storage through .NET SDK. We can split the file in blocks and upload them in parallel and commit. The code had been well blogged in the community. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public ActionResult About(HttpPostedFileBase file) 3: { 4: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 5: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 6: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(file.FileName); 7: var blockDataList = new Dictionary<string, byte[]>(); 8: using (var stream = file.InputStream) 9: { 10: var blockSizeInKB = 1024; 11: var offset = 0; 12: var index = 0; 13: while (offset < stream.Length) 14: { 15: var readLength = Math.Min(1024 * blockSizeInKB, (int)stream.Length - offset); 16: var blockData = new byte[readLength]; 17: offset += stream.Read(blockData, 0, readLength); 18: blockDataList.Add(Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)), blockData); 19:  20: index++; 21: } 22: } 23:  24: Parallel.ForEach(blockDataList, (bi) => 25: { 26: blob.PutBlock(bi.Key, new MemoryStream(bi.Value), null); 27: }); 28: blob.PutBlockList(blockDataList.Select(b => b.Key).ToArray()); 29:  30: return RedirectToAction("About"); 31: } This works perfect if we selected an image, a music or a small video to upload. But if I selected a large file, let’s say a 6GB HD-movie, after upload for about few minutes the page will be shown as below and the upload will be terminated. In ASP.NET there is a limitation of request length and the maximized request length is defined in the web.config file. It’s a number which less than about 4GB. So if we want to upload a really big file, we cannot simply implement in this way. Also, in Windows Azure, a cloud service network load balancer will terminate the connection if exceed the timeout period. From my test the timeout looks like 2 - 3 minutes. Hence, when we need to upload a large file we cannot just use the basic HTML elements. Besides the limitation mentioned above, the simple HTML file upload cannot provide rich upload experience such as chunk upload, pause and pause-resume. So we need to find a better way to upload large file from the client to the server.   Upload in Chunks through HTML5 and JavaScript In order to break those limitation mentioned above we will try to upload the large file in chunks. This takes some benefit to us such as - No request size limitation: Since we upload in chunks, we can define the request size for each chunks regardless how big the entire file is. - No timeout problem: The size of chunks are controlled by us, which means we should be able to make sure request for each chunk upload will not exceed the timeout period of both ASP.NET and Windows Azure load balancer. It was a big challenge to upload big file in chunks until we have HTML5. There are some new features and improvements introduced in HTML5 and we will use them to implement our solution.   In HTML5, the File interface had been improved with a new method called “slice”. It can be used to read part of the file by specifying the start byte index and the end byte index. For example if the entire file was 1024 bytes, file.slice(512, 768) will read the part of this file from the 512nd byte to 768th byte, and return a new object of interface called "Blob”, which you can treat as an array of bytes. In fact,  a Blob object represents a file-like object of immutable, raw data. The File interface is based on Blob, inheriting blob functionality and expanding it to support files on the user's system. For more information about the Blob please refer here. File and Blob is very useful to implement the chunk upload. We will use File interface to represent the file the user selected from the browser and then use File.slice to read the file in chunks in the size we wanted. For example, if we wanted to upload a 10MB file with 512KB chunks, then we can read it in 512KB blobs by using File.slice in a loop.   Assuming we have a web page as below. User can select a file, an input box to specify the block size in KB and a button to start upload. 1: <div> 2: <input type="file" id="upload_files" name="files[]" /><br /> 3: Block Size: <input type="number" id="block_size" value="512" name="block_size" />KB<br /> 4: <input type="button" id="upload_button_blob" name="upload" value="upload (blob)" /> 5: </div> Then we can have the JavaScript function to upload the file in chunks when user clicked the button. 1: <script type="text/javascript"> 1: 2: $(function () { 3: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 4: }); 5: });</script> Firstly we need to ensure the client browser supports the interfaces we are going to use. Just try to invoke the File, Blob and FormData from the “window” object. If any of them is “undefined” the condition result will be “false” which means your browser doesn’t support these premium feature and it’s time for you to get your browser updated. FormData is another new feature we are going to use in the future. It could generate a temporary form for us. We will use this interface to create a form with chunk and associated metadata when invoked the service through ajax. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 4: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 5: } 6: else { 7: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 8: return; 9: } 10: }); Each browser supports these interfaces by their own implementation and currently the Blob, File and File.slice are supported by Chrome 21, FireFox 13, IE 10, Opera 12 and Safari 5.1 or higher. After that we worked on the files the user selected one by one since in HTML5, user can select multiple files in one file input box. 1: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 2: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 3: var file = files[i]; 4: var fileSize = file.size; 5: var fileName = file.name; 6: } Next, we calculated the start index and end index for each chunks based on the size the user specified from the browser. We put them into an array with the file name and the index, which will be used when we upload chunks into Windows Azure Blob Storage as blocks since we need to specify the target blob name and the block index. At the same time we will store the list of all indexes into another variant which will be used to commit blocks into blob in Azure Storage once all chunks had been uploaded successfully. