You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to dev@manifoldcf.apache.org by Karl Wright <da...@gmail.com> on 2011/07/11 14:32:19 UTC
EC2 recommendation for SharePoint test instance
A colleague of mine who's been learning the "cloud" says that Amazon
EC2 may offer the simplest way to test ManifoldCF with proprietary
connectors. Specifically we'd want to start testing with SharePoint
2010. The steps are as follows:
(1) Set up an instance. Amazon probably already offers a SharePoint
installed instance. For other instances, we'd need to transfer the
iso data into the Amazon file system, which may be time consuming but
only need be done once.
(2) Run the instance when needed. Amazon provides an API for this
which means we can even write tests that turn the instance on or off
during the test. This is probably also a good way to manage
concurrency, since if the instance is already up the test can wait
until it comes back down, etc.
(3) Fees are 10-20 cents/hour, which is quite manageable, but somebody
will need to cough up a credit card that can be billed for this
(probably me).
I'm going to start by testing our current SharePoint connector in
branches/CONNECTORS-221 by hand to be sure that the jar changes needed
by the CMIS connector did not have any unfortunate effects on Axis,
and I'll post if this seems like a viable plan.
Thoughts?
Karl
Re: EC2 recommendation for SharePoint test instance
Posted by Karl Wright <da...@gmail.com>.
One more tricky point that probably prevents EC2 machines from being
our automated test framework: they charge for a full hour every time
the instance is started. This means that we can't reasonably start
and stop the instance during the run of a test (say).
Karl
On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 1:57 AM, Karl Wright <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Started to do some research on this.
>
> (1) I can't find a dedicated SharePoint instance that you can just
> buy. While that's a shame, I do have access to SharePoint 2010 via an
> MSDN iso. I'll need to download it and figure out how to install it
> remotely. Luckily download of data seems to be free.
>
> (2) The base instance that seems right for us is this one:
> http://aws.amazon.com/windows/ . There's not much on its domain
> affinity, etc, however. It's going to be a bit of a learning curve
> clearly.
>
> (3) The instance size needed is determined by the SharePoint
> requirements. My .iso is 64-bit only. So at the minimum, we need
> this:
>
> Large Instance 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores
> with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of local instance storage,
> 64-bit platform
>
> (4) Pricing. For this instance size, with Windows, it starts at $0.48
> an hour. The windows instances is Server 2008 R2, which is the right
> one, and comes with IIS for free and with what sounds like the MSDE
> version of SQL server. They state you can use the local SQL instance
> for free, but also say that if you want SQL Server it's $1.08 an hour.
> So I'm not quite sure I know what to get yet, and until I actually
> try it I am not going to know.
>
> My best guess is that this is going to take quite a bit of time to
> learn and assess, probably 10-15 hours conservatively. But I think
> it's well worth the cost of exploration.
>
> Karl
>
>
> On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Karl Wright <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> A colleague of mine who's been learning the "cloud" says that Amazon
>> EC2 may offer the simplest way to test ManifoldCF with proprietary
>> connectors. Specifically we'd want to start testing with SharePoint
>> 2010. The steps are as follows:
>>
>> (1) Set up an instance. Amazon probably already offers a SharePoint
>> installed instance. For other instances, we'd need to transfer the
>> iso data into the Amazon file system, which may be time consuming but
>> only need be done once.
>>
>> (2) Run the instance when needed. Amazon provides an API for this
>> which means we can even write tests that turn the instance on or off
>> during the test. This is probably also a good way to manage
>> concurrency, since if the instance is already up the test can wait
>> until it comes back down, etc.
>>
>> (3) Fees are 10-20 cents/hour, which is quite manageable, but somebody
>> will need to cough up a credit card that can be billed for this
>> (probably me).
>>
>> I'm going to start by testing our current SharePoint connector in
>> branches/CONNECTORS-221 by hand to be sure that the jar changes needed
>> by the CMIS connector did not have any unfortunate effects on Axis,
>> and I'll post if this seems like a viable plan.
>>
>> Thoughts?
>> Karl
>>
>
Re: EC2 recommendation for SharePoint test instance
Posted by Karl Wright <da...@gmail.com>.
Started to do some research on this.
(1) I can't find a dedicated SharePoint instance that you can just
buy. While that's a shame, I do have access to SharePoint 2010 via an
MSDN iso. I'll need to download it and figure out how to install it
remotely. Luckily download of data seems to be free.
(2) The base instance that seems right for us is this one:
http://aws.amazon.com/windows/ . There's not much on its domain
affinity, etc, however. It's going to be a bit of a learning curve
clearly.
(3) The instance size needed is determined by the SharePoint
requirements. My .iso is 64-bit only. So at the minimum, we need
this:
Large Instance 7.5 GB of memory, 4 EC2 Compute Units (2 virtual cores
with 2 EC2 Compute Units each), 850 GB of local instance storage,
64-bit platform
(4) Pricing. For this instance size, with Windows, it starts at $0.48
an hour. The windows instances is Server 2008 R2, which is the right
one, and comes with IIS for free and with what sounds like the MSDE
version of SQL server. They state you can use the local SQL instance
for free, but also say that if you want SQL Server it's $1.08 an hour.
So I'm not quite sure I know what to get yet, and until I actually
try it I am not going to know.
My best guess is that this is going to take quite a bit of time to
learn and assess, probably 10-15 hours conservatively. But I think
it's well worth the cost of exploration.
Karl
On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Karl Wright <da...@gmail.com> wrote:
> A colleague of mine who's been learning the "cloud" says that Amazon
> EC2 may offer the simplest way to test ManifoldCF with proprietary
> connectors. Specifically we'd want to start testing with SharePoint
> 2010. The steps are as follows:
>
> (1) Set up an instance. Amazon probably already offers a SharePoint
> installed instance. For other instances, we'd need to transfer the
> iso data into the Amazon file system, which may be time consuming but
> only need be done once.
>
> (2) Run the instance when needed. Amazon provides an API for this
> which means we can even write tests that turn the instance on or off
> during the test. This is probably also a good way to manage
> concurrency, since if the instance is already up the test can wait
> until it comes back down, etc.
>
> (3) Fees are 10-20 cents/hour, which is quite manageable, but somebody
> will need to cough up a credit card that can be billed for this
> (probably me).
>
> I'm going to start by testing our current SharePoint connector in
> branches/CONNECTORS-221 by hand to be sure that the jar changes needed
> by the CMIS connector did not have any unfortunate effects on Axis,
> and I'll post if this seems like a viable plan.
>
> Thoughts?
> Karl
>