Magento Open Source Ecommerce

Posted on September 4, 2008
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I have recently come across a very promising ecommerce product called Magento. The current version is 1.14. At the time of writing this post, Magento is just over 1 year old. It is still a very young product and show’s great promise. It is designed using current PHP coding standards, and is based around the Zend PHP development framework. It also has a very clean user interface which makes it very nice to use.

The code and the user front end are separated from each other, this makes template development so much easier. Some of key areas still need development.

Performance can be a problem, and a dedicated host with a PHP bytecode cache is ideal
No support file based down-loadable products like software or music
Poor support for bulk importing of products, if you have product set of several thousand products, It can take several hours to import data

I actually quite like the product and will be watching it mature. In fact when I get more time , I would like to contribute to it’s development. However as it is now, I would not recommended for a very busy or a site with a large product set.

http://www.magentocommerce.com/

Using LVM with a Ubuntu Live CD

Posted on September 4, 2008
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When you boot from a Ubuntu Live CD, you do not get access to your LVM volumes. LVM is a storage arrangement which allows you to create a file system across multiple discs. For example If you have 2 500GB discs, You can make a file system 1TB in size… Be aware that without a RAID storage system, this will not be fault tolerant.

Once booted into the Ubuntu Live CD, Open a terminal session, and enter the following commands
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo su -
This will give you root access
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ modprobe dm-mod
Installs the LVM modules into the kernel so you can see your Volumes
root@ubuntu:/dev# apt-get install lvm2 Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: lvm2 0 upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 1 not upgraded. Need to get 325kB of archives. After this operation, 918kB of additional disk space will be used. Get:1 http://archive.ubuntu.com hardy/main lvm2 2.02.26-1ubuntu9 [325kB] Fetched 325kB in 0s (726kB/s) Selecting previously deselected package lvm2. (Reading database ... 98423 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking lvm2 (from .../lvm2_2.02.26-1ubuntu9_i386.deb) ... Setting up lvm2 (2.02.26-1ubuntu9) ... Backing up any LVM2 metadata that may exist...done. update-initramfs is disabled since running on a live CD

root@ubuntu:/dev# lvs LV VG Attr LSize Origin Snap% Move Log Copy% san vol1 -wi--- 467.00G root@ubuntu:/dev# lvchange -a y san Volume group "san" not found root@ubuntu:/dev# lvchange -a y vol1

The rest of this code activates the LVM Volume ( Mine is called VOL1 in this case). You now have access to your LVM volumes.

You do have a choice !

Posted on July 11, 2008
Filed Under General | Leave a Comment

Over the past few months quite a my friends and associates have been
complaining about the latest windows operating system, Windows Vista.

The complaints range from the fact that they perceive windows vista to be
slow, or certain hardware devices or programs have stopped working since
installing Vista. Some problems have been so hard to overcome some of my
associates have “downgraded” to Windows XP.

People often resent the fact they eventually have to migrate to the newest
Windows operating system if the current one meets their needs. Microsoft
provides a limited life cycle for windows versions. It will stop supporting
versions of Windows as technology evolves and as hardware performance and
capacity increases. They do quite a good job in maintaining all the
different applications and operating systems; however they have to draw the
line at some point. Therefore Windows versions will eventually become
obsolete. To have your computer supported, you should upgrade to a current
supported operating system.

With this in mind, the point of this article is to highlight the fact that
people do have viable alternatives to Windows. As windows has evolved, so
have the alternatives.

The two most popular alternatives to windows are OSX running on Macintosh
computers & Linux. Linux has the advantage that it runs on a wider range of
computers. Linux has improved vastly over the past few years. Linux is a
operating system which has its roots in an operating system called UNIX. It
was mostly used on servers rather than on desktops computers. Over the past
few year’s companies have invested large sums of money into making Linux
function within a desktop environment. Mark Shuttleworth a South African
billionaire who made his fortune because of technology he created using
Linux, has invested large sums of money into Ubuntu Linux. This investment
has created a very stable desktop environment.

So rather than feel forced into a particular direction, lift your head up
and look around. There are alternatives. Examine how you use your computer
and what is important to you, and look around; you will be surprised at
what you may find.

Data protection stupidity

Posted on July 4, 2008
Filed Under IT Solutions | Leave a Comment

Data protection Stupidty.

I’m getting quite worried about the amount of news items that I have seen recently which highlight security breaches due to laptop theft or missing CD’s in the post.

One of the most public is the HMRC data of 25 million records on non-encrypted media.

A number of security experts have mentioned the need for encryption and expensive software to limit what can be transferred via USB data storage.

I have a really simple solution; don’t store high risk data on mobile computers in the first place. There is no need to have this type of data stored on mobile computers.

Leave the data on a central server, where you have one central point to protect. Then provide an access window trough VPN and terminal services or Citrix, the data can be viewed.

This way if the laptop is stolen, no data is actually stored on the machine. The laptop is used to view documents rather than store documents. This would not have been possible until recently, Network bandwidth was limited and quite expense.

Now you can get up to 8mbps on a laptop with a 3G card for £15 per month. This is far cheaper than the expense of software solutions to protect stored data.

Don’t store sensitive data on laptop’s. View it instead.

The trouble with cisco

Posted on June 27, 2008
Filed Under Networking | Leave a Comment

I have been working with CISCO networking equipment for over 10 years. Over the years they have created a very strong brand dominance. This is then fed by the fact that most corporations will only insist on using CISCO network equipment within networks.

However over the years CISCO’s competition has improved product offerings immensely, and provide very strong product offerings. In fact in some instances they make CISCO’s offerings look poor in comparison.