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10:  11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 14: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 15: var blocks = []; 16: var offset = 0; 17: var index = 0; 18: var list = ""; 19: while (offset < fileSize) { 20: var start = offset; 21: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 22:  23: blocks.push({ 24: name: fileName, 25: index: index, 26: start: start, 27: end: end 28: }); 29: list += index + ","; 30:  31: offset = end; 32: index++; 33: } 34: } 35: }); Now we have all chunks’ information ready. The next step should be upload them one by one to the server side, and at the server side when received a chunk it will upload as a block into Blob Storage, and finally commit them with the index list through BlockBlobClient.PutBlockList. But since all these invokes are ajax calling, which means not synchronized call. So we need to introduce a new JavaScript library to help us coordinate the asynchronize operation, which named “async.js”. You can download this JavaScript library here, and you can find the document here. I will not explain this library too much in this post. We will put all procedures we want to execute as a function array, and pass into the proper function defined in async.js to let it help us to control the execution sequence, in series or in parallel. Hence we will define an array and put the function for chunk upload into this array. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4:  5: // start to upload each files in chunks 6: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 7: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 8: var file = files[i]; 9: var fileSize = file.size; 10: var fileName = file.name; 11: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 12: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 13: ... ... 14:  15: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 16: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 17: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 18: }); 19: }); 20: } 21: }); 22: }); As you can see, I used File.slice method to read each chunks based on the start and end byte index we calculated previously, and constructed a temporary HTML form with the file name, chunk index and chunk data through another new feature in HTML5 named FormData. Then post this form to the backend server through jQuery.ajax. This is the key part of our solution. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 15: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 16: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 17: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 18: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 19: var fd = new FormData(); 20: fd.append("name", block.name); 21: fd.append("index", block.index); 22: fd.append("file", blob); 23: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 24: $.ajax({ 25: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 26: data: fd, 27: processData: false, 28: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 29: type: "POST", 30: success: function (result) { 31: if (!result.success) { 32: alert(result.error); 33: } 34: callback(null, block.index); 35: } 36: }); 37: }); 38: }); 39: } 40: }); Then we will invoke these functions one by one by using the async.js. And once all functions had been executed successfully I invoked another ajax call to the backend service to commit all these chunks (blocks) as the blob in Windows Azure Storage. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); That’s all in the client side. The outline of our logic would be - Calculate the start and end byte index for each chunks based on the block size. - Defined the functions of reading the chunk form file and upload the content to the backend service through ajax. - Execute the functions defined in previous step with “async.js”. - Commit the chunks by invoking the backend service in Windows Azure Storage finally.   Save Chunks as Blocks into Blob Storage In above we finished the client size JavaScript code. It uploaded the file in chunks to the backend service which we are going to implement in this step. We will use ASP.NET MVC as our backend service, and it will receive the chunks, upload into Windows Azure Bob Storage in blocks, then finally commit as one blob. As in the client side we uploaded chunks by invoking the ajax call to the URL "/Home/UploadInFormData", I created a new action under the Index controller and it only accepts HTTP POST request. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: } 8: catch (Exception e) 9: { 10: error = e.ToString(); 11: } 12:  13: return new JsonResult() 14: { 15: Data = new 16: { 17: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 18: error = error 19: } 20: }; 21: } Then I retrieved the file name, index and the chunk content from the Request.Form object, which was passed from our client side. And then, used the Windows Azure SDK to create a blob container (in this case we will use the container named “test”.) and create a blob reference with the blob name (same as the file name). Then uploaded the chunk as a block of this blob with the index, since in Blob Storage each block must have an index (ID) associated with so that finally we can put all blocks as one blob by specifying their block ID list. