Office of Information Technology Telephone: (609) 258-HELP Princeton’s Apache Utility How to make users happy without losing your mind HighEdWebDev 2006 – TPR 6

Princeton University Students: –6,500 undergraduates, –3,000 graduate Departments: –? –No medical/law/etc. graduate schools

Imagine a Conversation Someone with a university affiliation calls and wants to put up a web site. Question is “how can you help me?” Answer changes with the service vision

“I want to put up a web site, how can you help me do that?” 2000 Public html pages (www/~…) Register for perl cgi (campuscgi) DbToolbox (DB application interface) Buy your own server and manage it

“I want to put up a web site, …?” 2004 Public html pages (www/~…) Register for perl cgi (campuscgi) DbToolbox (DB application interface) Webscript (public php/mysql service) Buy your own server and manage it

“I want to put up a web site, …?” 2006 Public html pages (www/~…) Register for perl cgi (deprecated) DbToolbox (deprecated) Webscript (public php/mysql service) Departmental Weblamp service Departmental Roxen service Buy your own server and manage it

The Departmental Web Site Planners Dilemma Private or shared server? Security? Production level service? Technical help? Cost?

The Ideal World Websites just happen Analogy, the electric company Always just there

The Real World Physical network presence –Computing platform –Network connection Web/Application server Content control mechanisms Maintenance

“The” Goal Provide access to services for users across the university Practically –For as many as possible –Within our ability to support –Recognizing need

“The” Goal With a useful set of standard “tools” –Apache 1 –Apache 2 –Pam & Ldap authentication –Mysql 4 –Php 5 –Any scripting language available on Redhat Enterprise 3 (perl, python, etc.) –Awstats –phpMyAdmin

“The” Goal With a useful set of optional tools –User directory support –RSA authentication –Supervisory/Customer support interface –Single sign-on (WebISO using pubcookie) –Tomcat connectors –Weblogic connectors –Tomcat

Service Models From us who have to him who has need –The suck us dry model For him who has according to their wallet –The capitalist model For him who yells loudest –The political model We don’t serve here and we should –The opportunity model

Cheap Sites People like to buy cheap sites In a college/university cost has no relationship to expected service

User Management by $$ Public html pages Webscript (public php/mysql service) –$0 –No support Departmental Weblamp service –$22/month (for two sites, test & development sites) –Hand holding up to site development (charged) Shared Server –$60/month –Pay for site development Departmental Roxen service –Charged site development –Waiting list Buy your own server and manage it –Server cost + $5,000/year (UPS and system support) –Pay for site developement

Result 6 $60/month 1 ??/month (bumped off $60 machine) 22 $22/month (2 instances each) Various other sites created for other uses Total 65 installation instances on 16 servers

How Do You Survive? Automate Simplify Decentralize

Demo Monitoring Site defintion Installation