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Load Balancing Virtualmin WordPress Hosting Server with Varnish on AWS

By on May 17, 2012 in Amazon Web Services, Consulting, Content Management Systems, Virtualmin, Wordpress

I am creating a true load balancer topography for a WordPress hosting server, if it needs to scale up beyond what the current system can handle.

Scaling Levels

The current system is the “admin” path shown in the diagram, with no CDN or Load Balancing. It will handle a lot of traffic, but it is somewhat vulnerable to failure and overload. A simple and inexpensive extension of this system is to add CloudFront CDN, the “beta users” path.

For ultimate reliability and speed, I propose the “users” path: This will take most load off of the Virtualmin/Apache and Webmin/MySQL servers, because the user will be interacting only with CloudFront CDN and Varnish Caching Servers.

Load Balancing

The Load Balancing layer can be deployed separate from the current configuration, with DNS change to Route 53 for domains that require Load Balancing. If DNS routing for a domain goes to the Elastic IP, that traffic will interact directly with the primary Virtualmin/Apache server, which is OK for beta stage.

Traffic via Route 53 will be served from the Varnish instances, which will be load balanced, in multiple Availability Zones, and will serve cached WordPress pages as static HTML.

W3 Total Cache coordinates Apache and Varnish to provide updated disk-cached pages, and some data objects. CloudFront CDN pulls linked images, css, js, etc. from Apache via the W3 disk and opcode caches.

Redundancy and Fault Tolerance

More fault tolerance, speed and redundancy can be created via RAID10 arrays of multiple EBS Volumes, attached to the Virtualmin and Webmin instances. Creating a Storage Area Network for these volumes will provide shared /home and /var for the primary and slave instances.

Slave Server pairs for Virtualmin/Apache and Webmin/MySQL can be created to respond in round-robin fashion to the Varnish requests. With AWS Auto-scaling, more instances can be created on-demand if load on the backend servers is too great.

EBS snapshots of primary database server and web server will provide speedy recovery from catastrophic failure.
S3 backups of virtual domains on the primary Virtualmin/Apache server will provide speedy restoration of broken code or loss of files.

Be aware that creating a system with all of the elements I have described could be very expensive, and probably not necessary unless traffic is in the millions.

Website Workflow

WordPress sites:

At Soft Launch (client approval or beta):

  • Point A record to Elastic IP
  • Set up W3 Total Cache with CloudFront and Varnish, but do not deploy

At Public Launch:

  • Deploy W3TC
  • Point A record to Route 53, or set name servers to Route 53
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Office Furniture Retail Showcase

By on May 17, 2011 in Content Management Systems, Portfolio, Retail, Small Business
Office Coordinators Inc. website

Office Coordinators Inc. website

I worked with Office Coordinators Inc’s talented in-house designers to update the OCI website. OCI chose an e-commerce theme, and we completely reworked the CSS and layout to match their colors and logo treatment. After a previous failed attempt with another developer, they were surprised at how quickly the site came together, and how easy it is to manage with WordPress!

  • “Inquiry mode” e-commerce: customers can select items, add to shopping cart, then email for more information or price quote
  • Search Engine Optimization: Google Analytics and Sitemaps
  • WordPress Content Management
  • Social Networking with Facebook “score card”

Thank you for your persistence. You’re our favorite website/technically savvy guy ever.
— Emily Vaughn, OCI

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Bike Shop Website with Facebook Features

By on February 13, 2011 in Content Management Systems, Portfolio, Retail, Small Business

Suck Creek Cycle website

I’ve been hosting and helping with Suck Creek Cycle’s website since they opened in 1998. The site was long overdue for an upgrade, so I took an existing template design and tweaked it a bit to look like the bike shop, then integrated social media and syndicated content from their vendors.

  • Facebook local business page integration — publish from WordPress directly to Facebook
  • Facebook Friends and Wall displayed on the website
  • RSS Syndication for news from cycling sites and bike vendors
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Farmers Market Website

By on September 5, 2010 in Agriculture, Content Management Systems, Organic Farms, Portfolio, Wordpress

Main St Farmers Market website

This is a major redesign of the website for Chattanooga’s Main St Farmers Market. Local designers Widgets & Stone came up with the logos and suggested the look and feel, and I worked with Padgett Arnold to get the visuals and content just right. One interesting fact about the site: the web server is located on Main St as well! Keepin’ it LOCAL!