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 9: var file = Request.Files[0]; 10: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 11:  12: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 13: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 14: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 15: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 16: } 17: catch (Exception e) 18: { 19: error = e.ToString(); 20: } 21:  22: return new JsonResult() 23: { 24: Data = new 25: { 26: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 27: error = error 28: } 29: }; 30: } Next, I created another action to commit the blocks into blob once all chunks had been uploaded. Similarly, I retrieved the blob name from the Request.Form. I also retrieved the chunks ID list, which is the block ID list from the Request.Form in a string format, split them as a list, then invoked the BlockBlob.PutBlockList method. After that our blob will be shown in the container and ready to be download. 1: [HttpPost] 2: public JsonResult Commit() 3: { 4: var error = string.Empty; 5: try 6: { 7: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 8: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 9: var ids = list 10: .Split(',') 11: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 12: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 13: .ToArray(); 14:  15: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 16: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 17: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 18: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 19: } 20: catch (Exception e) 21: { 22: error = e.ToString(); 23: } 24:  25: return new JsonResult() 26: { 27: Data = new 28: { 29: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 30: error = error 31: } 32: }; 33: } Now we finished all code we need. The whole process of uploading would be like this below. Below is the full client side JavaScript code. 1: <script type="text/javascript" src="~/Scripts/async.js"></script> 2: <script type="text/javascript"> 3: $(function () { 4: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 5: // assert the browser support html5 6: if (window.File && window.Blob && window.FormData) { 7: alert("Your brwoser is awesome, let's rock!"); 8: } 9: else { 10: alert("Oh man plz update to a modern browser before try is cool stuff out."); 11: return; 12: } 13:  14: // start to upload each files in chunks 15: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 16: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 17: var file = files[i]; 18: var fileSize = file.size; 19: var fileName = file.name; 20:  21: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 22: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 23: var blockSizeInKB = $("#block_size").val(); 24: var blockSize = blockSizeInKB * 1024; 25: var blocks = []; 26: var offset = 0; 27: var index = 0; 28: var list = ""; 29: while (offset < fileSize) { 30: var start = offset; 31: var end = Math.min(offset + blockSize, fileSize); 32:  33: blocks.push({ 34: name: fileName, 35: index: index, 36: start: start, 37: end: end 38: }); 39: list += index + ","; 40:  41: offset = end; 42: index++; 43: } 44:  45: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 46: var putBlocks = []; 47: blocks.forEach(function (block) { 48: putBlocks.push(function (callback) { 49: // load blob based on the start and end index for each chunks 50: var blob = file.slice(block.start, block.end); 51: // put the file name, index and blob into a temporary from 52: var fd = new FormData(); 53: fd.append("name", block.name); 54: fd.append("index", block.index); 55: fd.append("file", blob); 56: // post the form to backend service (asp.net mvc controller action) 57: $.ajax({ 58: url: "/Home/UploadInFormData", 59: data: fd, 60: processData: false, 61: contentType: "multipart/form-data", 62: type: "POST", 63: success: function (result) { 64: if (!result.success) { 65: alert(result.error); 66: } 67: callback(null, block.index); 68: } 69: }); 70: }); 71: }); 72:  73: // invoke the functions one by one 74: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 75: async.series(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 76: var data = { 77: name: fileName, 78: list: list 79: }; 80: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 81: if (!result.success) { 82: alert(result.error); 83: } 84: else { 85: alert("done!"); 86: } 87: }); 88: }); 89: } 90: }); 91: }); 92: </script> And below is the full ASP.NET MVC controller code. 1: public class HomeController : Controller 2: { 3: private CloudStorageAccount _account; 4: private CloudBlobClient _client; 5:  6: public HomeController() 7: : base() 8: { 9: _account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(CloudConfigurationManager.GetSetting("DataConnectionString")); 10: _client = _account.CreateCloudBlobClient(); 11: } 12:  13: public ActionResult Index() 14: { 15: ViewBag.Message = "Modify this template to jump-start your ASP.NET MVC application."; 16:  17: return View(); 18: } 19:  20: [HttpPost] 21: public JsonResult UploadInFormData() 22: { 23: var error = string.Empty; 24: try 25: { 26: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 27: var index = int.Parse(Request.Form["index"]); 28: var file = Request.Files[0]; 29: var id = Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(index)); 30:  31: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 32: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 33: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 34: blob.PutBlock(id, file.InputStream, null); 35: } 36: catch (Exception e) 37: { 38: error = e.ToString(); 39: } 40:  41: return new JsonResult() 42: { 43: Data = new 44: { 45: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 46: error = error 47: } 48: }; 49: } 50:  51: [HttpPost] 52: public JsonResult Commit() 53: { 54: var error = string.Empty; 55: try 56: { 57: var name = Request.Form["name"]; 58: var list = Request.Form["list"]; 59: var ids = list 60: .Split(',') 61: .Where(id => !