Technically I have another week in March, but I don't think next week will be better than today, so I'll go ahead and post this month's progress:
185 x 3
195 x 1 (2 with a spot)
My bully spotter made me try 205, but I needed a little help from him with that, maybe next month. I definitely should be able to hit my goal of 200 next month, so I might up the ante to 225 by the end of the year. The best part of all of this is that it's been the same two people in there spotting me every Friday since I started in January and they were saying today they can really tell a difference. Hopefully the progress will continue...oh, and I weighed in at 165 today.
Friday, March 24, 2006
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Google is Yahoo 2.0
Jeremy posted this awhile back, but with the recent launch of Google finance, I totally see what he is talking about. I really enjoyed Jeremy's latest comments on how Yahoo! had many of these same ideas years ago, but due to many issues they were never able to act on them.
I think Yahoo! and Microsoft are very much in the same boat on this one. All of the competition from open-source in regards to the browser, the desktop, the office application suite, the server market, and the software as a service model is very similar to the Google vs. Yahoo! fight.
I certainly hope that our commitment to keeping our product teams small and focused will prevent our software from becoming stale. I want our teams to be able to release high quality software and then immediately be able to turn around and say "How can we make this even better?"
I think Yahoo! and Microsoft are very much in the same boat on this one. All of the competition from open-source in regards to the browser, the desktop, the office application suite, the server market, and the software as a service model is very similar to the Google vs. Yahoo! fight.
I certainly hope that our commitment to keeping our product teams small and focused will prevent our software from becoming stale. I want our teams to be able to release high quality software and then immediately be able to turn around and say "How can we make this even better?"
Friday, March 17, 2006
Congratulations Bill & Beth
Last weekend Bill & Beth were married in Alexandria, VA. I have known both of them it seems like forever and they are really great friends. They certainly know how to throw a great party too and their wedding was no exception. I think everyone had a great time and I was glad so many of our friends were able to attend.
So who's the next one in our company to tie the knot? Manny? Pat? Here are my odds:
Manny 3:2
Brian 11:5 (Vegas is only a plane-ride away!!!)
Pat 2:1
Mike 4:1
Steve 5:1
Huey 8:1
Matt 10:1
Ben 10:1
Vinny 12:1
A part timer 20:1
Any takers?
So who's the next one in our company to tie the knot? Manny? Pat? Here are my odds:
Manny 3:2
Brian 11:5 (Vegas is only a plane-ride away!!!)
Pat 2:1
Mike 4:1
Steve 5:1
Huey 8:1
Matt 10:1
Ben 10:1
Vinny 12:1
A part timer 20:1
Any takers?
Thursday, March 02, 2006
My Evaluation of Reverse Proxy Software
A proxy server takes outbound traffic and makes it appear as if it comes from a single IP address. This type of proxy is useful if you have a single access point to the Internet and want multiple computers behind that access point to be able to access the Internet. This is common in an office or corporate environment.
A reverse proxy takes incoming traffic and sends it to multiple backend computers. This is useful if you run a large website and want a single IP address to actually be served by multiple machines. You can also accomplish this with a load balancer, but load balancers typically lack several key features that a reverse proxy can provide.
Let's take a look at 4 reverse proxies that are currently available:
1. Apache's httpd
2. Squid
3. Perlbal
4. Pound
5. HAProxy
All of these are very good, but depending on your requirements some may not meet your needs. I'm interested in a reverse proxy that can handle the following requirements:
1. Easy to configure
2. Small memory footprint
3. Provides load balancing
4. Supports SSL to client, but non-ssl to the backend
5. Provides High Availability
6. Can proxy traffic based on URL pattern matching
7. Supports virtual hosts
Perlbal is really a terrific piece of software, but it has a lot of features that I don't need, plus it does not have one key feature that I do need, SSL. Although there is an option to configure Perlbal with SSL, don't do it. It's too easy to break because of this problem reported on their listserve. It appears this is not a problem with the Perlbal code, but a problem with the underlying libraries that Perlbal uses. I could stick stunnel in front of Perlbal and I think that would work great, but you have to setup one instance of stunnel per SSL site and that wouldn't work for me. Perlbal uses epoll, which would provide a big performance boost. Perbal doesn't support sticking users to backends (for session support), but that is not a requirement for me.
