My app uses the South East Asian Microsoft Azure server and I think that might be the problem why people in the United States face issues regarding the app's efficiency. How do I get around this in Microsoft Azure? Do I need to purchase mirror servers, etc? I am very illiterate when it comes to server/hardware related stuff.
The SQL Database is also hosted in the South East Asian region
The Mobile backend is in the same region
The Blob Storage is in the same region
Could this be the reason why people in the other end of the world face 'slowing' issues?
Can someone point out how I can make sure that my app service is available worldwide instead of limiting it to a specific region?
Related
i just arrived on this architecture, am doing a lot of research and i understood how it work in general but it's all theorical.
I decided to separate each step for the development of this architecture to start implementing so i can understand better these steps.
The first that i wanted to learn was the tenant provisioning, i wanted to apply it on AWS to mirror a production software example.
So, starting on that the common AWS service that i see most people using is AWS Cognito, but it's not clear in my mind the steps of the implementation, like how should i get the tenant data to onboard him in my app? Assuming it's tier based.
Should i have one database to store all tenants data separate from the application database?
I want to use microservices on this one because i think is better to onboard the tenant with different tiers and much more benefits.
Which AWS services should i use to make this process work? I'm not really asking about the implementation itself but a path to understand which services to use and how it connects with each other.
I hope i was clear about my doubts, english is not my mother tongue, sorry about that!
You are thinking in the right direction. However, there are decisions you need to make before diving into any saas service stack. I would start with
Planning my infrastructure - how many tenants/group.
the kind of tenant onboarding system you want
How will tenants onboard their users and manage authorization/authentication
Multitenant architecture, which needs to account for several things at the least like - DB model, shared vs isolated, data privacy, design keeping in mind industry data security standards
what will be your tenant deployment model. Remember one of the disadvantages of multitenancy is also slow time to market.
Your API stack needs to account for which apis needs to be multitenant and which are generic product offerings.
operational tool to monitor app health, client analytics.
how will you meter and bill the client and other non-functional decisions.
AWS offers good documentation to get started here : https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/building-a-multi-tenant-saas-solution-using-aws-serverless-services/
I am now developing a social application. But recently I noticed that Firebase is blocked in China. So I want to make sure whether firebase can be used in China?
* EDIT 24 January 2020 *
Some of the information here might be out of date.
Firebase has a China service at https://firebase.google.cn/ which is not blocked in the PRC. (Thanks to #c-an for bringing this up.)
That said, *.google.com and *.googleapis.com are still blocked in China. I'll change/update this as I get more information.
Original Answer
For now Firebase is blocked and can't be used in China, along with other Google services, because the PRC has blocked all URIs with *.google.com and *.googleapis.com.
This also means, for example, that the Play app store can't be accessed from China. If you don't know what's going on between Google and the PRC, here's a primer.
Also, according to Chinese law, user data of Chinese citizens must be stored inside of the PRC. You might be able to get away with only addressing this once you have a significant number of users, but the trend has been for the CCP to crack down more and more on foreign information, even busting VPNs and declaring them illegal despite complaints of academics who say that they need, you know, real information.
As we're now in the run-up to the 19th Party Congress this autumn, we can expect the situation to get worse before it gets better. Maybe 2018 will leave room for relaxation?
For now, very sadly, forget anything Google in China, and be prepared to store user data of PRC citizens on servers located inside the Great Firewall. Also be prepared for seemingly random degradations of your service within China, or to be blocked altogether, along with these other blocked services.
Update 2017-11-23: The 19th Party Congress has come and gone and, if anything, Google services look less likely than ever to become available in China. The great firewall is likely to continue to be strengthened as the Chinese Communist Party extends its role into corporations, and foreign firms are generally disadvantaged.