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(id)) 62: .Select(id => Convert.ToBase64String(BitConverter.GetBytes(int.Parse(id)))) 63: .ToArray(); 64:  65: var container = _client.GetContainerReference("test"); 66: container.CreateIfNotExists(); 67: var blob = container.GetBlockBlobReference(name); 68: blob.PutBlockList(ids); 69: } 70: catch (Exception e) 71: { 72: error = e.ToString(); 73: } 74:  75: return new JsonResult() 76: { 77: Data = new 78: { 79: success = string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(error), 80: error = error 81: } 82: }; 83: } 84: } And if we selected a file from the browser we will see our application will upload chunks in the size we specified to the server through ajax call in background, and then commit all chunks in one blob. Then we can find the blob in our Windows Azure Blob Storage.   Optimized by Parallel Upload In previous example we just uploaded our file in chunks. This solved the problem that ASP.NET MVC request content size limitation as well as the Windows Azure load balancer timeout. But it might introduce the performance problem since we uploaded chunks in sequence. In order to improve the upload performance we could modify our client side code a bit to make the upload operation invoked in parallel. The good news is that, “async.js” library provides the parallel execution function. If you remembered the code we invoke the service to upload chunks, it utilized “async.series” which means all functions will be executed in sequence. Now we will change this code to “async.parallel”. This will invoke all functions in parallel. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallel(putBlocks, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: }); In this way all chunks will be uploaded to the server side at the same time to maximize the bandwidth usage. This should work if the file was not very large and the chunk size was not very small. But for large file this might introduce another problem that too many ajax calls are sent to the server at the same time. So the best solution should be, upload the chunks in parallel with maximum concurrency limitation. The code below specified the concurrency limitation to 4, which means at the most only 4 ajax calls could be invoked at the same time. 1: $("#upload_button_blob").click(function () { 2: // assert the browser support html5 3: ... ... 4: // start to upload each files in chunks 5: var files = $("#upload_files")[0].files; 6: for (var i = 0; i < files.length; i++) { 7: var file = files[i]; 8: var fileSize = file.size; 9: var fileName = file.name; 10: // calculate the start and end byte index for each blocks(chunks) 11: // with the index, file name and index list for future using 12: ... ... 13: // define the function array and push all chunk upload operation into this array 14: ... ... 15: // invoke the functions one by one 16: // then invoke the commit ajax call to put blocks into blob in azure storage 17: async.parallelLimit(putBlocks, 4, function (error, result) { 18: var data = { 19: name: fileName, 20: list: list 21: }; 22: $.post("/Home/Commit", data, function (result) { 23: if (!result.success) { 24: alert(result.error); 25: } 26: else { 27: alert("done!"); 28: } 29: }); 30: }); 31: } 32: });   Summary In this post we discussed how to upload files in chunks to the backend service and then upload them into Windows Azure Blob Storage in blocks. We focused on the frontend side and leverage three new feature introduced in HTML 5 which are - File.slice: Read part of the file by specifying the start and end byte index. - Blob: File-like interface which contains the part of the file content. - FormData: Temporary form element that we can pass the chunk alone with some metadata to the backend service. Then we discussed the performance consideration of chunk uploading. Sequence upload cannot provide maximized upload speed, but the unlimited parallel upload might crash the browser and server if too many chunks. So we finally came up with the solution to upload chunks in parallel with the concurrency limitation. We also demonstrated how to utilize “async.js” JavaScript library to help us control the asynchronize call and the parallel limitation.   Regarding the chunk size and the parallel limitation value there is no “best” value. You need to test vary composition and find out the best one for your particular scenario. It depends on the local bandwidth, client machine cores and the server side (Windows Azure Cloud Service Virtual Machine) cores, memory and bandwidth. Below is one of my performance test result. The client machine was Windows 8 IE 10 with 4 cores. I was using Microsoft Cooperation Network. The web site was hosted on Windows Azure China North data center (in Beijing) with one small web role (1.7GB 1 core CPU, 1.75GB memory with 100Mbps bandwidth). The test cases were - Chunk size: 512KB, 1MB, 2MB, 4MB. - Upload Mode: Sequence, parallel (unlimited), parallel with limit (4 threads, 8 threads). - Chunk Format: base64 string, binaries. - Target file: 100MB. - Each case was tested 3 times. Below is the test result chart. Some thoughts, but not guidance or best practice: - Parallel gets better performance than series. - No significant performance improvement between parallel 4 threads and 8 threads. - Transform with binaries provides better performance than base64. - In all cases, chunk size in 1MB - 2MB gets better performance.   Hope this helps, Shaun All documents and related graphics, codes are provided "AS IS" without warranty of any kind. Copyright © Shaun Ziyan Xu. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons License.

