Announcing Database-less environments »

Created at: 16.05.2012 03:35, source: Engine Yard Blog, tagged: Add-ons databases Engine Yard Cloud mongodb mysql PostgreSQL Technology

At Engine Yard, we believe that you should have the flexibility to set up your environments and manage your data stores as you see fit. This is something we take seriously as we continue to evolve Engine Yard Cloud and today, we are happy to announce database-less environments as an alpha release. If you need to utilize data offerings outside of our natively supported MySQL or PostgreSQL, then this feature will enable you to do so.

Enabling the feature

With database-less environments, it is no longer necessary to have a MySQL or PostgreSQL instance in every environment. Simply boot up a ‘No Database’ cluster with one of our Add-on database providers or roll your own using utility instances. Now it is easier and more affordable than ever to get started on Engine Yard.

You can enable this feature using the Early Access tools. Once you have the 'No db' feature enabled, you will be able to select the "No Database (Alpha)" option under Database Stack on the new environment form.

You can add as many application instances and utilities as you need, and you can stop paying for database masters that you don’t use.  For example, you can follow the Mongoid RailsCast (Episode 238) and create a simple blog using Mongoid using two application instances and three utility nodes.

Add-ons and DBaaS

You can also use the ‘No Database’ feature in combination with our Add-on Program (login required).  For example, you can have a simple application with just one instance and an external database. See the Database section of our Add-on Program for more information.

We hope you enjoy this feature and let us know what you think.

Notes

Removal of the database.yml file
Environments without databases will not have a database.yml file generated by Engine Yard Cloud. Enabling this feature means that you are either not using ActiveRecord or you have supplied your own database.yml file in your repository.


more »

Introducing the Engine Yard Data Team »

Created at: 02.09.2011 21:08, source: Engine Yard Blog, tagged: News Technology engine yard data team mongodb mysql PostgreSQL

The Engine Yard Data Team’s mission is to formulate and iterate the Engine Yard data storage strategy, to help customers understand and choose their data solutions, to support OSS projects that match our vision, and to strengthen our leadership in the Ruby on Rails community. Our team is composed of Ines Sombra and our amazing DBAs: Erik Jones, Tyler Poland, and John Dalton.

We want to ensure that when you choose Engine Yard as your platform provider you have access to interesting data stores, features, tools, and information to build robust and scalable solutions.

Our Goals

  • Simplify and hide the complexities associated with data repositories.
  • Choose the best-in-class technologies and publish our own best practices.
  • Work closely with our customers and developers to understand their use cases and usage patterns.
  • Routinely assess how closely our data products and support match our customers needs.
  • Ensure Engine Yard’s data repositories are up-to-date with the rapidly evolving storage technology landscape.
  • Establish partnerships with key data providers to offer our customers additional services.
  • Design and support multi-site disaster recovery and business continuity plans for each type of data store by working with our customers to understand their scaling needs.

What we are currently working on

Upgrading our MySQL implementation

The team is currently working at a rapid pace to upgrade MySQL to version 5.1 and 5.5. We’ll also be improving MySQL replication, monitoring, backup, and fail-over tools.

Expanding the DB stack

We are working hard on expanding our stack to offer interesting NoSQL data stores, caches, and full-text search solutions. The products we are working on at the moment are:

PostgreSQL 9 PostgreSQL 9 is now in Alpha (click here for access). We are currently working towards a public Beta for all our customers to try. Postgres extensions will be available as part of the Beta release.

MongoDB We are working towards an Alpha release of MongoDB. We have been collaborating with customers that are interested in this technology to further develop our tools and finalize our supported architecture. We have established critical partnerships with hosted MongoDB providers (MongoHQ and MongoLab), and are working with 10gen to provide additional support options for our customers.

Redefining environments and data stores relationships

We are changing the way environments interact with data stores to provide greater flexibility and configuration options. We aim to support zero to multiple data stores in the same environment to facilitate the creation of polyglot systems in our platform.