One such instance is the CISCO 800 series routers. These routers are often deployed in Teleworker locations, small home offices and branch offices. There is strong competition in this area from the likes of Draytek, Dlink, Alcatel & netgear to name a few. From the features list, the CISCO 800 router does look very good, however the problems occur in execution.

The most common placed 800 router is the 877 with a ADSL WAN port or the ADSL 877W with built in Wireless radio. As ADSL2 & ADSL2+ broadband connectivity is deployed, this router seems to struggle where other routers half the price just get on with it.

ADSL2+ allows upload speeds of 2.5mbs using ITU G.992.5 Annex M. You have just spent nearly £300 on your brand new 877 to find out that you can’t max out your upload speed. This is because you bought the wrong version of 877 router. Although you have the correct version of IOS, you should have spent even more money and bought a CISCO877-M-K9 that M is really important. Where as a £50 Alcatel Speedtouch router has this built in.

Ok ADSL2+ is fairly advanced, However even ADSL2 seems to be quite challenging for the CISCO 877. You have to be very particular about the version of IOS you are running you need at least 12.4XJ or you will have to upload separate firmware for the ADSL interface.

Other routers seem to get on with it with no fuss and drama, and they cost half the price of the 800 routers. These routers are feature rich, however you would expect that the basics have sorted on such a premium brand.

I use these routers not out of choice, but because my customers insist on them. Therefore I need to know what problems they will face. If I had a choice, I would be using an alternative more affordable and no fuss router.

Firmware updates for the 800 series router

ftp.cisco.com/pub/access/800

BECTA says Whoa!, to Schools deploying Vista and Office 2007

Posted on January 25, 2008
Filed Under IT News | Leave a Comment

BECTA is an organisation which outlines the use of technology in Britain’s educational system. A report has been released by BECTA which outlines it’s position on deploying VISTA and Office 2007.

Microsoft Vista and Office 2007: full report

An interim report was released in January 2007 which came to the following conclusions:

the new features of Microsoft’s Vista product added value but did not justify early deployment in the education sector. The deployment costs were seen as high and the benefits were far from clear
office 2007 contained no ‘must have’ features and Microsoft should develop an underpinning business case to justify deployment in the education sector
there were interoperability concerns regarding Office 2007; and Microsoft should urgently provide ‘native’ support for the OpenDocument format (ODF)
educational ICT suppliers should ship computers for the educational marketplace with a choice of office productivity suites on the desktop. Ideally, this choice should include an open-source offering

One of the most encouraging things about this report is that they have stopped and thought about alternatives to meet ICT requirements rather than swallowing what is forced fed them. They have stood their ground and said no, we have a choice.

We note a number of recent developments aimed at enhancing choice in the field of office productivity software. These include further development of the online Google Apps product set, the incorporation of Star Office into the free download Google Pack and the release by IBM of a free version of Lotus Symphony.

In summary the report states that other options such as Linux, and Open Office for its Open Document format should be considered before deploying Vista and Office 2007. It also states that Microsoft will have to provide a more compelling business case before deployment can take place.

How refreshing !

Cisco Unified Communications

Posted on January 21, 2008
Filed Under Networking | Leave a Comment

Cisco have launched a product range targeted at the needs of small business. Cisco are not the only vendors who are now catering for the smaller. Lots of vendors have now acknowledge that the SMB market has been somewhat overlooked when it comes to IT application solutions and Hardware.
Cisco’s offering looks to address the following key communication requirements:

Voice/Fax Comminications FXO,FXS,BRI, VOIP
Internet connectivity and messaging
Wireless connectivity
Internet security

All ports are POE compatible and extremely easy to plug-in your Cisco IP phones and Wireless AP’s.
I’m attending the SMB University training this week to take the SMB focused course on this device. This looks like another value offering I can provide my customers.

NYSE Deploys 600 Linux servers in trading environment

Posted on January 18, 2008
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The New York Stock Exchange have deployed over 600 Linux servers within their Hybrid Market trading system. The Hybrid Market system lets NYSE traders buy and sell stocks electronically or on the exchange’s trading floor.

The key objectives on the move to Linux were:

Flexibility
Lower cost
technology independence

The servers are a based on Hewlett Packard machines, with AMD Opteron processors

N.Y.S.E. Places Buy on Linux, Hold on Unix

Using linux on the desktop

Posted on January 11, 2008
Filed Under Open Source | Leave a Comment

I have been using Linux on the desktop for a number of years, despite this I would not have recommended a Linux desktop for the average user.

The best place for Linux was is in the server room, not on the desktop. This has changed drastically over the past few years with Ubuntu Linux. Ubuntu Linux has taken the geeky edge from the Linux desktop and have created a number of tools to remove the hardware complexity and installation problems associated with Linux.

So much so that DELL have arranged to distribute Ubuntu Linux pre-installed on DELL machines.

This is excellent news for the consumer, and open’s a new level of choice.

Microsoft eases licensing to compete with LAMP

Posted on January 8, 2008
Filed Under IT News | Leave a Comment

Linux, Apache, Mysql,PHP have been readily available components when making web applications. It carries no licensing restrictions on the number of users and you can swap in any type of database you require, ( However Mysql being the most popular choice).

This make it extremely cost effective to build a web-server farm incorporating a load balanced fault tolerant environment. Scaling in the same manner has not always has been as affordable to achieve.

Windows Web server 2008 apparently will no longer carry some of the previous restrictions such as number of users, type of database used.

This only applies to the Windows Web server addition and then even under certain circumstances.

http://www.crn.com/software/205207950

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