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  • Microsoft Declares the Future of ASP.NET is Web API

    - by sbwalker
    Sitting on a plane on my way home from Tech Ed 2012 in Orlando, I thought it would be a good time to jot down some key takeaways from this year’s conference. Some of these items I have known since the Microsoft MVP Summit which occurred in Redmond in late February ( but due to NDA restrictions I could not share them with the developer community at large ) and some of them are a result of insightful conversations with a wide variety of industry insiders and Microsoft employees at the conference. First, let’s travel back in time 4 years to the Microsoft MVP Summit in 2008. Microsoft was facing some heat from market newcomer Ruby on Rails and responded with a new web development framework of its own, ASP.NET MVC. At the Summit they estimated that MVC would only be applicable for ~10% of all new web development projects. Based on that prediction I questioned why they were investing such considerable resources for such a relative edge case, but my guess is that they felt it was an important edge case at the time as some of the more vocal .NET evangelists as well as some very high profile start-ups ( ie. Twitter ) had publicly announced their intent to use Rails. Microsoft made a lot of noise about MVC. In fact, they focused so much of their messaging and marketing hype around MVC that it appeared that WebForms was essentially dead. Yes, it may have been true that Microsoft continued to invest in WebForms, but from an outside perspective it really appeared that MVC was the only framework getting any real attention. As a result, MVC started to gain market share. An inside source at Microsoft told me that MVC usage has grown at a rate of about 5% per year and now sits at ~30%. Essentially by focusing so much marketing effort on MVC, Microsoft actually created a larger market demand for it.  This is because in the Microsoft ecosystem there is somewhat of a bandwagon mentality amongst developers. If Microsoft spends a lot of time talking about a specific technology, developers get the perception that it must be really important. So rather than choosing the right tool for the job, they often choose the tool with the most marketing hype and then try to sell it to the customer. In 2010, I blogged about the fact that MVC did not make any business sense for the DotNetNuke platform. This was because our ecosystem relied on third party extensions which were dependent on the WebForms model. If we migrated the core to MVC it would mean that all of the third party extensions would no longer be compatible, which would be an irresponsible business decision for us to make at the expense of our users and customers. However, this did not stop the debate from continuing to occur in our ecosystem. Clearly some developers had drunk Microsoft’s Kool-Aid about MVC and were of the mindset, to paraphrase an old Scottish saying, “If its not MVC, it’s crap”. Now, this is a rather ignorant position to take as most of the benefits of MVC can be achieved in WebForms with solid architecture and responsible coding practices. Clean separation of concerns, unit testing, and direct control over page output are all possible in the WebForms model – it just requires diligence and discipline. So over the past few years some horror stories have begun to bubble to the surface of software development projects focused on ground-up rewrites of web applications for the sole purpose of migrating from WebForms to MVC. These large scale rewrites were typically initiated by engineering teams with only a single argument driving the business decision, that Microsoft was promoting MVC as “the future”. These ill-fated rewrites offered no benefit to end users or customers and in fact resulted in a less stable, less scalable and more complicated systems – basically taking one step forward and two full steps back. A case in point is the announcement earlier this week that a popular open source .NET CMS provider has decided to pull the plug on their new MVC product which has been under active development for more than 18 months and revert back to WebForms. The availability of multiple server-side development models has deeply fragmented the Microsoft developer community. Some folks like to compare it to the age-old VB vs. C# language debate. However, the VB vs. C# language debate was ultimately more of a religious war because at least the two dominant programming languages were compatible with one another and could be used interchangeably. The issue with WebForms vs. MVC is much more challenging. This is because the messaging from Microsoft has positioned the two solutions as being incompatible with one another and as a result web developers feel like they are forced to choose one path or another. Yes, it is true that it has always been technically possible to use WebForms and MVC in the same project, but the tooling support has always made this feel “dirty”. The fragmentation has also made it difficult to attract newcomers as the perceived barrier to entry for learning ASP.NET has become higher. As a result many new software developers entering the market are gravitating to environments where the development model seems more simple and intuitive ( ie. PHP or Ruby ). At the same time that the Web Platform team was busy promoting ASP.NET MVC, the Microsoft Office team has been promoting Sharepoint as a platform for building internal enterprise web applications. Sharepoint has great penetration in the enterprise and over time has been enhanced with improved extensibility capabilities for software developers. But, like many other mature enterprise ASP.NET web applications, it is built on the WebForms development model. Similar to DotNetNuke, Sharepoint leverages a rich third party ecosystem for both generic web controls and more specialized WebParts – both of which rely on WebForms. So basically this resulted in a situation where the Web Platform group had headed off in one direction and the Office team had gone in another direction, and the end customer was stuck in the middle trying to figure out what to do with their existing investments in Microsoft technology. It really emphasized the perception that the left hand was not speaking to the right hand, as strategically speaking there did not seem to be any high level plan from Microsoft to ensure consistency and continuity across the different product lines. With the introduction of ASP.NET MVC, it also made some of the