Update 2018-08-05: Google plans to open a censored version of its search in China, according to leaked documents. It seems reasonable to assume that if a censored Google Search becomes available in the PRC, then Firebase and other Google Cloud products may as well. The censored search plan, code-named Dragonfly, has reportedly been in the works since December 2017, possibly a result of meetings that month between Google CEO Sundar Pichai and an unnamed top Chinese official when they met at the World Internet Conference in Wuzhen, China, where PRC General Secretary and President Xi Jinping gave a speech.
Update 2018-12-23: It appears that Google's Project Dragonfly is now on hold if not outright abandoned. This implies that the outlook for Firebase in China has worsened.
You can build your own Rest API server outside of China, and make the server talks to Firebase rest api endpoints of Realtime db or Authentication, https://firebase.google.com/docs/reference/rest/database. So you web app talks to your rest api server (accessible from China), and your rest api server talks to Firebase.
The answer is NO :
Using a huge part of Firebase services, I contacted the support, this is the answer :
I'm glad you are considering Firebase for your project. However, in
accordance with current U.S. policies, it is not possible to use
Firebase from within certain countries. For more information about
these restrictions, please refer to the U.S. Department of the
Treasury website. The current list is of blocked countries is listed
here. If you have end-users located within China, it's quite difficult
to access Firebase there since the use of Firebase requires Google
Play Services, which most of the devices in China don't have. We
understand that access to our products has been problematic from
within mainland China. We believe it may have been caused by
networking conditions in China, rather than Google's own services.
Since access to services is determined by the respective country's
government and they don't report to Google, the Transparency Report is
the most authoritative it can be.
I just tested and I am able to access my realtime database hosted on the Singapore region in China mainland. No need to modify anything. Whatever works overseas, works in China. Tested in Beijing.
Facing the same problem, if you are in china, install Astrill VPN and change from openweb to StealthVPN, connect to a server like USA for china one and login to firebase. It will work successfully.
I got a project running on Google Cloud Platform but is not accesible from Cuba. I know that there are some restrictions but since this is a non-profit project and also a non-profit organization I wonder if there is a chance to open our site to the entire world?
The organization is CONABIO (Commission for Knowledge and Use of Biodiversity of Mexico).
Unfortunately GCP/Google and most cloud providers that are based in the United States have to follow federal rules that limit services to countries with embargoes. They won't be able to remove the restriction for you, you'll likely need to find another host based outside of the United States.
Google restricts access to some of its business services in certain countries or regions, such as Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria.
...
Certain Google services might be available in these countries or regions for personal use, but not for business or education use.
As mentioned by FridayPush, Google restricts access to some of its business service in certain countries or regions, such as Crimea, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan, and Syria. Google does apply this restriction as it follows US trade regulations and thus relaxing any embargo is not dependent on Google itself. You can check at this link.
These are the same countries restricted by the GCP. Here is a list of countries affected by the US trade regulations. The sanctions are different from country to country.
I have a social network website where user are able to upload their content. 80% user is in Malaysia and 15% in USA. Should I place the server in Taiwan (middle between USA & Malaysia) or Singapore (closer)? GCP don’t have Database in Singapore, so should I place the server in SG and DB in Taiwan?
Actually the answer to your question may vary. In your case since most users are in a specific region that is where the server should go. The amount of hops and bandwidth available to your users will make the difference in milliseconds or even a second but it will be faster - usually.
The time it may vary is the actual infrastructure in the country or place where the server farm is. However since you are dealing with AWS or Google I doubt you have anything to worry about.
So if your customers in the majority come from X region it makes sense to use servers as close to that region as possible.
Is there an easy way to migrate a hosted LAMP site to Amazon Web Services? I have hobby sites and sites for family members where we're spending far too much per month compared to what we would be paying on AWS.
Typical el cheapo example of what I'd like to move over to AWS:
GoDaddy domain
site hosted at 1&1 or MochaHost
a handful of PHP files within a certain directory structure
a small MySQL database
.htaccess file for URL rewriting and the like
The tutorials I've found online necessitate PuTTY, Linux commands, etc. While these aren't the most cumbersome hurdles imaginable, it seems overly complicated. What's the easiest way to do this?
