Amazon AWS RDS costs:

Some common things you might want to be able to do:

Change the size of a the storage after configuring the instance

Yes: http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonRDS/latest/UserGuide/USER_ModifyInstance.MySQL.html

If I’m not wrong to assume that a book that’s primarily on Apache’s web servlet Tomcat project should have “Tomcat” in the title, this list of books and their publication years suggests that nobody’s writing new books or updating their old ones.  By the way, I’m using Tomcat 8, for where there seem to be no books.  Even Amazon.com has no English-language books with “Tomcat 8” as part of its title.

Beginning JSP, JSF and Tomcat: Java Web Development
2012

Apache Tomcat 7 Essentials
2012

Apache Tomcat 7
2011

Tomcat 6 Developer’s Guide
2009

Tomcat: The Definitive Guide, 2nd Edition
2007

Professional Apache Tomcat 6
2007

How Tomcat Works: A Guide to Developing Your Own Java Servlet Container
2004

There are two ways to boot flavors of Linux on Mac hardware:

1. Boot from an external device, such as a USB stick
2. Dual-boot

Per answers like those provided at How-To Geek,  the fundamental problem of booting non-Mac operating systems on Macs is the unique Apple EFI code.

My situation is complicated by having a 32-bit EFI on the original Mac Pro, which requires a hack even to boot a modern Mac OS X version.

Unfortunately, I’ve had little luck even on my recent Macbook Pro trying to boot from a USB drive.  While Linux succeeds in the initial boot phase, it gets lost trying to start XWindows.

Supposedly,  rEFInd is the relevant tool.

I really like Stackshare’s listing of technology stacks used by various companies from big to small, many of which we’ve heard of.

It’s not so much useful to take a large company’s usage of a technology as an endorsement.  Amazon, for example, wrote their original web technology in PHP, and still has significant chunks left.  According to an insider, PHP is “banned” for new functionality on the grounds that PHP can’t be adequately secured.

It is useful to see where new technologies have been adopted, and get some context on how other companies are evolving their technology.  After all, there is something of a network effect for any technology or product: more users means more developers and support which means more users, etc.

I must say I’ve been happy with Amazon Web Services.  I utilize accounts both for business and personal, and I’ve been very pleased with the progress of their development of additional services, including SQS, SES, and RDS.  I’ve been aware of some of the holes in the stretched pizza dough, but like many consumers, there’s no reason to evaluate other options until things actually get painful.

To be clear, there have been points where the pain has come close to inspiring me at least to see what else is out there.  Some examples come to mind:

1. If you stop or reboot a running instance— which obviously stops your production instance— you’re required to confirm your intention.  If you create a new machine image from a running instance— which in not-at-all-an-obvious way stops your instance— there’s no warning.
2. If you use the Amazon Web Services console to manage your various tools, you’re shown only the obscure initials for the services— EC2, SES, S3.  If you try to manage the administrative logs, you’re shown only the fully spelled out service names.
3. Meeting all the recommended security points on their checklist requires that you turn off the default login.  But if you already have a retail account connected with your AWS account— which is encouraged and can’t be separated— then you must use the default login.

The pain arrived today.  According to AWS billing records, my otherwise innocent micro instance had been spending several days last month spewing obscene amounts of data for an unknown reason to an unknown destination, racking up a huge bill.  While chances are this is something I might have been able to do something about, there’s little evidence immediately available to even corroborate that this data actually transferred.  I haven’t submitted a ticket yet to Amazon to see if there’s anything they can do to, at a minimum, explain what happened.

In any case, this has inspired me to evaluate deploying my software on other platforms.  It’s certainly advantageous to at least be very clear on the extent to which you’re committed to a vendor.

I’ve begun separating the actual requirements for the services I use from the niceties that AWS has been providing.  To wit:

• SSH keys to access from any terminal and SFTP service

Niceties from AWS I’ll probably miss:

• EC2 (instance) roles
• AWS command line tools to talk to S3

Niceties from Google I might learn to appreciate:

• Save money on instances that stay up without having to pay for reserved instances
• Customizable instance sizes
• Automatic detailed monitoring stats

Here are some existing comparison articles that have been useful:

http://cloudacademy.com/blog/ec2-vs-google-compute-engine/

Mysql 5.7.9 has some additional security features that are at least useful for slamming your head against, if not actually improving your security.

1. There’s a default password set for ‘root’ when first running the server.  The password is not generated as a result of the installation as the documentation claims, but only when the server is actually started.  Don’t go hunting for it until you’ve started the server.
2. There’s a new default password security policy.  The current setting can be viewed with this query:

3. mysql> SHOW VARIABLES LIKE 'validate_password%';
   +--------------------------------------+--------+
   | Variable_name                        | Value  |
   +--------------------------------------+--------+
   | validate_password_dictionary_file    |        |
   | validate_password_length             | 8      |
   | validate_password_mixed_case_count   | 1      |
   | validate_password_number_count       | 1      |
   | validate_password_policy             | MEDIUM |
   | validate_password_special_char_count | 1      |
   +--------------------------------------+--------+