Improving our data documentation

We are collaborating with the PANDAs and our Documentation team to restructure and augment our data documentation. Watch for changes in docs.engineyard.com and let us know if we are not covering something that you are interested in.

We want to hear from you!

We are actively evaluating customer requested features and we will keep you informed as our work grows from ideas to projects. Our intention is to create a strong collaborative process with our customer community, so let us know what you need.

We’d love to hear your feedback! Please drop us a note at: docs.engineyard.com/data-feedback.html

Want to work with us?

Are you passionate about data? We are hiring!


more »

PostgreSQL 9 Support in Alpha »

Created at: 12.07.2011 01:16, source: Engine Yard Blog, tagged: cloud Product Technology appcloud Engine Yard Beta Program PostgreSQL

We are happy to announce that we have made PostgreSQL 9 available in Alpha to AppCloud customers who want to give it a try. Customers looking for additional database choices who are interested in the features offered by PostgreSQL 9 (current version is 9.0.4) should enroll in the alpha program. Also, we are currently working towards our Beta release, which will be available to all customers, and we want to include as much of your feedback as possible to make this a great feature! In addition to taking advantage of the stability, robustness, and feature set offered by PostgreSQL 9, customers using Rails 3.1 can take advantage of significant speed gains with PostgreSQL over MySQL. At RailsConf 2011, Aaron Patterson talked about the use of cached prepared statements in Rails 3.1, which provide a significant boost for PostgreSQL. If you would like to try PostgreSQL in Alpha:

  • Review the documentation, noting the current limitations for this Alpha release. These are important to be aware of before you request Alpha access.
  • Request access.
Once you’ve been granted Alpha access, refer back to the documentation for instructions on how to set up PostgreSQL 9 on your environment. Have some fun with it and let us know what you think! You can provide feedback by creating a discussion on the ey-beta-talk mailing list.


more »

Double Shot #646 »

Created at: 11.02.2010 13:50, source: A Fresh Cup, tagged: Double Shot bash cerberus git iPhone os x PostgreSQL ripple

Another semi-random walk through my corner of the internet.


more »

Installing Ruby on Rails, Passenger, PostgreSQL, MySQL, Oh My Zsh on Snow Leopard, Fourth Edition »

Created at: 08.02.2010 21:14, source: Robby on Rails, tagged: Business Ruby on Rails ruby programming PostgreSQL PLANET ARGON rubyonrails github ohmyzsh zsh PostgreSQL mysql rails ruby xcode snowleopard osx guide

Welcome to what seems like my tenth installment (actually, it’s the fourth) of showing you how I setup my development environment on a fresh OSX install. In this case, I’m actually getting a MacBook setup for a new employee with Snow Leopard.

Over the years, I’ve evolved these following steps and they’ve helped our team maintain a consistent and stable envirnment for Ruby on Rails development. I know that there are a few other ways to approaching this and I’m sure you’ll get similar results, but this approach has allowed me to maintain a hassle-free setup for the last five years.

As with all things… your milage may vary.

Phase One

During this initial phase, we’re going to install the primary dependencies and setup our environment.

XCode

The first thing that you’ll need to do is install XCode, which almost everything depends upon as this will install developer-friendly tools for you. Apple has been kind enough to ship this on your Snow Leopard DVD.

Go ahead and install XCode from the Optional Installs folder.

(might require a reboot)

You can also download it online.

MacPorts

Now we’ll install MacPorts, which the web site describes itself as, “an open-source community initiative to design an easy-to-use system for compiling, installing, and upgrading either command-line, X11 or Aqua based open-source software on the Mac OS X operating system.”

As I’ve said in past versions of this guide, this tool is about to become one of the most important tools on your operating system. It’ll be used time and time again to maintain your libraries and many of the Unix tools that you’ll be using. If you’re from the Linux or BSD world, you are likely familiar with similar tools… such as: apt-get, port, and yum.

You’ll want to download the latest stable version from http://www.macports.org/. Once downloaded, you can install it.

Once this is installed, you’ll be able to use the port command from your console.

