Friday, November 14, 2008

Getting into the Software Side of things ....

CentOS

I guess its a legacy thing for me. It may not be the best *nix operating system for some people but i just want the system to work. In the past, both at work and at home i got very accustomed to redhat ... and now since redhat ES and AS are no longer free i had to find an alternative. For me CentOS was the most obvious choice.

I like CentOS because:
  • Im pretty accusomed to how the Administor and manage the operating system, how to install the location of the various configuration and system files, startup scripts and standards etc
  • It already had LVS and various other clustering software installed - along with its tools already installed
  • Worked without any problems on the hardware that i purchased which was a big plus and all round easy to use OS - (for me)

MySQL

I used MySQL because again its something im very much used to. Used it during development at work and also when experimenting on my own and pretty much accustomed with how it works. There are alot of tools and libraries available. I also had very good documentation of the clustering packages that come with MySQL 6.0+ so it was the obvious choice to go.

The MySQL cluster now works over 4 servers and is bound together with a hardware LVS load balancer. Still getting used to operating the cluster commands but all in all its a pretty good tool.

CherryPy + Cheetah

Hmm okie, so why cherrypy .... I tried zope, django, turbo gears and at the end, after looking around and playing with the different technologies i decided to use cherrypy. I think its because things just came together alot easier with cherrypy and i was able to get what i wanted up and running alot quicker. I think its really just me here and possibly my old school way of thinking .... most of the other guys i know who are building sofware have gone down the django route.

Good thing with variety is later once our applications are finished we can share experiences and ideas so for me .. its cherrypy all the way ... :)

Python 2.5

It was easy to get my head around all the different concepts. The language was easy to learn and i could get applications built rapidly. Other then that nothing much else. I am currently using python 2.5 (which i complied specifically for the application). There is also 2.4 installed by default by centOS.

Lighttpd

I went down this path as a result of alot of reading and recommendations. In the past i have used apache (as most people may have) but after alot of reading and various types of experiments i have gone down the lighttpd path. It sets up pretty nicely and is performing well. I have tested its mod_proxy function but will also need to experiment with lighttpd's mod_fastcgi modules as well to see which one is actually better.

SQLObjects

When i was playing around with turbogears SQLObjects was the default ORM. I became accustomed with SQLObjects so at the moment this is what i have used. From a technical point of view im not sure which of the ORM's is best so this may change in future.

Well there you have it ... thats my software stack. I have other software packages installed but they are just tools ... OK more updates on the software build and the integration with the hardware later ...

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

tho im an absolute IT noob now, up until like year 10, was quite into computers as with most maths loving Asian-background high school buddies, I remember trying to install Redhat 7.0 on my computer in year 8, in year 2001? just when 15inch LCDs were coming out in production at 1000bux, and windows XP was the new hot thing. came free with PCuser mag. Never got around to using it though, and I'm still curious as how other operating systems other than the mighty windows operate. I'm planning to get one of those mini note books like the Asus N10 when I get some cash saved, recon trying one of those linux is a good idea? if it consumes less power and still compatible with wifi, which i aint sure.