Until recently, and for well over the past decade, my wife and I have been nomads. Moving from the Caribbean to Miami, New York, Las Vegas, Vancouver, and now back home. This has meant that for many of those years, my home office basically comprised of a few laptops and screens. These days, we are more […]
Finding Linux Compatible Printers
Here’s all the info and links needed to find printers or all-in-one printers that currently support Linux. If you don’t want to spend hours comparing printers, have a look at my recommended Linux compatible printers. Last updated Feb 24th 2020, see Epson ET series below. Last updated Oct 23th 2019, replaced a few printers with their newer models. – […]
25 Best CDN Providers 2020
A content delivery network, also referred to as a content distribution network (CDN) is a geographically distributed network of data centers containing proxy servers. CDN Providers serve Internet content, including web objects (text, graphics and scripts), downloadable objects (media files, software, documents), applications (e-commerce, portals), live streaming media, etc… closer to and thus faster, to end users. Some of the main advantages […]
Cache Everything (Full Page Cache) to global CDN Locations
Ask yourself, if this page didn’t load almost immediately, but instead there was a blank white page for a few seconds, would you stick around? Around half of web users leave, if it takes longer than 3 seconds to load a web page. Two years ago I used Cloudflare’s Page Rules, more specifically the “Cache everything” […]
Linux Performance: Almost Always Add Swap. Part 2: ZRAM
Previously, we looked at how swap space, particularly swapping, can severely slow down Linux performance. We then tweaked Linux kernel parameters to make better use of server memory and to avoid heavy swapping. That article created some debate and good arguments for and against swap space. For example, if you have more than enough memory […]
100 Top Server & Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Solutions
Back in September 2014, I wrote about an article that touched on the subject of server performance monitoring. After which, a reader asked me via LinkedIn: “I am using New Relic to monitor my cloud servers but need an alternative. Any suggestions?” So I wanted to share and expand on my answer to that question […]
50 Top Server & Application Performance Monitoring (APM) Solutions
Back in 2014, I compiled a list of top server and application performance monitoring solutions. Sharing that list publicly was a great way to gain feedback and recommendations on other tools available. In time that list grew from 20 to over 100 server monitoring and APM solutions! Because of it’s growing size, I’ve created below, a smaller, more […]
Optimizing APM in the Cloud: A Retrospective Approach for Future Success
The growth and maturity of the cloud has required us, as tech pros, to manage an increasingly complex web of applications spanning on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. While this affords us greater flexibility, agility, and scalability day-to-day, these changes to how we deliver applications are making traditional monitoring techniques much more difficult (sometimes impossible), while […]
Could not increase number of max_open_files to more than… (Solution)
A quick solution to the warning “Could not increase number of max_open_files to more than” when starting MySQL or MariaDB. For some background read How MySQL Opens and Closes Tables. Here’s an excerpt: “The table_open_cache and max_connections system variables affect the maximum number of files the server keeps open. If you increase one or both of these […]
Choosing the right infrastructure technology for your application
Your infrastructure is the backbone of your application; knowing what works best for the application you’re running is the first step towards an efficient application and costs which fit your budget. With an ever-growing number of new infrastructure options, it can be hard to choose the best option for your application, and it often requires […]