5 Keys to Successfully Building Enterprise Cloud Apps

Posted by Eric Weidner on February 3rd, 2012 in Open Source Trends, The Cloud

Deploying enterprise cloud apps to public or remote cloud infrastructure provides a lot of useful benefits, but can be problematic for many organizations due to concerns over security and control. Once you are ready for the move from your warm and windowless data center to someone else’s warm and windowless data center, here are 5 keys to being successful.

1) Protect your data (part 1)

Cloud security is the number one issue with using public clouds. Many organizations are building applications that include personal information, confidential information, or intellectual property that needs to be protected. Help all the paranoids sleep better by building in security features from the start, even going to the point of overkill if necessary. Database encryption is a common way to protect data at rest, but also consider treating your cloud instances as single use servers. Remove all the keys and passwords from disk once your application is running and disable all unnecessary connections including ssh. Adopt a devops strategy that allows quick launches and centralized logging and management. If a server does stop responding or gets rebooted for some reason, just throw it away and get a new one. Taking a few extreme security measures will help you get more opportunities to utilize the true power of the cloud.

2) Protect your data (part 2)

Cloud technology does pose some new challenges. At this point, server failure rates can vary and the faster options include storage that does not persist across restarts or failures. Data loss is a real risk unless a high availability or replication strategy is adopted. There are also plenty of cloud based data solutions popping up, including Cloudant, Amazon RDS, and Rackspace MySQL Cloud, that can put the HA burden on someone else’s shoulders. Bottom line, losing data will kill a project fast. Keep it safe.

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Cloud Technology and the Advancement in Software Engineering Processes

Posted by Eric Weidner on January 2nd, 2012 in Open Source Trends, The Cloud

Cloud technology is the next step in the evolution of predictable software engineering processes. With the cloud, servers become instant-on commodities. They are built the same way every time, providing consistency from the ground up. Servers instances are cheap and easy allowing each component of an application to be isolated to minimize conflicts. Instances are disposable, so there is no longer a need to worry about server drift. Just get a new one every time.

We can follow several recent advancements in software engineering processes that have been building on each other to see how this all fits together.

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Burn problems with Brasero, K3B rocks

Posted by Eric Weidner on September 5th, 2008 in Open Source Trends

I burned an Ubuntu Hardy live cd with Brasero (the GNOME default burning utility) the other day and it had problems booting.  Kept getting some error about SQUASHFS over and over again and never go to the login screen. After seeing some hints about a bad burn and some unconfirmed discussion about TAO versus DAO, [...]

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Project spotlight: OpenVPN

Posted by Eric Weidner on August 12th, 2008 in Open Source Trends

Anyone looking to relieve the pain of no non-Windows support from their hardware VPN vendor or that has issues wading through the IPSec options to get vpn working from their Linux or Mac machines should take a look at OpenVPN.  This firewall project is based on the SSL standard that has been battle tested by [...]

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Is the Linux desktop missing the boat?

Posted by Eric Weidner on August 7th, 2008 in Open Source Trends

Last year, there was a bit of discussion about how the launch of Vista was going to open a lot of doors for Linux on the desktop.  I’m not going to go into a discussion about the pros and cons of Windows Vista and why the door is open to alternatives, but I have been [...]

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Hackety Hack: Ruby is for everyone

Posted by Eric Weidner on November 15th, 2007 in Open Source Trends

(OpenLogic Engineer) Brad's 9 yo daughter uses a program called Hackety Hack to learn and write Ruby. She wrote a program to download an mp3 and play it the other day. When she asked Brad what he was working on, he replied "basically the same thing". 

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Microsoft and Novell – Dogs and Cats living together

Posted by Eric Weidner on November 10th, 2006 in Open Source Trends

Cheesy movies are so quotable. The "landmark" news that Microsoft and Novell are going to be collaborating reminds me of a scene from Ghostbusters. Dr. Peter Venkman: This city is headed for a disaster of biblical proportions. Mayor: What do you mean, "biblical"? Dr Ray Stantz: What he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real [...]

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Elevator Dreams

Posted by Eric Weidner on November 1st, 2006 in Uncategorized

Travel tip: If you find yourself checking into a hotel at 1 am (after being up for 23 hours) and the clerk offers you a lesser room because the one you booked is near an elevator, take the other room. Near an elevator doesn't mean there may be people walking outside your room. It really [...]

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The Ugly Side of Open Source

Posted by Eric Weidner on October 31st, 2006 in Open Source Trends

You've probably seen the big news in the Open Source world already. Oracle is hijacking Red Hat's Linux distribution and will ship a version named Unbreakable Linux, undercutting Red Hat's support pricing. Thanks for doing all the work Red Hat, we'll take it from here. To me, it appears that Oracle cares nothing about the [...]

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The Writing is on the Wall

Posted by Eric Weidner on February 15th, 2006 in Open Source Trends

Interesting developments keep happening in the Open Source world. "Oracle's Open-Source Shopping Spree" says that Oracle is negotiating to purchase the JBoss Group (JBoss Application Server), Zend (PHP), and Sleepy Cat (database). The acquisition is already announced on the Sleepy Cat page. This follows news that Oracle purchased InnoDB, the company behind a key piece [...]

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OpenLogic helps enterprises use open source software by providing open source support, scanning, governance, and cloud solutions. For more on OpenLogic, go to www.openlogic.com.