Bio-Linux and other bioinformatics tools available for EC2, Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud, were recently highlighted on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog. Customized Amazon machine images (AMIs) allow for the packaging and rapid, web based deployment of the data sets and tools needed for these specialized tasks. Because AMIs can be saved, reproducing past results is simplified and because these can also be shared, the computation environment of a particular analysis can be easily replicated both from within and outside your organization.
Category: Blogs
MySQL Error: BLOB/TEXT used in key specification without a key length
Recently, I was populating a database with lines from a number of log files. One of the key pieces of information in each of these log lines was a URL. Because URLs can be pretty much as long as they want to be (or can they?) I decided to make the URL field a Text type in my schema. Then, because I wanted fast lookups, I tried to add an index (key) on this field and ran into this guy:
ERROR 1170 (42000): BLOB/TEXT column ‘field_name’ used in key specification without a key length
It turns out that MySQL can only index the first N characters of a Blob or Text field – but for a URL, that’s not good enough. After talking it over with my team members, we decided to instead add a field – url_md5. By storing the md5sum of each URL, we could index on the hash field and have both fast lookups and avoid worrying about domains like this fitting into a VARCHAR.
TNR Global accepting applications for paid part-time internships
TNR Global is accepting applications for part time paid internships in Python Programming, System Administration, Joomla! Template Design and PHP Programming. Most of the work is done via telecommuting, but interns must be able to attend occasional meetings in Greenfield, MA.
TNR Global Launches New Website
TNR Global launches new corporate website. Before and after shots:
Jeremy Maryott passes the RHCT and RHCE exams and scores 100%!
Jeremy Maryott, System Administrator at TNR, passes the RHCT and RHCE exams and scores 100%! Jeremy has been with TNR for two years. He has experience with administering web, mail, DNS, and database servers, as well as virtualization technology such as OpenVZ and Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Great work, Champ!
From the Cloud Camp
Yesterday’s trip to Cloud Camp Boston was most interesting. The keynote gave a good overview of what cloud computing is, where it came from and where it is headed. Continue reading “From the Cloud Camp”
Ross Farinella, Information Assurance Expert, Joins TNR’s Search Team
Ross Farinella, Information Assurance expert, joins the search team at TNR. Ross’ interests in enterprise search include performance tuning, end-user experience, and learning algorithms. He has hands-on expertise with many tools, technologies and platforms including Java, C++, PHP, Python, XHTML/CSS, Javascript, Apache, MySQL, Windows Server, and various Linux distributions.
Amazon EC2 system restore
Recently, one of our small EC2 instances failed. While we had Nagios monitoring it, Nagios only provides alerts when services fail, or when the host goes down. In this case, the failure was on Amazon’s side- the hardware where our instance resided was failing.
Recently, one of our small EC2 instances failed. While we had Nagios monitoring it, Nagios only provides alerts when services fail, or when the host goes down. In this case, the failure was on Amazon’s side- the hardware where our instance resided was failing.
ShofarSites Featured in the Jewish Ledger
ShofarSites, a division of TNR Global, which creates Joomla! based web sites for synagogues, created a new web site for Congregation Beth El of Norwalk, CT. Read about it in the Jewish Ledger.
Migrating an OpenVZ Virtual Machine
One of the great features of OpenVZ is the ability to easily migrate a virtual machine(VM) to another server. While identifying the best methods to perform this task recently, I read about two tools to accomplish this task: vzdump, and vzmigrate. Continue reading “Migrating an OpenVZ Virtual Machine”