third party control vendors scratch their heads, and wonder what the heck Microsoft was thinking. The original value proposition of ASP.NET over Classic ASP was the ability for web developers to emulate the highly productive desktop development model by using abstract components for creating rich, interactive web interfaces. Web control vendors like Telerik, Infragistics, DevExpress, and ComponentArt had all built sizable businesses offering powerful user interface components to WebForms developers. And even after MVC was introduced these vendors continued to improve their products, offering greater productivity and a superior user experience via AJAX to what was possible in MVC. And since many developers were comfortable and satisfied with these third party solutions, the demand remained strong and the third party web control market continued to prosper despite the availability of MVC. While all of this was going on in the Microsoft ecosystem, there has also been a fundamental shift in the general software development industry. Driven by the explosion of Internet-enabled devices, the focus has now centered on service-oriented architecture (SOA). Service-oriented architecture is all about defining a public API for your product that any client can consume; whether it’s a native application running on a smart phone or tablet, a web browser taking advantage of HTML5 and Javascript, or a rich desktop application running on a PC. REST-based services which utilize the less verbose characteristics of JSON as a transport mechanism, have become the preferred approach over older, more bloated SOAP-based techniques. SOA also has the benefit of producing a cross-platform API, as every major technology stack is able to interact with standard REST-based web services. And for web applications, more and more developers are turning to robust Javascript libraries like JQuery and Knockout for browser-based client-side development techniques for calling web services and rendering content to end users. In fact, traditional server-side page rendering has largely fallen out of favor, resulting in decreased demand for server-side frameworks like Ruby on Rails, WebForms, and (gasp) MVC. In response to these new industry trends, Microsoft did what it always does – it immediately poured some resources into developing a solution which will ensure they remain relevant and competitive in the web space. This work culminated in a new framework which was branded as Web API. It is convention-based and designed to embrace native HTTP standards without copious layers of abstraction. This framework is designed to be the ultimate replacement for both the REST aspects of WCF and ASP.NET MVC Web Services. And since it was developed out of band with a dependency only on ASP.NET 4.0, it means that it can be used immediately in a variety of production scenarios. So at Tech Ed 2012 it was made abundantly clear in numerous sessions that Microsoft views Web API as the “Future of ASP.NET”. In fact, one Microsoft PM even went as far as to say that if we look 3-4 years into the future, that all ASP.NET web applications will be developed using the Web API approach. This is a fairly bold prediction and clearly telegraphs where Microsoft plans to allocate its resources going forward. Currently Web API is being delivered as part of the MVC4 package, but this is only temporary for the sake of convenience. It also sounds like there are still internal discussions going on in terms of how to brand the various aspects of ASP.NET going forward – perhaps the moniker of “ASP.NET Web Stack” coined a couple years ago by Scott Hanselman and utilized as part of the open source release of ASP.NET bits on Codeplex a few months back will eventually stick. Web API is being positioned as the unification of ASP.NET – the glue that is able to pull this fragmented mess back together again. The  “One ASP.NET” strategy will promote the use of all frameworks - WebForms, MVC, and Web API, even within the same web project. Basically the message is utilize the appropriate aspects of each framework to solve your business problems. Instead of navigating developers to a fork in the road, the plan is to educate them that “hybrid” applications are a great strategy for delivering solutions to customers. In addition, the service-oriented approach coupled with client-side development promoted by Web API can effectively be used in both WebForms and MVC applications. So this means it is also relevant to application platforms like DotNetNuke and Sharepoint, which means that it starts to create a unified development strategy across all ASP.NET product lines once again. And so what about MVC? There have actually been rumors floated that MVC has reached a stage of maturity where, similar to WebForms, it will be treated more as a maintenance product line going forward ( MVC4 may in fact be the last significant iteration of this framework ). This may sound alarming to some folks who have recently adopted MVC but it really shouldn’t, as both WebForms and MVC will continue to play a vital role in delivering solutions to customers. They will just not be the primary area where Microsoft is spending the majority of its R&D resources. That distinction will obviously go to Web API. And when the question comes up of why not enhance MVC to make it work with Web API, you must take a step back and look at this from the higher level to see that it really makes no sense. MVC is a server-side page compositing framework; whereas, Web API promotes client-side page compositing with a heavy focus on web services. In order to make MVC work well with Web API, would require a complete rewrite of MVC and at the end of the day, there would be no upgrade path for existing MVC applications. So it really does not make much business sense. So what does this have to do with DotNetNuke? Well, around 8-12 months ago we recognized the software industry trends towards web services and client-side development. We decided to utilize a “hybrid” model which would provide compatibility for existing modules while at the same time provide a bridge for developers who wanted to utilize more modern web techniques. Customers who like the productivity and familiarity of WebForms can continue to build custom modules using the traditional approach. However, in DotNetNuke 6.2 we also introduced a new Service Framework which is actually built on top of MVC2 ( we chose to leverage MVC because it had the most intuitive, light-weight REST implementation in the .NET stack ). The Services Framework allowed us to build some rich interactive features in DotNetNuke 6.2, including the Messaging and Notification Center and Activity Feed. But based on where we know Microsoft is heading, it makes sense for the next major version of DotNetNuke ( which is expected to be released in Q4 2012 ) to migrate from MVC2 to Web API. This will likely result in some breaking changes in the Services Framework but we feel it is the best approach for ensuring the platform remains highly modern and relevant. The fact that our development strategy is perfectly aligned with the “One ASP.NET” strategy from Microsoft means that our customers and developer community can be confident in their current and future investments in the DotNetNuke platform.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 28, 2013

