1. Web Hosting and Management"Past, Present, Future of web services from Wishart's lab" Nelson Young Wishart's Lab Presentation May 7, 2010

2. Outline • Web Hosting Process • DNS forwarding, firewall and routing, virtual hosting • Web Development Process • Design, implement, document, revision control, wiki •  Web Technologies and Frameworks Involved • C, Perl, CGI, Java Servlet, Ruby, AJAX • Java Struts/JSF, Ruby on Rails Framework • Infrastructure/Applications Virtualization • Web Administration and Management  • On-campus dedicated servers • Off-campus hosting: shared/managed web hosting, dedicated servers, cloud computing • Off-Campus Web Hosting  • Compare options, services, viability, maintenance

3. Web Hosting Process • Register domain name (ie. hmdb.ca) from Domain Service Provider (ie. Verio, Justhosting) • Register web server's IP with Domain Service Provider  • Set up server's AND department's firewalls to open web ports (ie. 80,8080) • Set up VirtualHosting  • Apache • Apache port-forwarding Tomcat • Apache port-forwarding Glassfish • Glassfish independent of Apache • Mongrel / Passenger Ruby on Rails

4. Web Development Process Past: • redpoll.pharmacy.ualberta.ca/wishart.biology.ualberta.ca are homes of all legacy programs • Static HTML web pages • Develop and test on production server • Front-end web pages to display results from programs in the back-end: • Wrote standalone C/Perl programs (ie. thrifty, shifty, shiftor, vadar, etc...) • Interconnect programs via piping • Aggregate and wrap final results in a web interface (ie. bacmap, basys, PANAV, CS23D, etc...)

5. Web Development Process Present And Future: • Separate development servers from production servers for testing and developing • Current web apps are more sophisticated, interactive, and well-managed;  • Current web apps tend to follow some framework (ie Rails, MVC paradigm, JSF); data persistence via back-end database;  • Check out latest source codes from SVN repositories; • facilitate code sharing and revision control

6. Web Technologies and Frameworks Past: • Web Technologies: • C, Java Servlets/Applets and Perl • Framework: • Use CGI from Apache to handle dynamic contents from results generated by independent C/Perl programs • Use Java servlets from Tomcat • Use flat-files instead of relational database for data storage • Use cronjobs to monitor and eliminate "run-away" processes • Very little data persistence

7. Web Technologies and Frameworks Present: • Web Technologies: • Java Servlets, JSF, AJAX, Ruby, Perl, Python • Framework: • For ease of deployment and management • JSF/Struts Framework • Ruby on Rails • Use MYSQL relational database for data storage and persistence • JSF/Java Struts

8. Web Technologies and Frameworks Future: • Web Technologies: • Virtualization (ie. VMWare, Xen, Parallel, KVM) • Framework: • Virtualize existing servers • Package, distribute, and deploy web apps via virtual machine images (VMs) • Take snapshots of VMs from time to time before update as a form of infrastructure revisioning

9. Web Technologies and Frameworks Future: • Web Technologies: • Virtualization (ie. VMWare, Xen, Parallel, KVM) • Frameworks: • Virtualize existing servers • Upload virtualized servers to remote datacenters (ie. Amazon, Eucalyptus, VMWare VCloud, etc...) • Package, distribute, and deploy web apps via VMs • Take snapshots of VMs from time to time before update as a form of infrastructure revisioning

10. Web Administration and Management Past: • Host all the web apps at the root location on the same server • Dependent libraries were installed and shared on a system level • intricate level of dependencies • minimal application isolation • Cronjob to monitor and bypass run-time errors • Documentation reside in individual programs • No revision control or centralization of source codes (ie. make copies of source codes in user dirs)  • Loose server security policy • Password-authentication; no enforcement • Simple passwords => security breach => HACKING!!!

11. Web Administration and Management Present: • Decentralize and separate web apps to different servers on-campus (ie. Rail apps, JSF apps, Java Servlets apps, Legacy apps); • Web apps are isolated to their own directories • SVN repositories for application documentation and source code revision control • GoogleExcel to keep track of and share information about all the servers and their hosting web apps • Implement and enforce stricter server policy • Private/Public key pair authentication

12. Web Administration and Management Future: • SVN repositories for application documentation and source code revision control • WishartWiki to document all web and standalone programs (ie. README.txt, INSTALL.txt, NOTES.txt, RELEASES.txt) • Migrate to off-campus web hosting • Current production servers on campus will become testing/development servers for users • Implement and enforce stricter server policy

13. Web Administration and Management Future: • Off-campus web hosting • Shared/managed web hosting • Dedicated physical/virtual server • Cloud Computing • Off-campus Pros • Save office spaces = $$$ • More reliable network uptime (ie. 99.5% uptime) • Off-campus Cons • No immediate hardware support • Pay for infrastructure support and hosting services

14. Off-Campus Web Hosting Shared Web Hosting (ie. OCS Solutions):

15. Off-Campus Web Hosting Managed Web Hosting/Dedicated Server (ie. OCS Solutions):

16. Off-Campus Web Hosting Dedicated Physical/Virtual Server (ie. OCS Solutions):

17. Off-Campus Web Hosting Cloud Computing (ie. Amazon): • On demand, Internet-based computing utility services • Pay for what you consume • Self-administration of operating system • Low hourly charge • Support full virtualization and administrative API tools • EBS or S3 services for persistence data storage • Ideal for • Memory and cpu-intensive web apps • Web apps that are not “well-behaved, structured” that require “privileged”, system access

18. Questions?