Web hosting services at CERN Alex Lossent – CERN IT/IS Hepix Fall 2005.

Web hosting services at Web hosting services at CERNCERN

Alex Lossent – CERN IT/IS

Hepix Fall 2005

10-Oct-2005 Alex Lossent 2

AgendaAgenda

Presentation of the service Demo Service infrastructure Recent achievements Future


AgendaAgenda



CERN Web ServicesCERN Web Services Mandate

Provide a managed infrastructure for CERN users to publish web content

Provide users with authoring and publishing tools Reduce “locally (un-)managed” web servers

CERN IT/IS Group (mail, Windows environment)

3 tasks Operate the central web hosting infrastructure Provide self-service site management interface User support


FiguresFigures

Infrastructure 25 production servers Hosting > 7000 web sites Serving ~ 2’000’000 requests/day

People Helpdesk provides 1st & 2nd level support 1.5 “FTE” Students and associates


CERN Web ServicesCERN Web Services

Self-service site management interface On-line documentation Site creation, deletion Management of permissions & access restrictions Management of site & folder properties

script/CGI execution Visibility (internal/world-visible) Require HTTPS

http://cern.ch/web

http://cern.ch/web

http://cern.ch/web

http://cern.ch/web


DemoDemo

Self-service site creation


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Service infrastructureService infrastructure Windows (2003 Server) + Linux (SLC3) Runs on top of CERN’s Windows & Linux

server environment Monitoring, HW/SW maintenance

Different server roles Hosting servers (11) Gateways to distributed file systems (4) Infrastructure support (6)

redirectors, administration, search engine “Customized” hosting servers (5)


Support for web Support for web applicationsapplications

Various technologies are provided for web application development

ASP, ASP.NET, Perl, PHP Supported on central Hosting Servers Databases: MS Access, Oracle (IT/DES) AFS folders: PHP, CGI (Perl etc.)

Java/servlet web application hosting Operated by IT/DES

Access control with NICE accounts/groups


AuthoringAuthoring

Supported authoring software Frontpage 2003, Dreamweaver Visual Studio .NET for ASP.NET applications

Several ways for authors to access site files Direct file access WebDAV Web interface FPSE


User recommendationsUser recommendations

Recommended technologies are: Centrally hosted web sites Authoring with FrontPage 2003 Dynamic content with ASP (VBScript)

Efforts focused on supporting that environment

Also supported: Dreamweaver Static content


About URLsAbout URLs

Web sites are published as http://www.cern.ch/mySiteName This is translated to

http://mysitename.web.cern.ch/mySiteName

Why? Many web sites & servers No virtual hosting so as to support HTTPS Web sites are 1st-level folders of a physical web server Web server’s name abstracted with DNS alias

“Web redirectors” are in charge of the translation Flexible implementation for integration of non-central sites Support for external DNS names

http://www.cern.ch/mySiteName

http://mysitename.web.cern.ch/mySiteName


Web redirectorsWeb redirectors

Web browser Redirectors

Web servers

http://www.cern.ch/web

302 Redirect

Web namespace

http://webservices.web.cern.ch/webservices

DNS zones


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Migration to Windows2003Migration to Windows2003

Many improvements over Windows2000 Simple “upgrade” was not possible Tedious migration task

Transparent for users


Support for PHPSupport for PHP

Popular technology Many useful applications already exist

PhpBB, wikis…

PHP4 A few problems

Bugs in the Windows port No version upgrades on SLC, only security fixes Version compatibility


Java/servlet web hostingJava/servlet web hosting

Provide a central service and limit “locally managed” servers

Service operated by IT/DES Tomcat 5.5, EJB not supported Multi-hosting with site isolation

Integrated with central web services Managed from the same web interface NICE authentication

Production since September 05 ~10 production applications + test/dev half migrated from existing servers 5 servers allow ~200 applications


New webservices siteNew webservices site

Consistent look & usage with other IT/IS services

Technology upgrade ASP.NET/SOAP vs. ASP/VB6

Complete documentation rewrite Simpler, easier access to some features

Security


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What’s next?What’s next?

Web-hosted collaboration tools “e-groups”: forum, mailing list, news, shared workspace

for file exchange… Sharepoint, WWF, custom solution?

Support for authentication with certificates

Improved search engine Support for “External users”

Web hosting services at CERN Alex Lossent – CERN IT/IS Hepix Fall 2005.

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