Xen users - Dec 2009 - Xen and EC2 power DARPA Network Challenge Team DeciNena

I just wanted to drop a note to this list and mention how awesome Xen (and
Drupal, if
folk are into that) has been in helping me field my team website for the DARPA
Network
Challenge (tomorrow) https://networkchallenge.darpa.mil/default.aspx

  My site, Team DeciNena:
http://decinena.com/

  is currently run on a 32-bit Ubuntu PV DomU (LAMP+Drupal) on a Debian 5
(Lenny) 64-bit Dom0.

  Here''s a writeup about our Drupal side of things:
http://drupal.org/node/649860


  We are anticipating high traffic during the event tomorrow, so we have
replicated the
site over to Amazon EC2/S3/RDS. We have one central RDS (EC2/Xen cloud system
running
MySQL) that runs the database, and we can dynamically add/remove nodes from teh
RDS
cluster via Amazon''s AWS control panel.

  We also have one EC2 machine running and NFS server that stores and shares the
common
dynamic site content (static site content like the Drupal installation lives on
the actual
EC2 node to reduce NFS traffic).

  We also have any number of identical EC2 Ubuntu nodes installed with Apache
and the
Drupal site. These actually process the HTTP requests from the client users, and
talk to
the NFS and RDS servers.

  The original Xen machine switches to being a load-balancing redirector when
the site
makes the cutover to the cloud-based implementation, so I don''t have to
wait for DNS
changes to propagate.


  Xen and Xen-based-EC2 have been instrumental in making this happen.
Virtualization is
awesome.


  Yes, I''m also blatantly self-promoting my team. Come join me and
maybe share in part of
the $40,000 prize, even if you aren''t the one who spots a balloon. Even
if you can''t join,
I request you send a note to your friends/twitter/facebook about it.
That''s the actual
goal of DARPA''s game -- social network exploration.

-- 
Chris ''Xenon'' Hanson, omo sanza lettere                  Xenon
AlphaPixel.com
PixelSense Landsat processing now available! http://www.alphapixel.com/demos/
"There is no Truth. There is only Perception. To Perceive is to
Exist." - Xen

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