Monitoring of the Cloud Server.

Monitoring allows you to check the availability of different services from different locations and send alerts in the event of failure to perform or a given condition. Monitoring tool designed as flexible and affordable even for users with no experience of administration of Web services.

With the help of monitoring can check the availability of the cloud server, the availability of ports, availability of databases, performance of mail servers, etc. Verification is carried out from points of presence located in London, New York, Yekaterinburg, Kiev, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Palo Alto.
Information about the results of the check is sent by e-mail, instant messaging protocol XMPP, private messages on Twitter, or in the form of SMS-messages to the mobile phone.

PING - to check if a connection to the server, helps to measure the latency and availability of verification points to the server;

• TCP - check the status of TCP-port;
• UDP - check the status of UDP-port;
• SSH - connection test without authorization, as well as checking the banner SSH;
• SMTP, POP3, IMAP - checking of e-mail service on the selected protocol;
• DNS - check the correctness of the conversion of a domain name in the IP-address on the specified resolver;
• HTTP GET - content inspection and the response code, as well as finding a substring in the returned data;
• HTTP HEAD - Lightweight request GET, allowing to check the document on the server response code without having to download the entire body of the document;
• HTTP basic authentication - checking mechanism basic authorization;
• HTTP digest - checking mechanism digest authentication;
• FTP - check FTP-servers;
• PostgreSQL - check the availability of the database server PostgreSQL;
• MySQL - check the availability of the database server MySQL;
• SSL - check validity of SSL-certificates for domain names.

Memory on Demand for Cloud Servers.

For Memory on Demand, a new option that allows you to more precisely control the behavior of the server is turned on. It is called start memory.

When the cloud server finished downloading technology and Memory on Demand enabled, the memory is adjusted depending on the amount of memory. However, this technology is tied to an agent running inside the virtual machine, which sends information about the current memory usage of mod-server (outside of the virtual machine). Therefore, to respond to the lack of memory the system can start only after the mod-agent (it starts with the other services in the cloud server load). In some cases, there is a need to start immediately with the "Head Start" that is, from the beginning to allocate a significant amount of memory.

The default value is set in the value static_min that is the minimum amount. Now, this value can be changed explicitly.

There are three strategies to use:

The server runs with a minimum of memory, and then starts to increase the amount of memory used as the data load or the load increases. So behave cloud servers by default (for which setting is not changed MoD).

The server runs with inflated the value of the memory, and then quickly "blown away" to the desired server. This configuration prevents the sudden lack of memory request large memory database or close an application that allocates large chunks rather than gradually.
The volume of home storage exhibition about the desired value - in this case mod works fine tuning mode, that is, increases / decreases as circumstances change.

If the technology of Memory on Demand is disabled, this value allows you to manually change the current value of the allocated memory (ranging from static_max to static_min) without rebooting, which can be useful in terms of technologies that do not like change memory (Java, for example).

Management for Dedicated Cloud Servers.

Recently we have paid more attention to the coverage of new services such as cloud servers and cloud storage, but it did not stop the work in other directions, in this article we will go about our dedicated servers. In the near future we will provide functionality provides automatic installation of operating systems on dedicated servers, which is now undergoing the final stage of testing. In the meantime, we would like to describe the current features that can also add the convenience of working with a dedicated server.

Download Management Dedicated Server

After selecting a dedicated server from the list will take you to a page containing basic information about the server, as well as elements of the power management and load. Now, in addition to the server tab familiar power management buttons (physical on / off and hard reset the server) and access to the KVM console, a new menu is available "download management server," which allows you to manage the server boots directly from the control panel.

To select the menu are available as standard options for server boot (boot from the first or second hard disk), and special tools for installation, diagnostics and recovery, "Booting Boot menu" and "Booting into Rescue (Recovery Console)." After selecting a menu item, you must save the change and restart the server. Let us consider each item.

Boot Menu

Boot menu allows installers to run the most common server operating systems or additional software for the diagnosis and recovery that are constantly kept up to date. Click "Download Boot Menu", save and reboot the server to work with the Boot menu, use the KVM console server.

In most cases, installing the operating system on a dedicated server to the client before the delivery is done by our engineers, but sometimes customers have a need to install yourself. Consider installing OS using « Boot Menu".