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 28, 2013Popular ReleasesEsoteric language interpreters collection: WARP, FALSE, Befunge-93, BrainFuck version 1.9: WARP Add factorial source Add brainfuck interpreter source Correct flex number system parse test by using regexes Implement the { operator Implement the } operator Support standard input redirection (so that the , operator reads one line only) The following executes the WARP brainfuck interpreter with a hello world brainfuck program: echo "+++++ +++++[> +++++ ++ > +++++ +++++> +++> + <<<< - ]> ++ .> + .+++++ ++ ..+++ .> ++ .<< +++++ +++++ +++++ .> .+++ .----- -.----- --- .> +.> ."...SharePoint Calendar Helper: 1.0.0.0: The first release, enjoy!WebsiteFilter: WebsiteFilter 1.0: WebsiteFilter Need .net framework4.0ax 2012 Security Privilege generator: xpo privilige generator: While upgrading AX 2009 solutions to AX 2012. I became tired of creating all those privileges. It for every menu item every time the same case; create a view and a maintain privilege. So for all those lazy developer out there, her it is, a privilege Builder. How it works, easy select right mouse on the menu item and you get your privileges.Outlook 2013 Add-In: Configuration Form: This new version includes the following changes: - Refactored code a bit. - Removing configuration from main form to gain more space to display items. - Moved configuration to separate form. You can click the little "gear" icon to access the configuration form (still very simple). - Added option to show past day appointments from the selected day (previous in time, that is). - Added some tooltips. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it ...Stored Procedure Pager: LYB.NET.SPPager 1.10: check bugs: 1 the total page count of default stored procedure ".LYBPager" always takes error as this: page size: 10 total item count: 100 then total page count should be 10, but last version is 11. 2 update some comments with English forbidding messy code.Terminals: Version 3.0 - Release: Changes since version 2.0:Choose 100% portable or installed version Removed connection warning when running RDP 8 (Windows 8) client Fixed Active directory search Extended Active directory search by LDAP filters Fixed single instance mode when running on Windows Terminal server Merged usage of Tags and Groups Added columns sorting option in tables No UAC prompts on Windows 7 Completely new file persistence data layer New MS SQL persistence layer (Store data in SQL database)...NuGet: NuGet 2.6: Released June 26, 2013. Release notes: http://docs.nuget.org/docs/release-notes/nuget-2.6Python Tools for Visual Studio: 2.0 Beta: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 2.0 Beta. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including CPython/IronPython, Edit/Intellisense/Debug/Profile, Cloud, HPC, IPython, and cross platform debugging support. For a quick overview of the general IDE experience, please watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TuewiStN...Player Framework by Microsoft: Player Framework for Windows 8 and WP8 (v1.3 beta): Preview: New MPEG DASH adaptive streaming plugin for Windows Azure Media Services Preview: New Ultraviolet CFF plugin. Preview: New WP7 version with WP8 compatibility. (source code only) Source code is now available via CodePlex Git Misc bug fixes and improvements: WP8 only: Added optional fullscreen and mute buttons to default xaml JS only: protecting currentTime from returning infinity. Some videos would cause currentTime to be infinity which could cause errors in plugins expectin...AssaultCube Reloaded: 2.5.8: SERVER OWNERS: note that the default maprot has changed once again. Linux has Ubuntu 11.10 32-bit precompiled binaries and Ubuntu 10.10 64-bit precompiled binaries, but you can compile your own as it also contains the source. If you are using Mac or other operating systems, please wait while we continue to try to package for those OSes. Or better yet, try to compile it. If it fails, download a virtual machine. The server pack is ready for both Windows and Linux, but you might need to compi...Compare .NET Objects: Version 1.7.2.0: If you like it, please rate it. :) Performance Improvements Fix for deleted row in a data table Added ability to ignore the collection order Fix for Ignoring by AttributesMicrosoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.95: update parser to allow for CSS3 calc( function to nest. add recognition of -pponly (Preprocess-Only) switch in AjaxMinManifestTask build task. Fix crashing bug in EXE when processing a manifest file using the -xml switch and an error message needs to be displayed (like a missing input file). Create separate Clean and Bundle build tasks for working with manifest files (AjaxMinManifestCleanTask and AjaxMinBundleTask). Removed the IsCleanOperation from AjaxMinManifestTask -- use AjaxMinMan...VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.44: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImgChili.net" links FIXED: Auto UpdaterDocument.Editor: 2013.25: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.25: Improved Spell Check support Improved User Interface Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Channel9's Absolute Beginner Series: Windows Phone 8: Entire source code for the Channel 9 series, Windows Phone 8 Development for Absolute Beginners.Indent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...New ProjectsAdjusting SharePoint Site Quota PowerShell: PowerShell Script that displays the current space statistics thresholds for the database, site and quota. With this script you change the quota of a site.AndroidOMS: android omsASP.NET????????????: ASP.NET???????????? GlobalProfile ?????ASP.NET???????????。 ?????????????XML??????,?????ASP.NET??IHttpModule???????????,?????HttpRuntime.Cache???????????。 ???ax 2012 Security Privilege generator: While upgrading AX 2009 solutions to AX 2012. I became tired of creating all those privileges.CometDocs.Net: The .Net binding of the CometDocs web API (https://www.cometdocs.com/developer/apiDocumentation)Compositional Signals: This project aims to develop a simple compositional signal processing pipeline for education purposesCRM 2011 Field Data Type Converter: Field data type converter for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011CRM Solution CommandLine Helper: CRM Solution Command Line helper provide command line interface to handle CRM solution deployment and automate basic tasks.cursosabado: curso sábado c#Custom Html Helper for Google Maps: This Custom HTML helper let you integrate google maps into your MVC app easiler than EVER!DemoGRAPHICS: This project was demo'ed at the Microsoft Build 2013 Conference as part of "What's new for HTML Developers in Blend for Visual Studio 2013 Preview".DotNetNuke Demo SkinObjects: A collection of skin objects for DotNetNuke designed to make demonstrations easier for people.Excel to Dynamics CRM: Excel to Dynamics CRM for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 makes it easier for the CRM users to upsert (update and/or insert) data from an Excel file.Newbie Open Source Project: math developOpen Parsing Example: here is an example to parse my own fileformatPeople Finder: This is a web proyect aimed to help people to get contact with whom are lost. Initial purpose: Help those who had their kids kidnapped in hospitals.Recovery Solutions at Your Service: Find our some of the most incredible solutions for protecting your backup and data file from corruption, errors and damages.San Francisco Transportation: San Francisco Transportation appSecurity Analysing: Just beginning.Show My Apps: This project aims to build a WPF Application that monitors resources and display them in a beautiful screen, usually seen on TV.TSAsyncModulesExampleApp: TSAsyncModulesExampleApp - ??????????-?????? ????????? ?? TypeScriptUltimate Music Tagger: Ultimate Music Tagger is a powerful, easy and extreme fast tool to reorganize your music libraryUniversal Visualnovel Engine Tools: Universal Visualnovel Engine is a cross-platform AVG Game Engine which supports Windows Phone 8.0 OS.This project hosts the documents and samples of uvengine.WCF Data Service Example: The purpose of this application is to demonstrate the usage of WCF Data Service with Repository patternWebsiteSkip: websiteskip is an open source Web page jump httpmodule component.windowsrtdev: The purpose of this project is to provide a central location for "native" (ie: Win32 - not WinRT) Windows RT development libraries / applications.

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  • Image map popup on rollover, with popup text drawn from database

    - by lbholland
    I have a custom map of the USA with about 20 polygonal hot spots. I would like a box to pop up next to each hot spot on hover, with text and links drawn from my DB specific to the location. I would have thought this is a common situation, but I can't find a solution that works. I tried using an asp:imagemap and an ajax popup extender but you can't assign IDs to hotspots and it doesn't support mouseover events. I tried css with an html image map but I can't figure out how to use css solutions with polygonal hot spots, and I also don't know how to link it to get the data from the db without asp targets (I'm not very familiar with jquery, which would work, I am guessing). Anyone know of any simple-ish solutions out there?

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  • Very slow compile times on Visual Studio

    - by johnc
    We are getting very slow compile times, which can take upwards of 20+ minutes on dual core 2GHz, 2G Ram machines. A lot of this is due to the size of our solution which has grown to 70+ projects, as well as VSS which is a bottle neck in itself when you have a lot of files. (swapping out VSS is not an option unfortunately, so I don't want this to descend into a VSS bash) We are looking at combing projects (not nice, as we like the separation of concerns, but is a good opportunity to refactor away some dead wood). We are also looking at having multiple solutions to achieve greater separation of concerns and quicker compile times for each element of the application. This I can see will become a dll hell as we try to keep things in synch. I am interested to know how other teams have dealt with this scaling issue, what do you do when your code base reaches a critical mass that you are wasting half the day watching the status bar deliver compile messages UPDATE Apologies, I neglected to mention this is a C# solution. Thanks for all the cpp suggestions, but it's been a few years since I've had to worry about headers. At a distance I say I miss C++, but I'm not sure I want to go back EDIT: Nice suggestions that have helped so far (not saying there aren't other nice suggestions below, just what has helped) New 3GHz laptop - the power of lost utilization works wonders when whinging to management Disable Anti Virus during compile 'Disconnecting' from VSS (actually the network) during compile - I may get us to remove VS-VSS integration altogether and stick to using the VSS UI Still not rip-snorting through a compile, but every bit helps. Orion did mention in a comment that generics may have a play also. From my tests there does appear to be a minimal performance hit, but not high enough to sure - compile times can be inconsistent due to disc activity. Due to time limitations, my tests didn't include as many Generics, or as much code, as would appear in live system, so that may accumulate. I wouldn't avoid using generics where they are supposed to be used, just for compile time performance WORKAROUND We are testing the practice of building new areas of the application in new solutions, importing in the latest dlls as required, them integrating them into the larger solution when we are happy with them. We may also do them same to existing code by creating temporary solutions that just encapsulate the areas we need to work on, and throwing them away after reintegrating the code. We need to weigh up the time it will take to reintegrate this code against the time we gain by not having Rip Van Winkle like experiences with rapid recompiling during development.

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