Understanding Amazon Web Services EC2 CPU Credit Mechanism

Posted on by ztp

On my web server on Amazon Web Services (AWS) I had a T2.micro instance running Ubunto and a web server.

After all installed and up and running I started gazing at the CloudWatch Monitoring charts. Here is one with the default options:

image

With the help of AWS documentation I recalled the definitions that would help me interpret this graph.

On the AWS documentation at View Amazon EC2 Metrics we can read the explanation about the CPU Credit Usage metrics: “The number of CPU credits consumed during the specified period.”.

So, hovering on the original chart “CPU Credit Usage” I read that, for example, at 2014-09-29 03:19 the server consumed 0.15 credits during 5 minutes, on average. That corresponds to 1.8 credits over one hour. Looking at the graph we can say that the average is about 0.16, which corresponds to 1.92 credits. Let’s assume 2 credits spent in this hour for simplicity.
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Comparing Web Hosting Services for Small Photography Site

Posted on by ztp

Purpose

Many web developers have the daunting task of choosing web hosting solutions and company. I needed a low end web hosting for some low traffic web sites. Nonetheless, knowing that it can grow if needed, or how would it support spikes, is also a factor to consider when choosing.

This article focus on the server performance as perceived by the user. I focused on the speed of a hosting for a single visitor and also of its performance for more simultaneous users.

This is not by all means a thoroughly evaluation. There is a lot more that could be done:

  • lot more data, better statistical analysis.
  • more hosting (companies and plans)
  • server internal benchmark software

Other tests

Looking around other hosting speed tests, I’ve found these worth mention:

  • 200Please. The “Top Hosting Providers” service analyzed 1,868,360 sites (as of this writing) giving market share and response time for each host of those web sites.

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The making of MontePuraVida website using WordPress and Underscores Theme.

Posted on by ztp

The purpose of this blog post is to describe the implementation of a commercial website (a rural hotel’s website) using WordPress online at www.montepuravida.com.pt. It is not a step-by-step tutorial but just a general description of what is involved.

This assignment was a legacy work done by my former company. It also suited the purpose for me to tryout the WordPress as a site development platform. Another purpose on using WordPress was to give the client a website that could be authored and managed by others, in the future.

The site uses a lot of plugins and the Underscores (“_s”) theme as the base theme. Since the website already existed but was implemented in another platform, the web design implementation was just to mimic the existing one. But no CSS or HTML was copied from the existing site, since it was not in HTML5/CSS3.

Existing site front page:

Original web site

Plan

The first thing to do was to make a text document depicting the web site:

  • Hosting: domains, locales, emails
  • Common layout
  • Pages: name, URLs, locales, content, migration notes
  • Forms: fields, email addresses, Google Web Analytics event info

This document was delivered to the client so he could review the migration notes, mainly.
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