The new MySQL upgrade will improve stability, performance and security for Cloud Sites customers.

Key benefits include:

• Increased performance when using InnoDB transactions
• Better security with the latest MySQL patches for MySQL 5.1.61
• Latest bug fixes

See the latest MySQL documentation for more details.

As of August 31, 2012 MySQL 5.0 will no longer be supported by Cloud Sites, therefore we encourage customers to self-migrate to 5.1.  Please refer to Migrating MySQL 5.0 to 5.1 Knowledge article for details on migration

As always, we welcome your feedback on Cloud Sties and your experience with these and other features on our product feedback site.

Want to read more about Cloud Sites and how it came to be? Check out our Cloud Founders series, where we interview Rackspace cloud founders Jonathan Bryce and Todd Morey about Cloud Sites’ beginnings.

The combination, which integrates Rackspace’s flexible cloud and hosting product portfolio and Fanatical Support with EMC’s strong storage technology, creates a powerhouse pairing that offers enterprise-ready world class products. EMC and Rackspace partners can recommend Rackspace to host, implement and manage customers’ web-based applications and workloads, and do so with confidence.

At EMC World 2012 (May 21 through May 24 at The Venetian in Las Vegas), Rackspace will showcase the possibilities when two tech titans like Rackspace and EMC team up. Though a collaborative process, Rackspace and EMC are able to fuel long-term cloud strategies and solutions, and offer a plethora of enterprise configurations, to help clusters focus on their goals and objectives.

Rackspace and EMC have collaborated since 2001 to deliver innovative products and services that leverage both companies’ portfolios. And last year, the two tightened their relationships when Rackspace joined the EMC Velocity Service Provider Program.

We offer Dedicated Hosting with EMC storage, RackConnect with EMC storage and Private Cloud with EMC storage. We know that enterprise needs are not the same, so we’re helping out with different solutions for the various problems that can spring up. And at EMC World, we’ll be showcasing RackConnect, our hybrid hosting offering; Advisory Services, our team of enterprise architects that can help you design and customize your cloud environment; and Private Cloud.

Currently, the market is pulling customers in various different directions. C level executives are being called upon to develop strategies that help them get a better return on resources and do more with less. At the same time, IT management is faced with serving the dynamic and demanding needs of disparate business unites while also staying innovative and reducing costs. Meanwhile, developers on the front line have become over-taxed by the need to scale resources and bulk up cloud expertise to get the job done right and get it done quickly.

Together, Rackspace’s and EMC’s cloud solutions can meet those needs and let enterprises focus on running their core business. Rackspace and EMC let businesses meet business demand and mitigate risk; focus on innovation and avoid lock-in; take control of their infrastructure with more agility; and better utilize resources to reduce costs.

If you want to learn more about how Rackspace and EMC can fuel your IT transformation, please stop by our booth at EMC World (#418). Mention the word “voodoo” for some cool Rackspace schwag.

So why exactly would you need a load balanced website? Well, a single server can only handle so many connections. After a certain point it just can’t handle any more users, and the website starts to slow down or even become unreachable. A load balancer is a device that can spread those visitors over a bunch of different servers, allowing the “load” of those visitors and their requests to be “balanced” over a number of different devices. Especially with the Rackspace Cloud, creating more servers to handle increased load is remarkably simple. Even if you don’t have that much traffic to worry about, in the event that your server crashes a load balancer will let you spin up new servers and immediately start sending traffic their way instead of having to wait for the DNS records to update (which could take 24 hours to 48 hours).

Simple analogy: a single server is like a single twig and will easily break, but a load balancer allows you to tie a whole bunch of twigs together to make a stronger solution.

Before we get started, here’s a quick overview of the steps we’re going to take:

1. Spin up and configure a complete WordPress server.
2. Duplicate the WordPress server and set up as SQL server.
3. Force WordPress server to use remote SQL server.
4. Configure cloud storage solution for images and uploaded files.
5. Configure Load Balancer and DNS records.

OK, here we go!

