Jaan Paljasma | Tech Blog

Are you exhausted from the complexities and the extra cost associated with the EFS? What if you simply need to share the EBS volume between two EC2 instances? Say no more - Amazon Web Services has an answer for you! Starting today, customers running Linux on Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) can take advantage of new support for  attaching  Provisioned IOPS ( io1 ) EBS volumes to  multiple EC2 instances , at  no extra charge ! Multi-Attach option in EBS According to AWS, the Multi-Attach capability makes it easier to achieve higher availability for applications that provide write-ordering to maintain storage consistency. Consider the following scenario: you are running a web application behind the load balancer, and the application expects static assets, such as WordPress media uploads, theme or configuration files, shared between the instances. Instead of using EFS, you could create new PIOPS EBS volume with the Multi-Attach option, mount t...

AWS announced per-second billing for EC2 and EBS Volumes Effective October 2, 2017 Available for On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot Instance Types EBS Storage gains same benefits as well Also applies to Amazon EMR and AWS Batch Amazon Web Services provides flexible, secure and scalable cloud platform for the masses, and according to the Gartner Research, is a leader in this field. Today, they announced another useful feature which will change the level of the playing field again: Effective 10/02/2017, usage of Linux instances that are launched in On-Demand, Reserved, and Spot form will be billed in one-second increments. Similarly, provisioned storage for EBS volumes will be billed in one-second increments. Per-second billing also applies to Amazon EMR and AWS Batch. AWS is used by more than 1 million people from "organizations of every size across nearly every industry," Jeff Bezos wrote in his letter to shareholders. Per-second Billing Advantages With...

This thread  was started more than a year ago, asking for when Amazon Web Services will add support for HTTP/2  into their ELB. In addition to that, people are also asking, how to configure ELB to support multiple SSL certificates. AWS support team has been reluctant on giving out any specific details on when both of these features will be available, citing: I've verified that the ELB team is aware of the interest in ELB supporting HTTP/2. Please keep an eye on What's New from Amazon Web Services: http://aws.amazon.com/new/ for any updates. What is HTTP/2? HTTP/2 is a replacement for how HTTP is expressed “on the wire.” It is not a ground-up rewrite of the protocol; HTTP methods, status codes and semantics are the same, and it should be possible to use the same APIs as HTTP/1.x (possibly with some small additions) to represent the protocol. HTTP/2 protocol is supported by major modern browsers including IE11, Edge 13, Firefox 47, Chrome 52, Safari 9.1, Opera 38, ...

The Greatest Framework Since ZF 1 After 17 months of effort, hundreds of releases, tens of thousands of commits by hundreds of contributors, and millions of installs, Zend finally announced the immediate availability of Zend Framework 3 . Increased Performance According to Zend, the performance increase is ~ 4x on PHP 5, and even greater performance on PHP 7 - which is now fully supported - compared to previous version of Zend Framework. Naturally, they claim that they have improved documentation. Ships with a Micro-Framework The Zend Framework 3 also included a number of new features, primarily around PSR-7 (HTTP Message interfaces) support. These include: Diactoros : the original and leading PSR-7 implementation in the PHP ecosystem. Stratigility : a PSR-7 middleware foundation based on the node.js Sencha Connect Expressive : a PSR-7 middleware microframework If you are already familiar with our MVC, or want to get started with it, we have created a new ve...

Z-Ray Technology Preview The most advanced debugging & productivity technology for PHP developers - now on your own PHP stack! In just a few steps, you can start introspecting the insides of your code and apps using Z-Ray. Currently supported on Linux and Mac OS X. Z-Ray Standalone Tech Preview for Linux/OSX available for download https://t.co/x4HolzbJJS #PHP #Zend #ZRay #OSX #Linux #debug #technology — Jaan Paljasma (@jpaljasma) October 22, 2015

Amazon S3 Adds Two New Long-Awaited Features Bucket Limit Increase You can now increase your Amazon S3 bucket limit per AWS account. All AWS accounts have a default bucket limit of 100 buckets, and starting today you can now request additional buckets by visiting AWS Service Limits. Read-after-write Consistency Amazon S3 now supports read-after-write consistency for new objects added to Amazon S3 in US Standard region. Prior to this announcement, all regions except US Standard supported read-after-write consistency for new objects uploaded to Amazon S3. With this enhancement, Amazon S3 now supports read-after-write consistency in all regions for new objects added to Amazon S3. Read-after-write consistency allows you to retrieve objects immediately after creation in Amazon S3. Now go ahead and bump the # of S3 buckets in AWS Service Limits page.

