a9s Public PaaS

anynines – Scalable Swift File Storage Service

Posted by Julian Fischer
on

Given that most web applications need to store files generated or uploaded by users they require a place to store these files. Back in the old days such files have been put into the filesystem.

However, for redundant systems with multiple application server instances this is not an option. Because the instances can be spread over the whole network, they don’t share a common filesystem.

Services like NFS allow filesystem sharing but neither do they scale well nor are they very stable as they represent single point of failures (NFS). If an error occurs, there is no backup system to handle that and the whole storage system is not accesible for your applications.

While there are cumbersome ways to increase the availability of those servers, developers should prefer storage services that are easily scalable and highly available by design. Openstack Swift fulfills these requirements and it is a software system based on Open Source developments.

“A distributed object storage system designed to scale from a single machine to thousands of servers. Swift is optimized for multi-tenancy and high concurrency. Swift is ideal for backups, web and mobile content, and any other unstructured data that can grow without bound.

Swift provides a simple, REST-based API fully documented at https://doc.openstack.org/.

Swift was originally developed as the basis for Rackspace’s Cloud Files and was open-sourced in 2010 as part of the OpenStack project.”

Openstack Swift provides mechanisms to guarantee the availability of your files at any time. Even if a storage instance encounters an error, the system is able to handle it and direct your file requests to a redundant copy of the required files. If your storage demands increase over time, it is easy to provide further space for your files. In addition Swift provides a REST api for accessing your files from the Internet and it enables you to put your files in public or private buckets. This offers many usage scenarios for storing and accessing your files from within or outside your web app.

The only obstacle for using Swift is the installation and operation of your own Openstack Swift service. Setting up an OpenStack Swift cluster is not a trivial task because it consists of a number of services that need to be maintained by an experienced administrator.

Good news everyone!

We have integrated an OpenStack Swift service with anyines for you.

You, as a developer, can now use Swift out of the box. No setup required. No worries about complicated server installations.

Just create a Swift service using the cf command and you are ready to go!

You can find all information you need in our tutorial on how to use the anynines Swift service for managing files from within your web apps.

a9s Public PaaS

Brace yourselves. Update is coming.

Posted by Mirek Wozniak
on

No beating around the bush – the future is now. We’ve prepared a recipe for the upgrade process to make things even easier!

If you’ve already finished upgrading your system, use this instruction for a new application deployment. Afterwards, why not tell us how the upgrade went?

We hope you’re going to enjoy the new system – if something doesn’t work as planned, let us know and stay put. Our flying engineers squad will be with you shortly!

Just make sure that you migrate before June 18, 2013. We’re saying goodbye to the old system after that.

a9s Public PaaS

Harder, better, faster – anynines!

Posted by Julian Fischer
on

First of all: folks – thanks for being with us! We wouldn’t ever dream of building anynines without you.

We’ve got an announcement. A big one: anynines is getting a huge upgrade.

Soon, we will update our Cloud Foundry to the cutting-edge 2.0 version. anynines will be one of the first to provide the new features of CF 2.0. And yes – we are excited.

Let’s get down to the gist of this post – the upcoming changes and new features:

Buildpack support – anynines will detect a buildpack that’s best for you app, run it and tell you when your app’s ready to work. No framework restraints, no language worries, no nothing.

Domain Management – configure your domains & manage them easily via anynines. A single command is all you need to link domains with apps.

Advanced Rights Concept – make your organisation simple & efficient by dividing it into individual spaces, each which its own anynines environment.

Fair Pricing – Pay for what you use. If you decide to use anynines after the beta, we’ll sit down and count your actual use of the services. We play clean & fair.

In order for all of this to happen you must migrate your running apps to the new system.

This needs a human operator,  so we’ll send you an e-mail with instructions.

That’s all folks. Bear with us and tell us what you think. We’d love to hear from you.