Using Cloud Computing

I am sure we all are using so call cloud computing solutions in our day to day activities / operations either knowingly or unknowingly. And it is equally true that the improvisation of Operating System or the platform running over our enormous hardware has helped us to improvise utilisation of available resources. Take an example most of my emails and personal document management is taken care by google apps and if I have to deploy my online application and want to purely concentrate on my business rather than worry about Infrastructure, hardware scoping, infrastructure management, high availability, up-scaling, etc. and most important CAPEX, it would make more sense in using offerings made by Amazon and others, as this will help me to concentrate more on my business operations & activities and let the service provider manage the Infrastructure. And yes, SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service) & IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) will be the focus and not just selling boxes or softwares.

Cloud Computing

Everybody is busy talking ga ga about cloud computing ... I sometime wonder why .... cloud computing is just a repackaging & selling of mainframe technology. The same old technology with same old features like batch processing, multi functional, virtualisation, storage etc.

Nginx (engine x) – Installation Guide on CentOS

1] Download source code of Nginx from the official site (http://nginx.net/)

To get stable version as per this tutorial dated is

$ wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.7.61.tar.gz

or

To get development version as per this tutorial dated is

$ wget http://sysoev.ru/nginx/nginx-0.8.7.tar.gz

(Note : For production server use stable version only)


2] We store downloaded file under a directory, for example we will use 'download' directory

$ mkdir ~/download

$ cp nginx-0.6.36.tar.gz ~/download

$ cd download


3] Install required Nginx dependencies

pcre pcre-devel zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel

so using default package manager of CentOS

$ sudo yum install pcre pcre-devel zlib zlib-devel openssl openssl-devel


4] Create required Nginx user and group ids

$ sudo /usr/sbin/groupadd nginx

$ sudo /usr/sbin/useradd –g nginx –s /bin/false nginx


5] Proceed with source installation of Nginx

$ cd ~/download

unzip the source file

$ tar -zxvf nginx-0.7.61.tar.gz

$ cd nginx-0.7.61


6] Configure Nginx source

$ ./configure \

--prefix=/usr/local/nginx \

--sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin \

--conf-path=/usr/local/nginx/nginx.conf \

--http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \

--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \

--pid-path=/var/run/nginx/nginx.pid \

--lock-path=/var/lock/nginx.lock \

--user=nginx \

--group=nginx \

--http-client-body-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/client/ \

--http-proxy-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/proxy/ \

--http-fastcgi-temp-path=/var/tmp/nginx/fcgi/ \

--with-http_ssl_module \

--with-http_realip_module \

--with-http_perl_module \

--with-http_flv_module \

--with-http_gzip_static_module \

--with-http_stub_status_module \

--with-md5-asm \

--with-md5=auto/lib/md5 \

--with-sha1-asm \

--with-sha1=auto/lib/sha1


7] Make and Install

$ make

$ sudo make install


8] Change ownerships before we proceed

$ sudo chown nginx:nginx –R /usr/local/nginx


9] Create following directories with required ownership to proceed

$ sudo mkdir -p /var/tmp/nginx /{client,proxy,fcgi}

$ sudo chown nginx:nginx -R /var/tmp/nginx


10] Start Nginx

$ sudo /usr/local/sbin/nginx

If we get no error while starting Nginx then lets check running process status by executing following command and getting similar output as below

$ ps aux | grep nginx

root 10009 0.0 0.0 5524 592 ? Ss 07:21 0:00 nginx: master process /usr/local/sbin/nginx

nginx 10010 0.0 0.0 5716 928 ? S 07:21 0:00 nginx: worker process


11] And we are ready to use Nginx

Open your browser and type ip address of your server or just type localhost.

http://localhost

http://127.0.0.1


Bingo!!!

12] Shutdown Nginx

$ sudo kill `cat /var/run/nginx/nginx.pid`