Managed Firewall for Cloud Servers.

Almost a month ago, through a ticket system, we invite all of our customers who use the services of accommodation and renting dedicated servers, take part in a closed test our new service - "Managed Firewall for Cloud Servers". Now we are ready to offer this service for public use.

What is it?

Managed Firewall for Cloud Servers is a service providing a secure Internet channel with managed firewall. The main objective of the service is monitoring and filtering passing through network packets according to defined policies and options screen.

Billing

We have tried to simplify its billing and accounting is reduced to just one parameter - the capacity of the protected band. Step, which can increase the capacity of the firewall is 5 Mbit / s.

Activate the Service

To start using the service, you need to have at least one dedicated subnet for servers in data centers and pay protected strip to the extent necessary.

Secure the band is an independent resource and it can be connected to any available you subnet (paid, PI URLs). Translation subnet insecure network by firewall occurs in manual mode after agreeing prime time, when transferring network subnet is about 1 minute.

Changing Bandwidth

After activating the service, you can change firewall throughput protected band "on the fly" through the control panel. If you change (increase or decrease) the capacity of the protected strip missing.

Beginning of Work

By default, the protection of disabled traffic - traffic already passes through the firewall, but it does not apply to any action. After payment services firewall and transfer under the protection subnet, you get access to the control panel, firewall, in which the utilization of available graph secure strip chart with counters on the "bad" traffic, as well as tabs for configuration management and policy options screen validation traffic.

The Validation Process Traffic

Initially checked accessory package to the existing session if the packet does not belong to any existing session, it is checked through the screen, and then runs a chain of policy, if there were no anomalies in the packet is delivered to the destination address. If the packet belongs to an existing session, it immediately goes to check abnormality in the screen without passing chain policies and then delivered to the destination address. Policies can be set in both directions, both inbound and outbound. Screen check all traffic passing through the firewall, regardless of its direction. Unidirectional policy does not mean that you have to adjust the resolution of a response from the destination, since the session is divided into two areas.

iOS App for the Cloud Storage Service.

In the evening, December 17, 2012, we finally got approve our application for the "cloud storage" in the AppStore and now it is available for download. Since this was our first experience in the development and distribution of iOS apps, everything was not as trivial as we would like.

Issues

From the very first problem we faced before the completion of the registration process in «iOS Developers Program». When you are registered as a legal entity, it is necessary to specify the DUNS number, which is assigned to the organization in the database «Dun & Bradstreet» (D & B), which, in turn, Apple takes the information about the company as directed by the DUNS. Unfortunately, in this database we were recorded as «OOO», and this is an incorrect name and looks ugly.

After talking with Apple tech support, it became clear that to continue the registration process must be some way to change the company's name in the database D & B, then another procedure changes can be very painful. About 2-3 weeks we wrote / called in different representation of D & B for making changes to the company name. Once made changes to D & B, we had to wait about two weeks until Apple will make these changes in your base. As a result, only one registration took us 4-5 weeks (this is not including waiting for confirmation of payment after sending a fax at Apple). Waiting activate your account after payment has taken another 5 days.

Attempt # 1

After we tested the application in the emulator, on several different versions of the phone, as well as under various versions of iOS, it's time to download the application for review in the AppStore. The first attempt to download the application, we are faced with the problem of signing the certificate, I had to reset all the certificates and sign it all over again. After downloading the app in AppStore, immediately turned down as a 3.5 "screen shots were not optional, but mandatory. Added screenshots, took to the application. After 4 days, were refused because login present at the screenshot link to an external registration page.

Attempts to # 2 and # 3

On the same day, we removed the link to the registration page and was sent back to the application, but as was a new binary, then we hit the end of the queue. After 6 days, the application went to the. The day was rejected «Metadata Rejected». Due to the lack of experience with the AppStore, we began to review all sources of external links on the topic, which was written in failure, but did not find a single reference and did not understand the reasons for the refusal. In the end, it turned out that the refusal was due to the fact that the application was to describe again the link to our website.

Remove the link from the description and press «Submit New Metadata» application was «Waiting For Review», after half an hour was «In Review», after 4 hours «Processing for App Store» and another 10 minutes «Ready for Sale». Thus, it appears that the error in the Metadata binary does not go through the whole place, and forwarded immediately to the "doosmotr."