Morfik Deployment Tips and Tricks – Introduction

As we all know maintaining a website and its related server infrastructure is a daunting task! Most of us think of it as some kind of pain that is unavoidable – a pain that has to be endured for things to work properly. While this is largely true, I feel there are a number of things that we can do to reduce or even eliminate this pain.

In my blogs I will try to help you manage this pain by simply talking about our experiences in this field. I will share with you what we have learnt running and supporting Morfik and its related partners’ websites and their server infrastructure.

Morfik uses its own software exclusively for its website and associated services. As well as this being one of the best things we could have ever done for the product, it ensures that there is never a dull moment in the IT department here at Morfik!

Here are the areas that I will be covering in my future blogs:

Website Monitoring: Monitoring your website for availability is crucial – its importance can never be over-emphasised. It is not a matter of if, but when, a website or service will go down. The pain of disruption can be minimized by how fast it can be recovered and we will explore how monitoring can help this process.

Virtual Hosting and Cloud Computing: Sharing of resources between independent Operating systems is more or less what cloud computing is about. Companies around the world are saving millions of dollars using this new technology. What are the advantages of cloud computing and why should you consider them as an option? I will also share with you some easy ways for you to get your Morfik applications running on the cloud.

Things to know about DNS services: Domain Name Service (DNS) is a facility that resolves your domain name to the IP address of your web server. What are the important things to know about DNS services? What do you need to know about reliability, performance and geographical routing of web traffic using DNS servers? I will also cover the basic load balancing support that is available through some of the DNS service providers.

Choosing the right hosting service provider: In each region of the world there are numerous web hosting service providers. How do you go about choosing one and what are Morfik-specific requirements?

Windows vs Linux: What are advantages and disadvantages of each platform and which one is the right choice for you? Should you be considering 64bit OS?

Choosing between IIS and Apache: Web servers are the main engines of web applications. What do we need to consider when choosing one? Performance, scalability and reliability are the key issues but what about ease of use? I will also be covering IIS7 special features that are generally not well known.

Availability and Scalability: Can your application or system scale up? Do you need redundancy in case of disaster? To what level can you take redundancy? What can be done to avoid the impact of a Hosting Service provider going down?

Special tips on setting up Morfik applications on various platforms:

• How to set a Morfik application on IIS7 – IIS 7.x provides state of the art in web hosting. It has built-in facilities and extensions that allow you to run almost anything and which prevent it from failing. It runs in Kernel-mode for increased speed and reliability. Running multiple applications on IIS7 has become much easier. How can you take advantage of IIS7’s new features?

• Running Morfik applications as Apache 2 modules on Linux – How to set up Morfik applications as native Apache modules on an Apache 2.x web server and how to install SSL certificates for Morfik applications on Apache 2.

• Running Morfik applications as Apache 2 modules on Windows.

• Running Morfik applications in stand-alone modes on Linux and Windows.

Morfik Auto-Deployment technology and its benefits: Auto-deployment is the technology that will turn your server into a push-button deployment for Morfik applications right out of your IDE. Deploy as many applications as your server can handle painlessly with just a few clicks. Morfik’s websites are all auto-deployed!

SSL and Security: If you need secure communications between a browser and your server, you need to use SSL communication. What is involved in getting SSL set up for your website? Do you need a firewall?

These are the topics I will be covering, not in any particular order. If you are interested in seeing a specific topic covered earlier than others please leave a comment and I will try to cover that topic in one of my earlier blogs.

In my next blog I will explain how you can set things up so that you receive a call on your cell phone as soon as your site goes down!

Adios until then

Shahram Mirkazemi