Wget

Let’s test out your MacPorts install by installing a useful tool called wget, which we’ll use to install oh-my-zsh.

sudo port install wget

Git and Subversion

Every development environment should have some source code management tools available. We’ll install both of these with one command.

sudo port install git-core +svn

This will install git and subversion.

oh-my-zsh

Oh My Zsh is the most amazing thing to happen to shells since… well since I said so. It’s one of my open source projects that I encourage you to give a whirl.

wget http://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/raw/master/tools/install.sh -O - | sh

That’s it. The next time you open up your terminal, you’ll be running zsh with a bunch of stuff available. For more information, visit http://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.

Terminal theme (optional)

I never understood why the icon for Terminal has a black background but when you start it up the default theme is black on white.

versus

Anyhow, I’m a fan of the the dark background. To change this, open up preferences in Terminal. Select Pro, then click on the Default window so that this sticks around.

Let’s now open up a new Terminal window..

You should be looking at something like this:

Much better… let’s continue.

Phase Two

We’re now going to start installing everything we need to get this running.

Ruby 1.8.7.x

First up, Ruby.

Snow Leopard includes Ruby and Rails already installed, but we’re going to back these up for a rainy day. Just issue these commands:


$ sudo su -
Password:
:~ root# mv /usr/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby.orig
:~ root# mv /usr/bin/gem /usr/bin/gem.orig
:~ root# mv /usr/bin/rails /usr/bin/rails.orig
:~ root# logout

Now we’ll go ahead and install a fresh copy of Ruby and RubyGems via MacPorts.

sudo port install ruby rb-rubygems

You should now see something like this for a bit…

Let’s watch a video about bumble bees.

When it finishes installing, you should check that Ruby is available to you and installed in /opt/local/bin.

We’ll also take a second to create a symlink for this as some tools seem to rely on /usr/bin/ruby being there.

sudo ln -s /opt/local/bin/ruby /usr/bin/ruby

Great, let’s move on.

Passenger (mod_rails)

Now that we have Ruby installed, we’re going to take a quick detour to setup Passenger with the Apache server already available on your machine. I’ve been a big fan of using Passenger for your development for over a year now.

sudo gem install passenger

Once the gem is finished installing, you’ll need to install the apache2 module with the following command:

It’ll ask you to continue by pressing Enter. At this point, it’ll check that you have all the necessary dependencies and then compile everything needed for Apache2.

Now I’ll force you to watch a highlights reel of Fernando Torres… the best striker in the world!

The passenger install will then show you this output, which you’ll want to stop and read for a moment and highlight the following:

Then using vi or emacs, you’ll want to create a new file with the following content:

vi /etc/apache2/other/passenger.conf

Then paste in the following (what you highlighted and copied above.)


LoadModule passenger_module /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.9/ext/apache2/mod_passenger.so
PassengerRoot /opt/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/passenger-2.2.9
PassengerRuby /opt/local/bin/ruby

You’ll also want to include the following below what you just pasted.


  # Set the default environment to development
  RailsEnv development

  # Which directory do you want Apache to be able to look into for projects?
  <Directory "/Users/ryangensel/development">
      Order allow,deny
      Allow from all
  </Directory>

You’ll want to quickly start up your web sharing, which will start Apache2 up via your System Preferences.

Simple enough… moving forward.

Passenger Pref Pane

To make things as simple as possible, I’d encourage you to install the Passenger Preference Pane (view this post for a download).

Development directory

I have a directory named development/ in my home directory, which is where I end up storing all of my projects. This should match whatever you put above in the apache configuration (<Directory "/Users/ryangensel/development">).

mkdir development; cd development;

Installing Ruby on Rails via RubyGems

Now we’ll use RubyGems to install the latest version of Ruby on Rails (and all of it’s dependencies).

sudo gem install rails

While this is installing, you can watch a video from my old band that ended around the time that business started picking up for Planet Argon.