  • Interactive home page presents tons of information in a compact javascript slider
  • Fresh content includes recipes and a list of what’s available each week
  • Facebook fan page gets automatically updated with new content
  • New photos and videos are easily uploaded via SlideShowPro and YouTuber for a fun, engaging user experience
  • Lightweight CSS3 design and an alternative layout for mobile browsers present the site quickly and efficiently
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Landscape Architect Website with Slideshows & Social Media Integration

By on January 28, 2010 in Content Management Systems, Contracting, Portfolio
Craig Design Group Website

Craig Design Group Website

This is a simple website for a Chattanooga based landscape architect that focuses on beautiful portfolio slideshows. We’ve also added Twitter and Facebook integration to keep fans and customers updated on the latest projects.

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Social Media — Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and Sharing

By on December 3, 2009 in Content Management Systems, Wordpress

Social media, including sites like Facebook and MySpace, micro-blogging platforms like Twitter, and sharing/bookmarking tools like Digg, Del.icio.us and Stumble Upon are all very important to your outreach to customers, not to mention the incoming links they provide, and the potential of exponential viral traffic.

Add to this the need for regular blogging (on your site and other platforms) and email updates, and the management of all this online communication becomes daunting. What if there were a way to integrate all of your modes of online presence, so you’d only have to post once to update all of the different platforms? Well, the short answer is: there is.

I’ve been working with a local organic farm to update their online presence, and we’ve come up with a very simple implementation of WordPress that cross-posts to Facebook Pages and Twitter. Every blog post automatically creates an entry with linkback on Facebook Pages, and an accompanying Tweet with linkback. It has been a great way to keep the farm’s audience informed and engaged.

Additionally, we’ve added bookmarking links for all of the major social media platforms and favorites keepers, thus adding to the potential for viral sharing.

I’m also working on a mailing list that further integrates with WordPress, and it’s looking very promising. There is a new WordPress mailing list plugin that allows opt-in or manually entered mailing list clients to manage automated subscriptions to blog and page updates, and allows administrators to manage multiple mailing lists, and send newsletters and alerts. It integrates with the website seamlessly and also has WYSIWYG editing.

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Organic Farm Website with Slideshows and Content Management

By on November 13, 2009 in Agriculture, Content Management Systems, Organic Farms, Portfolio, Wordpress
Sequatchie Cove Farm website

Sequatchie Cove Farm website

This site was produced in tandem with Widgets & Stone, a Chattanooga design firm. We’re members of Sequatchie Cove Farm’s Community Shared Agriculture program, so we are very familiar with the quality of the eggs, dairy, meat and produce coming out of the clean and fertile Sequatchie Valley. Continue Reading →

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Rafting and Adventure Travel Site with Reservation Form

By on July 23, 2009 in Adventure Travel, Content Management Systems, Portfolio
Southeastern Expeditions website

Southeastern Expeditions website

This site, for an adventure travel company that runs rafting and eco-tourism trips in North and Central America, features a clean interactive design and extensive search engine optimization, including tailored metatags, hyperlinks, and a backlink referral network. Continue Reading →

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Regional Visioning Plan

By on May 3, 2009 in Content Management Systems, Portfolio
Chattanooga STAND website

Chattanooga STAND website

This site, completed for Chattanooga’s Create Here, in tandem with design firm Widgets & Stone, is for a regional visioning process being conducted around Chattanooga, Tennessee.

  • Tell-a-friend and Volunteer forms
  • Semantic, search engine and handheld browser friendly design
  • Google Analytics to track page views, form submissions, pdf and  file downloads
  • Expression Engine multi-site manager
    • custom fields: staffers can frequently and easily update the content and sidebars
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Content Management Consulting

By on February 25, 2009 in Content Management Systems, Portfolio
AJC Media Solutions website

AJC Media Solutions website

I was contracted to develop the content management system for the Atlanta Journal Constitution’s AJC Media Solutions site.

I took a great design from IQ Interactive, created Joomla 1.5 templates, and structured the site so IQ and AJC staffers could easily add content, including an extensive collection of Flash movies and PDF whitepapers. Continue Reading →

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