1. Spin up and configure a complete WordPress server

The easiest way to configure the load balanced system is to start with a complete and functioning server with everything running just the way you like it, and then slice it up from there. So the first step is to spin up a new server. Windows, Linux, whatever — it doesn’t really matter. But for the purposes of this walk-through we’re going to be using Fedora Linux 16. Rackspace already has a great article about how to set up a cloud server instance, so I’m not going to go over that again.

Once you have your server set up you need to have the following things running:

• Webserver (IIS / Apache)
• SQL Server (Microsoft SQL / MySQL)
• PHP

Personally, I’m an Apache/MySQL/PHP kind of guy as they’re much easier to configure for me, but pick your own poison. Again, Rackspace has some good articles on how to do it or you can scour Google. I also like to slap PHPMyAdmin on there because it makes administrating MySQL a whole lot easier.

At this point you should have everything squared away on your server — MySQL up and running, WordPress installed and properly configured, firewall allowing HTTP access and the operating system fully updated. If you have a domain name for the WordPress site you should point it to the server now and make sure everything is working using the domain instead of the IPs — this will save you some trouble down the road. Go ahead and take a quick image of this server (another Rackspace article there) so that if everything goes sideways you still have something to work with.

2. Duplicate the WordPress server and set up as SQL server

Now we need to slice out the MySQL server and set it running on a standalone system.

“Wait, WHAT?!” I hear you cry, and there’s a good reason for it. Putting the SQL server on a different system makes the traffic susceptible to sniffing and requires you to open up the SQL port in the firewall, but it needs to be done. But first, the reason it needs to be done.

WordPress uses the SQL database to store just about everything, including the text of your posts and the comments. When you have a single server it makes sense to have the SQL server on the same box, but when you have multiple servers running the same website the only way to have them all running and showing the exact same content simultaneously is to have a single central SQL server with the “master” copy of the database. You’ll still need to replicate the uploaded files (pictures and so forth) across the different web servers, though.

So, now that everything is running you will need to spin up a new server to act as the central SQL server. Take an image of the running server that you have and spin up a new one from that image (see article here).

Now that you have an identical server running we need to slice some things out to slim it down and improve performance, as well as allow other servers to use it.

1. Set the permissions on the MySQL Database for your WordPress installation to allow connections from anywhere and not just the local system. This is best accomplished using the “Permissions” tab in PHPMyAdmin.
2. Disable Apache on the system. Don’t uninstall it (as you’ll need it for the PHPMyAdmin system), simply disable it. Use this command: sudo service httpd stop

We also need to open the firewall to allow MySQL connections (port 3306). This traffic should never leave the Rackspace network, but since it is still technically a public connection you should still pick a good username / password combination to protect the server. Open the iptables config file in a text editor (sudo vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables) and pop the following line at the top of the config:

• -A INPUT -p tcp –dport mysql -j ACCEPT

Save the file and reboot the server for good measure.

3. Force WordPress server to use remote SQL server

You now have one working COMPLETE server, and one working SQL-only server. The next step is to tie the two together.

WordPress uses a file called “wp-config.php” to keep track of the MySQL connection information. The file is stored in the root directory of the WordPress installation. Since we created the SQL server based off the existing running complete server, we can assume that the username and password combination in this file is correct and the rest of the database is compatible. The only thing we need to change is the address of the server.

When we’re picking the IP address we want to connect to, we have a choice. We can either use the public IP of the server (listed on the Rackspace Cloud control panel page for the server) or we can find the private IP of the server and use that instead. The private IP address will force the connection to route over Rackspace’s internal network instead of going over the public Internet and so makes the connection less likely to be sniffed (especially if the servers are in the same datacenter). You can find the private IP address of the SQL server by SSHing into the computer and running “ifconfig.” The private IP will usually be a 10.x.x.x address on eth1.