The ideal solution would be something like what you do to set up a web host: point GoDaddy to it, upload files, import database, done. (Bonus points for phpMyAdmin being already installed but certainly not necessary.)
It would seem the amazon AWS marketplace has now got a solution for your problem :
https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/pp/B0078UIFF2/ref=gtw_msl_title/182-2227858-3810327?ie=UTF8&pf_rd_r=1RMV12H8SJEKSDPC569Y&pf_rd_m=A33KC2ESLMUT5Y&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=awsmp-gateway-1&pf_rd_p=1362852262&pf_rd_s=right-3
Or from their own site
http://www.turnkeylinux.org/lampstack
A full LAMP stack including PHPMyAdmin with no setup required.
As for your site and database migration itself (which should require no more than file copies and a database backup/restore) the only way to make this less cumbersome is to have someone else do it for you...
Dinah,
As a Web Development company I've experienced an unreal number of hosting companies. I've also been very closely involved with investigating cloud hosting solutions for sites in the LAMP and Windows stacks.
You've quoted GoDaddy, 1And1 and Mochahost for micro-sized Linux sites so I'm guessing you're using a benchmark of $2 - $4 per month, per site. It sounds like you have a "few" sites (5ish?) and need at least one database.
I've yet to see any tool that will move more than the most basic (i.e. file only, no db) websites into Cloud hosting. As most people are suggesting, there isn't much you can do to avoid the initial environment setup. (You should factor your time in too. If you spend 10 hours doing this, you could bill clients 10 x $hourly-rate and have just bought the hosting for your friends and family.)
When you look at AWS (or anyone) remember these things:
Compute cycles is only where it starts. When you buy hosting from traditional ISPs they are selling you cycles, disk space AND database hosting. Their default levels for allowed cycles, database size and traffic is also typically much higher before you are stopped or charged for "overage", or over-usage.
Factor in the cost of your 1 database, and consider how likely it will be that you need more. The database hosting charges can increase Cloud costs very quickly.
While you are likely going to need few CCs (compute cycles) for your basic sites, the free tier hosting maximums are still pretty low. Anticipate breaking past the free hosting and being charged monthly.
Disk space it also billed. Factor in your costs of CCs, DB and HDD by using their pricing estimator: http://calculator.s3.amazonaws.com/calc5.html
If your friends and family want to have access to the system they won't get it unless you use a hosting company that allows "white labeling" and provides a way to split your main account into smaller mini-hosting accounts. They can even be setup to give self-admin and direct billing options if you went with a host like www.rackspace.com. The problem is you don't sound like you want to bill anyone and their minimum account is likely way too big for your needs.
Remember that GoDaddy (and others) frequently give away a year of hosting with even simple domain registrations. Before I got my own servers I used to take HUGE advantage of these. I've probably been given like 40+ free hosting accounts, etc. in my lifetime as a client. (I still register a ton of domain through them. I also resell their hosting.)
If you aren't already, consider the use of CMS systems that support portaling (one instance, many websites under different domains). While I personally prefer DotNetNuke I'm sure that one of its LAMP stack competitors can do the same for you. This will keep you using only one database and simplify your needs further.
I hope this helps you make a well educated choice. I think it'll be a fine-line between benefits and costs. Only knowing the exact size of every site, every database and the typical traffic would allow this to be determined in advance. Database count and traffic will be your main "enemies". Optimize files to reduce disk-space needs AND your traffic levels in terms of data transferred.
Best of luck.
Actually it depends upon your server architecture, whether you want to migrate whole of your LAMP stack to Amazon EC2.
Or use different Amazon web services for different server components like Amazon S3 for storage and Amazon RDS for mysql database and so.
In case if you are going with LAMP on EC2: This tutorial will atleast give you a head up.
Anyways you still have to go with essential steps of setting up the AMI and installing LAMP through SSH.