Cloud Ready?

For general questions and discussions specific to the AbleCommerce GOLD ASP.Net shopping cart software.
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sweeperq
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Cloud Ready?

Post by sweeperq » Thu Sep 06, 2012 4:27 pm

Is AbleCommerce Gold cloud ready? For instance, will it work on Windows Azure?

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Logan Rhodehamel
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by Logan Rhodehamel » Thu Sep 06, 2012 5:03 pm

It's a good question. We did make some changes in Gold that related to cloud hosting compatibility. The application has been tested on Godaddy's cloud hosting, but not on Windows Azure. I think it would be worthwhile for us to investigate Azure and whether we have any troubles on that platform.
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Logan
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sweeperq
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by sweeperq » Fri Sep 07, 2012 8:49 am

Good to hear that you are thinking about these things. Is there still a "Demo" mode in AbleCommerce GOLD like there was in AC7 that replaces all the user information with "DEMO"? If so, I could throw it up on Azure on my own and do some testing.

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dgoranov
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by dgoranov » Fri Sep 07, 2012 11:14 am

Hello,

We installed AbleCommerce 7.0.7 site with Demo license on Azure few weeks ago. Site is running with Azure MSSQL Database and Azure Virtual Server running Windows Server 2008R2.

http://ablecommerce.demo.drundo.com/

I have been experimenting with different Virtual Server Sizes (1 Core, 2 Cores etc). The configuration is performing slower than a private dedicated server with RAID 10 configuration
and I could not get the response time below 2000ms even with Medium VM (2 x 1.6GHz CPU, 3.5GB RAM).

On our servers the same configuration has response time below 900ms.

There was also some downtime reported by PingDom: http://stats.drundo.com/a914m0insgcm/628276

I'm planning to setup AbleCommerce Gold demo as Azure Web Site (not on a Virtual Server) next week and see if the response time would be better. Azure is not PCI compliant yet,
but Microsoft is working on getting Azure PCI compliant.
Dimi Goranov
Drundo Software Inc.
AbleCommerce Hosting and Management
Email: dgoranov@drundo.com
Ph: 888.464.2140

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Shopping Cart Admin
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by Shopping Cart Admin » Fri Sep 07, 2012 9:41 pm

Hi Dimi,

While cloud is obviously a great 'buzzword', you are creating multiple instances of the OS on a single server and that is going to have more overhead. The .net application pool already is separated so that one application doesn't take down the other.

I'll just say it outright I don't like some versions of 'the cloud' much as it's going back in time where all powerful computers talked with dumb terminals. Steve and Mike were the first to break this mold and it empowered my generation. Please just give me a good processor, some memory and a storage device of MY OWN thank you very much.

Why do you want my data?, who else are you going to show it to? and btw it's creepy that your advertising is matching the subject matter of my emails. Please don't forget to thank Yahoo for sharing the information in their 'cloud' and getting some poor SOB locked up for 10 years in China.

There are at least two versions of the word 'cloud': Storing data on some all powerful server and (Azure) isolating multiple copies of a complete OS on a single server or across multiple servers. I'm not yet a fan either way, though with Azure there are potential benefits..perhaps.
Thanks for your support

Shopping Cart Guru
AbleCommerce.com
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AbleMods
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by AbleMods » Mon Sep 10, 2012 5:17 pm

I've been running both Able sites and 3 other .Net internal sites on Amazon EC2 for 45 days now. Solid. Stellar. I barely push 10% utilization on the medium high-memory instance. Just passed my annual PCI compliance scan.

Beats the heck out of the 3am text message that your ECC RAM is throwing errors...
Joe Payne
AbleCommerce Custom Programming and Modules http://www.AbleMods.com/
AbleCommerce Hosting http://www.AbleModsHosting.com/
Precise Fishing and Hunting Time Tables http://www.Solunar.com

harryhair5
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by harryhair5 » Wed Oct 17, 2012 4:15 pm

Joe - did you launch this on E2C with the image including SQL server or did you use RDS?

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AbleMods
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by AbleMods » Wed Oct 17, 2012 4:35 pm

harryhair5 wrote:Joe - did you launch this on E2C with the image including SQL server or did you use RDS?
Both actually. Started with RDS until I found out (the hard way) that it wasn't compatible with Amazon VPC.

So, I lit up an EC2 with SQL Web inside my VPC and moved on. A month later, they added VPC support for RDS :)
Joe Payne
AbleCommerce Custom Programming and Modules http://www.AbleMods.com/
AbleCommerce Hosting http://www.AbleModsHosting.com/
Precise Fishing and Hunting Time Tables http://www.Solunar.com

harryhair5
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by harryhair5 » Thu Oct 18, 2012 7:44 am

Isn't that always the way it goes... :roll:

thanks for the input.

sweeperq
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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by sweeperq » Wed Nov 14, 2012 3:21 pm

AbleMods wrote:Both actually. Started with RDS until I found out (the hard way) that it wasn't compatible with Amazon VPC.

So, I lit up an EC2 with SQL Web inside my VPC and moved on. A month later, they added VPC support for RDS :)
Joe, what's the monthly damage to the wallet on this setup?

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Re: Cloud Ready?

Post by AbleMods » Wed Nov 14, 2012 4:07 pm

All depends on the size instance you want. Plan on about $ 100/month for the smallest Server + SQL deployment available.

You can find the choices and specs here: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/instance-types/

You can find the prices here: http://aws.amazon.com/windows/

Convenient how they are on separate pages. Not.

The instance price is only the beginning. Remember to factor in disk space, a monitoring service and some sort of snapshot automation. Bandwidth is fairly cheap imho. Google 'Amazon EC2 calculator' and you can estimate your monthly setup pretty easily.

Since my instances are for hosting clients, I had to drop some real coin into solid provisioning, billing, monitoring and backup software. But the automation is sweet. I can light up a new account in 30 seconds.

Overall I'm pleased with it. I'll probably bump up the SQL instance to the next level soon. Every so often one of my own update routines will peg the SQL CPU to 100% for a while and I don't like that.

Worst plumbing in town is usually in the plumbers house.....:D
Joe Payne
AbleCommerce Custom Programming and Modules http://www.AbleMods.com/
AbleCommerce Hosting http://www.AbleModsHosting.com/
Precise Fishing and Hunting Time Tables http://www.Solunar.com

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