Here’s the corrected line you need to update in wp-config.php using either the public or private IP:

• define(‘DB_HOST’, ’10.179.98.192′);

Where 10.179.98.192 is the IP address of your SQL server. If you have a DNS record for the SQL server you can slap that in there instead and pop some single quotes around it. Like so:

• define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘sql20.notaserver.net’);

There are a couple errors that could arise once you make the change to the WordPress configuration, and thanks to my own idiotic stumblings I’ve experienced most of them. Thankfully I also have a solution. So, if you get the following errors on your WordPress site when trying to load it after making the switch, this is what’s going on:

• Unable to establish a connection… : The WordPress installation is trying to connect to the newly designated MySQL server, but can’t get it to work. This specific error is indicative of the network connection itself being unable to make it between the servers. Ensure that the IP address or domain name of the server that you specified in the wp-config.php file is correct and responding to pings from the web server itself. Also ensure that the firewall on the SQL server is allowing the traffic.
• HTTP 500 Error: Also known as the “internal server error,” this indicates that the connection to the SQL server is up and working, but something else is amiss. Make sure that the account (username and password combination) you’re using in the wp-config.php file is granted the right permissions on the SQL server for the database for the WordPress tables, and also that the account is allowed to be accessed from any IP address and not just the local host.
• The site isn’t the latest version: If you spun up the SQL server instance using an older image of your single complete server (for example, if you’ve published new stuff since then) you might not have all of the articles in the SQL server’s database. You can either type them in on the new system or spin up and configure a new SQL server from an image of the current server being sure to tell your writers to hold their horses for a bit.

At this point you should be looking at one server running Apache and PHP with the WordPress files on it, and one server with MySQL and the WordPress content on it, and they should be working together to serve the website.

4. Configure cloud storage solution for images and uploaded files

The next issue is with the images and other files associated with your WordPress site. In a normal configuration all of the media files are stored on the webserver itself, but because we now have multiple webservers running it’s very hard to duplicate the files across both servers efficiently. Thankfully Rackspace’s Cloud Files solution offers a great alternative storage method for all the images you want to post on your blog, and a WordPress plugin is available to do all of the hard work for you. CDN Tools is a third party plugin that will automatically upload all of your files to the Rackspace Cloud Files service and do the magic to make them appear in your posts. An added benefit is that because the images are being served from a content delivery network — instead of the server itself — it reduces the load on your webservers and makes the site load faster.

5. Configure Load Balancer and DNS records

Now we just need to set up the load balancer.

Think of your server configuration as a straight line. On one end you have the Internet, where your readers will come from to visit the site. The first thing they should hit on their way into your network is the load balancer, which will direct their traffic to the appropriate server based on some parameters we’ll set up. Next in line are the web servers, the dumb systems that simply serve static HTML or PHP pages and respond on port 80. Those systems talk to the “brains” of the operation, which is last in line, the SQL server that listens on port 3306. The SQL server sends the webservers whatever content the reader wants to see; the webservers spice it up and make a presentable web page based on the WordPress files; and the load balancer remembers where the traffic came from and sends it right back to them. Now that we have the infrastructure spun up to handle a load balancer, we need to spin up the load balancer itself.

Rackspace has a great article on how to spin up a load balancer, and you should follow it to configure the LB. Set the webserver we’ve spun up (the one with Apache still running) as the only node behind the LB for now.

With the load balancer up and running you now have a complete solution. Using the public IP address of the load balancer you can change your DNS records to point your various domains to that LB. Remember to setup Apache with a virtual server in the configuration files of the SERVERS (nodes) for each domain name you want to point towards your load balancer, as the LB will blindly pass the traffic along without altering it and allow you to run as many sites off that one configuration as your heart desires.

At this point you should take an image of the webserver (the node) that is running behind the load balancer. If you see your server starting to slow down, all you have to do is spin up a new instance of that server and designate it as a node in the load balancer’s configuration. Traffic should be balanced between the servers automatically and your site will remain up and responding.

And that’s how you set up WordPress in a load balanced environment with Rackspace Cloud. Well, at least that’s how I did it. And I think I did a damn fine job.

1. Email is not for everything. When you’re sending a message that requires more than a few paragraphs, email may not be the best medium. Pick up the phone or discuss it in person.

2. Who really cares? It may be tempting to send an email to all employees to announce a departmental victory, but it is necessary? Help lessen the weight on colleagues’ inboxes by considering who really needs the information before firing off a message.

