Working on a cloud

This blog is now coming to you from a cloud. A rackspace cloud server that is. Two of them in fact, the front end server running the CMS, and the back-end MySQL server.

The concept of cloud computing really isn’t all that new, but if you’re all at sea when it comes to clouds you might want to toodle over to Wikipedia and read about it there.

"This is the pointy end of the geek scale where crontabs are complex and the preferred editors have two letter names." The service I’m using is probably better described as cloud provisioning, in that I’ve got two virtual servers living somewhere in the bowels of the Rackspace data centre. I don’t have to care about memory sizing, disk space, network infrastructure, or anything else for that matter, I’m just renting some resources out of the cloud.

I picked how much memory and disk space I wanted in a few clicks then before the kettle had time to boil the server was on line and ready for configuration. If this service was available back when I was running a hosting business I’d probably still be running a hosting business, although I’d also be stark raving bonkers.

At this point I should say that I’m talking about virtual Linux servers here, not cloud hosting or full service shared hosting. This is the pointy end of the geek scale where crontabs are complex and the preferred editors have two letter names.

I’ve moved the blog onto the fluffy stuff to get a feeling for the service before I shift my work-in-progress link shrinker into the cloud as well. What I want to achieve with the lngz.org is simply not possible on a shared platform, as I want to build a tiered application which can scale quickly.

The traditional way of achieving this goal would be to slap your gold card down on the counter of a hosting company and then proceed to the bank to arrange a second mortgage on your house. Virtualised ‘cloud’ server services such as rackspace cloud, Amazon EC2 or gogrid lets you do the same things for a fraction of the cost and with amazing flexibility.

Note: I’m not affiliated with Rackspace, I just think they provide a nifty service.

Note from future self: I don't actually use Rackspace any more, but when I migrated my blog to a new platform in 2023 I thought this was worth keeping as it seemed, well, cute.