Great, let’s test out the install of Rails…

Test Rails and Passenger

In your development directory, let’s quickly a new Rails app…

rails testapp

This will generate a new Rails application in a testapp/ directory.

Now open up the Passenger Preferences Pane and add this directory as a new application.

Press Apply…

You should now fire up your browser of choice and head to http://testapp.local. If all has worked, you’ll see a, “Welcome aboard” screen from the Ruby on Rails application.

Assuming that this worked for you, let’s take a quick break to make some tea…

Phase Three

In this last phase, we’re going to install a few database servers and corresponding rubygems so that you can get to work.

PostgreSQL

At Planet Argon, we build our web applications on top of PostgreSQL. I’ve been a long-time advocate of it and hope you consider using it yourself.

At this point in time, the current stable version of PostgreSQL via MacPorts is 8.4.x. Let’s install that now…

sudo port install postgresql84 postgresql84-server

Once this finishes compiling, you’ll need to run the following commands to setup a new PostgreSQL database.


sudo mkdir -p /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb
sudo chown postgres:postgres /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb
sudo su postgres -c '/opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin/initdb -D /opt/local/var/db/postgresql84/defaultdb'

Assuming that you want PostgreSQL to always be running, you can run:

sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.postgresql84-server.plist

...and to start it right now, run:

sudo launchctl start org.macports.postgresql84-server

Before you can start using it, we’ll need to make sure that the PostgreSQL executables are available in your shell path. Since you’re now using oh-my-zsh, you’ll want to edit ~/.zshrc with your favorite editor.

vi ~/.zshrc

Just append this to export PATH= line in the file.

:/opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin

Your PATH might look something like the following now:

@# Customize to your needs… export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11/bin:/opt/local/lib/postgresql84/bin@

Setup database user

To setup a new database (with superuser credentials), just run:

createuser --superuser ryangensel -U postgres

We’ll now test creating a database:

createdb test_db

Let’s test that we can access it…


➜  ~  psql test_db
psql (8.4.2)
Type "help" for help.

test_db=# \q

Great, let’s drop it now.


➜  ~  dropdb test_db
➜  ~  psql test_db
psql: FATAL:  database "test_db" does not exist
➜  ~

Okay, we’ll now install the library that will allow Ruby to talk to PostgreSQL.

Just run: sudo gem install pg

Voila… let’s move on to the inferior database…

MySQL

We’re going to run through the installation of MySQL really quickly because you might need it.

sudo port install mysql5 mysql5-server

This took ages on my machine… so let’s watch a video.

We’ll now setup the database and make sure it starts on system boot.


 sudo -u _mysql mysql_install_db5
 sudo launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchDaemons/org.macports.mysql5.plist
 sudo launchctl start org.macports.mysql5

Let’s test that we can create a database now (and that it’s running.)


 ➜  ~  mysql5 -u root
 Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or \g.
 Your MySQL connection id is 3
 Server version: 5.1.43 Source distribution

 Type 'help;' or '\h' for help. Type '\c' to clear the current input statement.

 mysql> create database test1;
 Query OK, 1 row affected (0.00 sec)

 mysql> \q

Great, we’ll now install the library that will allow Ruby to talk to MySQL.

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/opt/local/lib/mysql5/bin/mysql_config

That should be it!

Phase Four, next steps

Okay… so we’ve installed XCode, MacPorts, Ruby, Rails, PostgreSQL, MySQL… and I’ve also got you to switch your default terminal shell from bash to zsh. You might take a look over the available themes for Oh My Zsh so that you can personalize your terminal experience even further.

You also now have a handful of gems installed as you can see with gem list.

Closing thoughts…

This is the fourth version of this guide and I’ve appreciated the hundreds of comments, questions, and emails that I have received… let’s not forget all those beers that people buy me when I’m at conferences. :-)

I hope you have found some of this useful. If you have any problems and/or questions, don’t hesitate to post them in the comments section below.


more »

bgurl
ипотпал
аквичоп


Tag cloud

Categories

Links

Blogs: 43
Posts: 2516