3. It’s not a race. Instead of replying immediately to each email as it’s received, schedule time every few hours to sort and respond to email. Turning off the new message pop-ups and notifications helps to reduce the temptation to dive into the inbox.

4. Know when to clock out. Just because you can check your work email around the clock, doesn’t mean you should. When you leave the office, turn off email notifications on your phone to avoid tipping your work/life balance.

5. Be a professional. Save the cute emoticons and OMGs for personal communication. Not only does it help maintain the professionalism and clarity of your message, but it can also help you avoid an embarrassing email blunder.

6. Over-emailing annoys. Don’t send an email to confirm if a recipient received an email or multiple messages to check on status. Sending too many messages can cause recipients to ignore them.

7. Don’t get too attached. For large digital files, email isn’t an ideal medium for distribution. Consider using file storage services, like SharePoint or Cloud Files, to share the big stuff.

8. Don’t wait for spring to clean. Set aside time each week to tidy up your inbox to reduce clutter. Use the time to move messages to folders, delete old messages, and check your junk folder for misrouted messages.

9. Protect your work email address. Giving out your primary business email address for whitepaper downloads or webinar registrations can lead to an onslaught of unwanted email. Use a separate email account or an alias for registrations and downloads.

10. Watch this video. The following video shows you how to use existing tools to tame your inbox, plus more ways to streamline your inbox for better email management.

• Advocating is not inquiring – that’s asking questions.
• Advocating is not listening – that’s staying open to the words and actions of others and hearing what they really have to say.
• Advocating is not empathizing – that would be relating to others through their feelings and the perspective.

Advocating is what I am doing right now; that is, talking (via my writing) to make a point. The challenge most of us face is that we don’t know when we’re advocating.

As designers, we are trained to listen, to ask good questions and to empathize. However, we are not effectively trained to advocate; to communicate what we want and need for ourselves, and to communicate what we, as advocates or proxies for the customer experience, need. It turns out that given the work each of us engage in, it is essential that you advocate for yourself, your projects, your team and your discipline!

Advocating is not simply getting credit where credit is due; it’s about putting yourself out there. Advocating is about knowing what to say, when to say it and how to say it so that the right people will listen and act on your behalf to get things done. It’s about leaning forward and allowing natural forces to pull you into the conversation.

When I was a kid, I learned that walking was, essentially, the act of leaning forward and falling into the next step…by putting one leg in front of the other and allowing gravity to pull me ahead. Advocating is similar. Let the gravity of your job pull you forward. Lean into it. And, as with walking, it’s essential to put one foot in front of the other so to speak.

Advocate for the customer, or as some designers say (and as much as I detest the term) “the user.” Advocate for your stakeholders and for better experience design overall. If people don’t know who you are, what you’re capable of, what value you create and how you make things better simply by showing up, then we are all missing out. It is essential that designers advocate for better experiences across channels, up and down the interaction chain.

Part of our job is to help people see that what shows up in an interface is only a small piece of the puzzle. Another key part of our job is to thread the needle through the interface—from the business model, through service design interactions, experience moments and ultimately the UI.  And, from a omni-channel point of view, it doesn’t matter if the experience moment manifests for the end user, pre-sales engagement, post sales support, software developers or any other persona.

In an omni-channel world, it is about personas and what I call atomic-segments—the smallest meaningful unit of people who have the same expectations. Consider an expectation to be the sum of non-negotiable demands and wants or desires.

As I see it, limiting our understanding to “users” doesn’t make sense because the term is overloaded at best and pejorative at worst.

As agents of change, and to create the kind of world we want to live in, we have to take into account and accept responsibility for crafting the interaction chains that lead to high utility and usable designs that deliver extraordinary value-for-value exchanges. You have to connect this stuff all the way back because great interfaces aren’t enough anymore. We have to link design deep into our organizations.

These are the things that I’m asking all designers to take responsibility for:

• Illuminating – Shedding light
• Educating – Learning and helping others learn
• Negotiating – Collaborating and compromising
• Activating – Getting it done and being the change you want to see in the world
• Advocating – Talking about the things that matter

These are the things I’m asking you to think about and do. There is a huge opportunity in front of us.

