{"id":3449,"date":"2014-09-24T06:58:52","date_gmt":"2014-09-24T12:58:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=3449"},"modified":"2014-09-24T07:14:13","modified_gmt":"2014-09-24T13:14:13","slug":"nerd-toy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/?p=3449","title":{"rendered":"Nerd Toy"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Raspberry<\/a>

Raspberry Pie<\/p><\/div>\n

I just acquired a new computing toy with which to play. No, not the Raspberry Pie. That’s another nerd toy. But I have something almost as\u00a0small…<\/p>\n

I just signed up for the smallest available Amazon Web Service (AWS)<\/a> \u00a0Cloud web server. It is a free usage account for a year. I have no real idea what I am going to use it for at this moment other than a sandbox server to play with and see what a tiny server can do. It will definitely be running a Linux operating system.<\/p>\n

I am not at the moment planning to move this blog or any of my websites to the AWS. There is another up and coming cloud provider called Digital Ocean<\/a> that is a bit more cost efficient for the very small user like me. Right now The AWS\u00a0free offer is hard to beat, but it is a onetime offer for a year. My plan is to see how pricing shakes out a year from now.<\/p>\n

The service that this blog and all my web sites are using is a shared server with a lot of other users using the same hardware and operating system. I do not have root access to the supporting software. It\u2019s cheap and does a very good (actually outstanding) job when it or one of the shared users (including me) isn’t being hacked, so I have no urgent need to make any system changes.<\/p>\n

But I have to be prepared. A cloud based server is almost but not exactly like having my own private server setting on the floor beside me. I have done that in the past. I had a Linux server running 24\/7 in my home office for several years as a headless file server. It kept itself updated from the Internet but was not an open server on the Internet.<\/p>\n

I could in fact make the new AWS\u00a0Cloud server be nothing more than a private cloud file storage system. That\u2019s not an entirely practical use these days with all the free cloud storage already being shoved at me from other services. I have 3.5 Gig free on Dropbox and now 10 Gig free on OneDrive and iCloud is throwing 4 Gig more free storage at me. With expandable S3 storage available on AWS\u00a0I can have almost unlimited backed up storage available, so it is a thought. I have 5 Terabytes available on several drives at home, but subject to loss due to HD failure. (I do keep multiple BU\u2019s, the reason for all that storage.)<\/p>\n

But what I now have with this choice is a totally connected chunk of hardware setting in a datacenter somewhere that figuratively looks like the Linux box\u00a0setting next to me. It will run any other OS as well.\u00a0\u00a0Just like I have done\u00a0(off and on) since Linux, heck personal computing was invented.\u00a0Only, I don\u2019t have to do any maintenance or upkeep of the hardware. I just get to use it for free or a small fee.<\/p>\n

When the free is over is when I will have to decide. Free doesn\u2019t last forever (yet) and it is more costly (2X) than my cheap shared service, but still not a high cost. This is a whole bunch less than if I set up my own hardware for the same service.<\/p>\n

That is what cloud computing is all about. What a wonderful nerd toy\u2026<\/p>\n

Yes, I have a Raspberry Pie too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I just acquired a new computing toy with which to play. No, not the Raspberry Pie. That’s another nerd toy. But I have something almost as\u00a0small… I just signed up for the smallest available Amazon Web Service (AWS) \u00a0Cloud web server. It is a free usage account for a year. I have no real idea what I am going to use it for at this moment other than a sandbox server to play with and...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38],"tags":[165,98],"class_list":["post-3449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computersoftware","tag-linux","tag-website"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3449\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ramblindan.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}