Not even automakers like Tesla are immune to hacking Two researchers - Kevin Mahaffey, CTO of security startup Lookout, and Marc Rogers, a security researcher at CloudFlare - said they were able to take control of a Tesla Model S by hacking into the car's entertainment system. When the car was cruising at less than five miles per hour or idling, the researchers were able to apply the emergency hand brake, bringing the car to an immediate stop. Physical access to the car was necessary Researchers emphasized that physical access to the car was needed to carry out the hack. For their research, he and Rogers plugged a laptop into a Model S ethernet port and exploited the vulnerabilities until they tapped into the entertainment software. Back in the old days one would simply cut few wires or brake cables. Patch applied Over-the-Air It’s impossible to prevent an attack from hitting a car’s computer system, Mahaffey said. “The question is how do you respond quickly with ...

AWS announced Aurora  MySQL compatible database engine last November. Aurora is a fully-managed, MySQL-compatible, relational database engine that combines the speed and availability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. What is AWS Aurora? Amazon Aurora is a relational database engine that combines the speed and reliability of high-end commercial databases with the simplicity and cost-effectiveness of open source databases. It delivers up to five times the throughput of standard MySQL running on the same hardware. Amazon Aurora increases MySQL performance and availability by tightly integrating the database engine with an SSD-backed virtualized storage layer purpose-built for database workloads. Amazon Aurora's storage is fault-tolerant and self-healing. If the entire instance fails, Amazon Aurora will automatically failover to one of up to 15 read replicas. MySQL 5.6 Compatibility According to the AWS...

AWS OpsWorks. Image courtesy of Amazon Web Services Does AWS OpsWorks drive you nuts with its auto-update feature eating up your resources and messing up your deployments? There is now a solution to mitigate that, with manageable agent updates. This recently-added feature allows you to select if you'd like to opt in for agent auto-updates or would you like to stick to a specific (and tested by you) version of AWS OpsWorks. Go to  Add Stack  page, in the  OpsWorks Agent Version  field, choose  Manual update  and pick a version. Try this out today by editing one of your stacks to specify an agent version (be sure to do this in your test environment first). This updates the agents and cookbooks on all online instances in that stack immediately. Click the  Changelog  link to learn about the changes that come with the new agent. You can also update the agent on a single instance instead of the entire stack by selecting a version on the...

As announced today, Google PageSpeed Service PSS (which has been in beta since July 2011) will be shut down forever on August 3, 2015. For every site currently using PageSpeed Service, you must change your DNS before 3rd August 2015 or your site(s) will become completely unavailable on that date. If you wish to continue enjoying many of the performance benefits of PageSpeed Service, the same Google PageSpeed technology is available in a number of alternative packagings which you may wish to consider using, including Apache mod_pagespeed, and nginx ngx_pagespeed. Other cloud-based solutions are available, too. Read more on Google PSS .

Now that's the iSlap to AT&T Apple (AAPL) To Join The Dow Jones Industrial Average March 18, Replacing AT&T (T). And that naturally caused the AT&T stock decline. Here are all 3 charted today #iBlueChip #iDow #iSlap According to Reuters, the decision to move AT&T aside shows how much communications and technology have evolved over the last several decades . You got that right indeed. Historic moment for Apple According to Dow Jones, "a stock typically is added only if the company has an excellent reputation, demonstrates sustained growth, and is of interest to a large number of investors," and so on some level, Dow Jones is reaffirming Apple's corporate reputation with this addition.

You should be FREAK ing out because of this encryption bug found in Windows and Internet Explorer. And if you are still the one using Windows XP, then most probably your PC is affected too, but don't wait Windows to send you any security updates on the way because  Windows XP support ended on April 8, 2014 . Windows 10 Tech Preview, Courtesy of Microsoft In a security advisory released Thursday, Microsoft has confirmed that Windows was and still is, in fact, vulnerable to FREAK (Factoring attack on RSA-EXPORT Keys). Earlier this week there were rumors that IE and Windows users were not affected by this bug. What is FREAK? It allows an attacker to intercept HTTPS connections between vulnerable clients and servers and force them to use weakened encryption, which the attacker can break to steal or manipulate sensitive data. FreakAttack.com is dedicated to tracking the impact of the attack and helping users test whether they’re vulnerable. Popular sites that are vulnerabl...