What is your job at Rackspace?

My title is Senior Vice President.  For the last two years I lead the cloud computing initiatives within Rackspace.  Now I am helping Rackspace transition to a cloud computing company — not just a company with a cloud computing division.  I oversee our core business as well as product, marketing, and each of our engineering locations outside of San Antonio, which include Austin, San Francisco, Atlanta and Blacksburg, Va.
 
 
 
What do startups mean to Rackspace?

Startups are critical to Rackspace. The cloud is an amazing platform for innovation that startups can easily and affordably leverage to get their business off the ground. We want as many startups as possible to build their businesses on our cloud. I really believe that most jobs in the future will be created from companies that haven’t even formed yet. The future of the world economy relies on great startup innovation that is still to come. From a Rackspace perspective, that means a lot of potential growth for us. Also, it wasn’t long ago that Rackspace was a startup.  We are still very much in touch with our startup roots and we want to help as many startups as we can.

Explain the entrepreneurial spirit within Rackspace?

There is a ton of entrepreneurial spirit within Rackspace. Rackspace is still a very young company and growing faster than most startups in early stages. We are fortunate to work with thousands of startups that are building their businesses on top of our cloud and hosting services.  Also, we’ve acquired six startups over the last few years and I imagine we will acquire more in the future.

You can just feel our entrepreneurial energy when you walk into our offices. We have 4,300 employees today, but in many ways we still operate like a startup. Rackspace is low politics and high energy, with incredible opportunity for people who work here. I think entrepreneurship is all about creating opportunities. We’re growing fast and creating amazing opportunities for thousands of people. I think that’s pretty awesome.

What is your favorite startup story within Rackspace?

I’m most impressed with the Mosso story. Mosso was truly our first venture into cloud computing and it was actually an internal initiative.  Led by Lew Moorman, the company took a group of passionate Rackers, relocated them to a different part of San Antonio and allowed them to invent our future.  These Rackers took an idea, a vision, a passion and they went and made it happen. One of the reasons that it’s my favorite story is because it happened within the company — that is not something you see very often. Most companies struggle with innovation, especially when it’s something that will cannibalize their core business.

Why was the Rackspace Startup Program conceived?

We wanted to figure out how we can help startups in the very early stages. Early stage startups don’t have a lot of money. We want to help startups get going. It comes back to the entrepreneurial spirit within Rackspace; we are a very entrepreneur-friendly company. I also believe that most companies that work with us will grow with us.  So there are certainly business benefits to the startup program as well.

What advantages do Rackspace Cloud Computing and Fanatical Support give a startup?

Startups are building the next generation of businesses on the cloud.  We can help there.  Early stage startups typically don’t have a lot of money, so we can help there too.  But the main thing that makes Rackspace different from everyone else is our willingness to help.  We call this Fanatical Support.  Startups need to focus on creating value for their users and customers.  They don’t need to spend a lot of time worrying about the plumbing behind the scenes.  Many startups are pushing the envelope when it comes to technology and thus the cloud.  This is complicated stuff and whenever complexity is involved, Fanatical Support is really valuable.

What is the best advice that you could give to a startup?

Focus.  Startups are normally started by smart and ambitious people. When you are really smart and ambitious, it’s easy to imagine all the things you could take on.  More products.  More features.  More customers to target. But at first, you need to focus on getting started and creating value in some kind of unique way.  What is the one thing you can be truly great at?  Focus on that. Most startups fail not because entrepreneurs are dumb or lazy. It is because they don’t focus.

If you could launch a startup right now, what would it be and why?

I really don’t know.  I love high tech and Internet businesses.  I love companies that re-invent norms.  But I don’t spend a lot of time dreaming about a future outside of Rackspace.  Right now I’m very focused.

An Insider view of how important it is for startups to focus, from Pat Matthews, senior vice president at Rackspace, a true entrepreneur and startup innovator. The Rackspace Startup Program thanks Pat for his dedication to the startup movement in giving back, staying connected and learning from startups. Get all of the Insider information for your startup by contacting the Space Cowboys today!