Squid has been around for a long time, but I think it's too bulky. First, the configuration is too hard. Second, it's primary goal is to serve as a proxy, but I do not need this, just the reverse proxy. Squid also does a lot of caching, I don't need this either, I would prefer to have something that never touches disk. Also, to my knowledge, Squid does not support high availability (checks to make sure a backend is not down).
Apache's latest release (2.2) of it's httpd server does have better support for load balancing and high availability than previous versions, but it's still too bulky for me. One thing that kills me about Apache is how hard it is to configure mod_rewrite. I actually was able to setup Apache 2.2 as a reverse proxy and it was working perfectly, but I realized that this was going to be too hard to maintain on a large scale system. It's great that Apache is so configurable and can handle just about any task, but that can also be looked at as a big negative too.
Bill showed me HAProxy and it looks great, very configurable. But it requires Apache for SSL support, and I don't think you can proxy traffic based on URL.
The final piece of software that I looked at as a possible reverse proxy that would meet all of my requirements was Pound. I had a little trouble compiling Pound at first on RHES3, but I finally figured out the right compiler flags. On RHES4 it compiled with no problems. Besides that Pound seems to work great. It's easily configurable, is designed to accomplish only one task, and is small in size.
So there you have it, my evaluation of reverse proxy software. If I missed anything or I am just dead wrong, feel free to leave a comment. I'll update this post if anything is inaccurate.
A reverse proxy takes incoming traffic and sends it to multiple backend computers. This is useful if you run a large website and want a single IP address to actually be served by multiple machines. You can also accomplish this with a load balancer, but load balancers typically lack several key features that a reverse proxy can provide.
Let's take a look at 4 reverse proxies that are currently available:
1. Apache's httpd
2. Squid
3. Perlbal
4. Pound
5. HAProxy
All of these are very good, but depending on your requirements some may not meet your needs. I'm interested in a reverse proxy that can handle the following requirements:
1. Easy to configure
2. Small memory footprint
3. Provides load balancing
4. Supports SSL to client, but non-ssl to the backend
5. Provides High Availability
6. Can proxy traffic based on URL pattern matching
7. Supports virtual hosts
Perlbal is really a terrific piece of software, but it has a lot of features that I don't need, plus it does not have one key feature that I do need, SSL. Although there is an option to configure Perlbal with SSL, don't do it. It's too easy to break because of this problem reported on their listserve. It appears this is not a problem with the Perlbal code, but a problem with the underlying libraries that Perlbal uses. I could stick stunnel in front of Perlbal and I think that would work great, but you have to setup one instance of stunnel per SSL site and that wouldn't work for me. Perlbal uses epoll, which would provide a big performance boost. Perbal doesn't support sticking users to backends (for session support), but that is not a requirement for me.
Squid has been around for a long time, but I think it's too bulky. First, the configuration is too hard. Second, it's primary goal is to serve as a proxy, but I do not need this, just the reverse proxy. Squid also does a lot of caching, I don't need this either, I would prefer to have something that never touches disk. Also, to my knowledge, Squid does not support high availability (checks to make sure a backend is not down).
Apache's latest release (2.2) of it's httpd server does have better support for load balancing and high availability than previous versions, but it's still too bulky for me. One thing that kills me about Apache is how hard it is to configure mod_rewrite. I actually was able to setup Apache 2.2 as a reverse proxy and it was working perfectly, but I realized that this was going to be too hard to maintain on a large scale system. It's great that Apache is so configurable and can handle just about any task, but that can also be looked at as a big negative too.
Bill showed me HAProxy and it looks great, very configurable. But it requires Apache for SSL support, and I don't think you can proxy traffic based on URL.
The final piece of software that I looked at as a possible reverse proxy that would meet all of my requirements was Pound. I had a little trouble compiling Pound at first on RHES3, but I finally figured out the right compiler flags. On RHES4 it compiled with no problems. Besides that Pound seems to work great. It's easily configurable, is designed to accomplish only one task, and is small in size.
So there you have it, my evaluation of reverse proxy software. If I missed anything or I am just dead wrong, feel free to leave a comment. I'll update this post if anything is inaccurate.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
