Hi everyone. I am starting a thread to post some of the information that I have learned in my journey to free my business from monthly development, software and hosting related costs. I have invested many, many thousands of dollars and frankly lost most if it through ignorance of hosting, development, SEO, freelancers, and programming languages. I hope this thread helps anyone out there who is struggling because they have great ideas but no idea how to technically implement them. #BulkTP, #Linux, #CentOS, #Zimbra, #Fedora
Don't be too quick too judge because I don't get the jargon absolutely right. I have been a member here a long time and many know that I own a fair size paper supply business. This is a side hobby for me and I am not selling any services to anybody but my current wholesale TP customers...which all happen to be portable toilet companies. I have paid my dues and a lot of $$$ to experts,engineers, developers, freelancers, consultants... Anyways, I don't claim to be an "expert" in anything tech related. I have a General BA and no certifications. Re: Magento... I wanted a "free" shopping cart that could handle a database of 250k Jan-San products. It was recommended by a web development firm out of Florida. I ended up getting a decent site of it and you wouldn't believe me if I told you how many orders I shipped off of it in 2015. I decided to move away from that business model to work on the wholesale business. Maybe my mistakes can save some monkeys money.
Welcome back @Catullus ... For the fairly NEWBIES... Catullus is the Grand Guru of Toilet Paper.... We have missed him around here, for a few years... and are happy to see he has returned....
Thank you @BTPost. I am always around but haven't been in a communicative mindset. It has been an eventful few years for me and my family but we have made it through.
Ha! That is better than some of the paper I have seen on the market...but I am not hear looking to recommend TP. Everyone already knows BulkTP Brand is the best.
Today I am moving my server cluster, which has been in my crawlspace sealed up with an ac unit, to a separate building on my property that will be a dedicated lab and development space . I am running 7 Dell R710's 48gb in a Raid 5 configuration. Each is running Centos 6.8. I manage the cluster using OVirt. It took me a couple of months to get the basics of using it figured out...but it is my new best technological friend.
Post SHTF , as the TP runs out ,I've planned on the T towel washed after every usage. in place of TP.
@sec_monkey Thanks! I will be posting pics later today and some of the build scripts I used and created as well over the next few weeks. I look forward to your thoughts.
@Catullus please make sure ya shutdown cleanly or the RAID plus FS will not be happy also there are some things that should be done prior to a shutdown to make sure there are no issues should probably PM ya about that
The BulkTP Cluster v1.0 Hardware used: 7 Dell R710 Virtualization Servers (48gb ram 2 X quad core) 5 misc boxes 3 cyberpower industrial battery backups (1.5 hours runtime with power loss) 16 misc SATA hard drives I had laying around (250gb -4TB) using Raid 1 or 5 depending 24 port switch Some of the software I chose: Centos Apache mariadb (mysql) Let's Encrypt OVirt Zimbra for mail
Because this is a business system and not a hobby, there are some things you need to take into consideration if you haven't done so already: How often and how you back up your data. Where to store the backups so you can recover in the event of fire, etc.. Validating your backup and recovery strategy on a periodic basis Ensuring that you are getting the latest patches for all your software and operating systems Validating that those patches will not have unintended consequences before they get applied to production systems Redundancy not just for your data, but for your computing/web servers Consider UnRaid for your data storage (LimeTech – Network Attached Storage). It's easier to expand and will allow you to more easily migrate to higher capacity hard drives than other systems - yes, you can mix and match hard drives with this one Security - too many things to list here, but your strategies to prevent unauthorized access to any of your system both internally and externally. How will you verify that your security is protecting you? Security part 2: how are you protecting your customer's data including their purchase history and payment information? How can assure your customers that this information is safe. What is your continuity of service plan? Do you have a separate facility that can take over operations in the event of catastrophic failure at your primary location? How long an outage can your business tolerate? Testing your COS plan - how often do you fail over to your backup system for validation? Do you have adequate network capacity? Your network also needs to meet the same standards (actually exceed them) as your servers and data storage. Can a single router or switch bring your operations or storefront down? What technical support do you have in the event you need to get things back up and running to prevent business loss? What is your physical security like for all server, data, and network components?
Passwords should NEVER be something you can deduce by investigating the person or through social engineering. Ever. Password generator: RANDOM.ORG - Password Generator Store them in an encrypted database like KeePass: KeePass Password Safe Change them every 90 days or less. Your KeePass password should also be strong. Change them immediately any time you think you may have been compromised. No default passwords on anything even if it's behind a dozen firewalls. Don't forget WiFi passwords...
I would NEVER have Remote Login enabled, EXCEPT thru an End to End Encrypted, VPN Tunnel.... All Administration should be done, IN PERSON, AT the Farm, or thru the above mentioned method.... PERIOD...