If you are an avid Shopify user, and have been undecided whether to get yourself a Shopify POS app, now its the perfect time to make up your mind, because today Shopify announces that selling in person just got a whole lot easier - their point of sale (POS) app, Shopify POS , is now available on the iPhone, and it's free for all Shopify merchants. With the new Shopify POS, you can now accept cash, credit, debit, and gift cards on your iPhone and iPad . Brick and mortar businesses can use our new Retail Package for more advanced features. Shopify POS seamlessly integrates with your online store so your products, orders and customers are always in sync. Bridging this gap between online and offline selling is an important step forward in our mission to make commerce better. Shopify POS is perfect for merchants that sell at farmers markets, pop-up stores, or even coffee shops on the weekend. Get your free Shopify POS (Point of Sale) app here . You will need Mobile Cred...

Priceline PCLN and Expedia EXPE  continue boycotting TripAdvisor's Mobile Booking Engine, while working with smaller MetaSearch players.  TripAdvisor rolled out it's mobile booking engine capabilities some time ago, claiming that their Mobile Booking Experience is far superior from other booking engines out there. Their Instant Booking feature (this is how they call it) is powered by Tingo and Getaroom. While the user experience may be questionable for many smaller and/or older online booking engines, this is not the case in 2014/2015 anymore - most bigger brands understand the increasing value of mobile visitor and have invested into their booking engines, some of them taking Mobile-First design approach. TripAdvisor's claims (who by the way has no real life experience in hotel eCommerce) do not apply bigger OTAs (and even bigger brands like Marriott). The question is not about the (mobile) user experience - it's about who owns the data. Every visitor to the...

Simplifying the EC2 Reserved Instance Model There is now a single type of Reserved Instance and it has three payment options. All of the options continue to provide capacity assurance and discounts that are typically around 63% for a three year term when compared to On-Demand prices. There are three payment options that so that you can decide how you would like to pay for your Reserved Instance throughout the term (in descending order of effective discount), and you can find these new options under the Offering  settings when purchasing Reserved Instances: All Upfront -  You pay for the entire Reserved Instance term (one or three years) with one upfront payment and get the best effective hourly price when compared to On-Demand. Partial Upfront -  You pay for a portion of the Reserved Instance upfront, and then pay for the remainder over the course of the one or three year term. This option balances the RI payments between upfront and hourly No Upfront -...

New, "Explosive" C4 instance type from AWS It has been a while since Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced new cloud hardware. For those unfamiliar with the cloud: yes, even cloud computing need actual hardware to run. The update will brings new, explosive c4 compute-optimized instance type on board, and while I still cannot see this type in my AWS console, I'm sure the promised architecture behind it will be good one. Apparently AWS has ordered the specific Haswell CPU from Intel, designed just for EC2: The new C4 instances are based on the Intel Xeon E5-2666 v3 (code name Haswell ) processor. This custom processor, designed specifically for EC2 , runs at a base speed of 2.9 GHz, and can achieve clock speeds as high as 3.5 GHz with Turbo boost. These instances are designed to deliver the highest level of processor performance on EC2.  As said, there are no CPU benchmarks available yet, but I was quite surprised on their c3.large instance type performance and it h...

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Shopify , a widely used and beloved eCommerce platform, started experiencing issues today around 2:09pm. They are currently investigating problems with a data store, causing all shops to be unavailable. According to a customer rep, everything should be back to normal in 10 minutes. Update - The service came back in less than hour around 3:07pm. None of the Shopify twitter accounts reported this incident. Visit status.shopify.com for status updates.

The issues with connectivities to certain computers and servers does not affect only everyday users but also major businesses, especially those primarily relying their business on the cloud servers, cloud storage, and SaaS/PaaS solutions. With the introduction of cloud computing, total number of IP addresses has grown every month ever since. From Wiki: 512K Day  is the unofficial title of an event that occurred on August 12, 2014. Multiple  Internet routers , manufactured by  Cisco  and other vendors, encountered a default software limit of "512K" (actually 2^19 )  IPv4   BGP  routing table entries, causing assorted outages at various  data centers . Various IT professionals reported the issue on  Internet forums , sometimes as just " 512K ", and under a  Twitter  hashtag of  #512k . Quote from Reddit: BGP is the backbone of the internet and the internets just got fat enough for the backbone to start cracking. Here's ...

Amazon ElastiCache can be configured in Multi-AZ setup (or as they call it "Flexible Node Placement"). Your Memcached Cache Clusters can now span multiple Availability Zones within a Region, improving reliability and availability of the Cluster. And, if you are still using old cache.m1 instances, see this article about new M3 and R3 instances  and upgrade for better and more reliable hardware. You can now choose the Availability Zone for new nodes when you create a new Cache Cluster or add more nodes to an existing Cluster. You can specify the new desired number of nodes in each Availability Zone or you can simply choose the Spread Nodes Across Zones option. The feature is available exclusively to memcached cluster only.