The Computing Center provides a web cluster to improve the web services performances. The whole web sites hosted at Computing Center will be gradualy migrated to this web cluster.

Technical description

The cluster builded at Computing Center consist of two forehead servers: an active one and a bakup one which which take the relay in case of failure of the first one. The forehead server node distributes the incoming connections over six other servers according to their load. These architecture allows higher performances and a higher reliability of the service.

New technical characteristics binded to the cluster :

 User account: there is no possibility to have several accounts for a same web site. The account is unique and generic for a given site.

 Access : there is no interactive access on the servers (in return, the access becomes possible from everywhere, without any network restriction).

 AFS : there is no way to access AFS space.

 Files transfert : the file access is done using the sftp protocol or using the scp command. All softwares can be used (free or costed versions) under Windows, Mac OS X or linux operating system. For example:

• WinScp (Windows)
• SSH client (Windows)
• Adobe Golive CS 2 (Windows, Mac OS X)
• Dreamweaver 8 (Windows, Mac OS X)
• Cyberduck (Mac OS X)
• TextWrangler (Mac OS X)

 Directories : a user connected to the cluster will be on the www directory of his site. These directory consist of 3 sub-directories :

• htdocs : directory with files of the web site
• cgi-bin : CGI directory
• log : directory with PHP logs, PHP sessions files and Apache logs

 Operating system : the operating system distribution is Red Hat Entreprise Linux WS release 4 (Nahant Update 2). [1]

 Software versions :

• PHP 5.1.2 [1]. The principal security prameters are :safe_mode activé, openbase_dir limited to the PEAR [1] distribution build with this PHP version and to the htdocs directory of the site,
• Perl [1] 5.8.5
• Python [1] 2.3.4,

 Apache server :

• version 2.0.53 [1]
• the base configuration of a virtual host is very limited but it can be modified on demand.

 Statistics : a graphical tool will be available soon to allow statistics vizualisation for each web site.

 Hosting modifications :

• A web interface will be provided for making web site hosting requests. Until this, the user support of the Computing Center will transmit your requests.

Recommendations for your site and recommended technologies

 Static web pages and PHP scripts (strongly recommended)
 Perl and Python scripts
 The possibility to use Java applications server is under study.
 The compiled CGIs scripts are not authorized on the cluster.

Legal informations

You can consult the web hosting charter at CC-IN2P3 by clicking here.

On the frame of the Numerical Economy Confidence Law (LCEN), a new charter in under drafting. It will be available on these page soon.

It will precise a certain number of points as the legal mentions that will be clearly visible on your site :

 name and email of the publication leader
 webmaster generic email
 name, address and link to the Computing Center

The publication leader :

 is responsible for the data hosted on his site.
 define the webmaster of his site
 can give to somebody else the generic account allowing access to his site, but is always reponsible under the law.

All modifications of the publication leader or the webmaster should be noticed to the Computing Center staff.