And check out previous installments of the Rackspace Startup Program Insider:

• Rackspace Startup Program Insider With John Engates
• Rackspace Startup Program Insider: Lew Moorman Talks Startups
• Rackspace Startup Program Insider: Lanham Napier On The Vision & Guts Of Startups

More Satisfied Users
. By giving users the power to create their own solutions, IT is no longer in the hot seat to solve minor business problems. Users can build what they want, when they want with little or no IT intervention. IT is able to strengthen its relationship with users, and users get maximum control over creating and delivering their own work tools.

More Bandwidth. 
While end users are building their own solutions in SharePoint, IT can focus on the big, mission-critical projects that drive business. The delivery curve for projects is reduced as those small tasks taking IT away from the really important projects are handed over to users on a controlled, easy-to-use platform.  By moving or consolidating tasks into SharePoint, businesses also have an opportunity to reallocate hardware and resources to other tasks.

More Control
. SharePoint prevents users from going around IT to implement solutions that haven’t been properly vetted. IT maintains the integrity of SharePoint leaving users free to tailor solutions without worrying about the backend – unlike rogue applications or processes that sit outside of IT and risk data loss and proprietary information leaks. If a user creates a SharePoint solution that needs to be serviced by IT, SharePoint serves as a familiar platform that allows for easy administration and support for both the end user and the IT team.

More Scale. 
SharePoint provides a platform for solutions of all shapes and sizes to grow in importance and requirements along with their business. What starts out as a narrow solution for one team, can easily evolve into a broader, business-wide solution without outgrowing the SharePoint platform. IT can govern and monitor applications built on the SharePoint platform; if these applications ever become large, mission-critical business systems, ownership can be transferred from departments to IT using a deliberate, pre-planned process.

How SharePoint impacts your organization is based on your unique use case and business goals. Learn more about SharePoint at Rackspace.

The goal of a CDN is to distribute static media to users who are visiting your website. One benefit of using a CDN is the fact that they use a geographical DNS resolution to make sure that your users hit a CDN server closest to their geographic location. By doing this, you can deliver the media content quicker to your users’ browser. I also made a video on this topic as part of our Google+ Wednesday Video series.

There are a couple of WordPress plugins that can connect the media on your site to Rackspace Cloud Files and help leverage the CDN. One of those is CDN Tools – as you upload an image or media file to your site, the plugin will store that file automatically on your Rackspace Cloud Files account so you can benefit from the CDN. Another plugin that supports a large variety of CDNs in addition to Rackspace Cloud Files is W3 Total Cache.

With only a few clicks, you can leverage these plugins to better serve media content to your end users. Not only will they get the content faster, your server will not be over taxed by rendering media files and can focus on delivering the text content of your site.

If you’d like to see a video of Matt talking about how to integrate a CDN into your WordPress Site, head over to our Google+ Page. For the next several weeks, Matt will be providing tips and tricks for WordPress. Last week, Matt talked about the importance of caching your WordPress site. Be sure to check back next week when he explains how to backup both the file system and database of your WordPress Site.

“We’re not worthy! We’re not worthy!”  I’d like to send a quick, personal shout-out to all “Real Rackers” everywhere and especially those of you kind enough to endure our storming of The Castle for our story (News 4 WOAI at 6:30).

I can’t tell you how much “job envy” everyone here has after looking at our footage. You should feel very proud of where you “work” and I hope we get across the real vibe of what it’s like to be there every day. It’s pretty entertaining and I’m guessing that more than a few “wanna-be Rackers” will try to join you after seeing our story.  I hope they’re worthy.

Thanks again and RACK ON!

Beamer

Hello Interactive is an agency that was one of the first Cloud Sites customers. It was responsible for hosting the online votes  for the Teen Choice Awards. Hello Interactive is an expert at creating great content and design, but it needed a place to host an online voting application. Cloud Sites was the solution that handled millions of votes leading up to the awards show. Hear about this great story first hand from the cloud founders in this video and check out our other videos with the two founders.