The “Ceph Lords” refer to an elite society of scholars, technologists, and engineers that was founded by Captain Nemo almost 150 years ago.  While on a seafaring exploration 20,000 leagues under the sea, he tangled with a colossal cephalopod that had never been documented before.  Thereafter, the Captain recruited the best and brightest to study nature’s mysteries and apply their discoveries in an effort to advance science and technology.

Over fifty highly esteemed members of the OpenStack community will convene at DreamHost’s San Francisco office on Thursday, February 2^nd.  The theme of this Meetup will be the Ceph storage project and how it’s currently being implemented in production.

Ceph is a massively scalable, open source, distributed storage system.  There has been widespread interest from the OpenStack community in using Ceph’s RADOS Block Device to fill the block storage void in the cloud software stack.  There is also interest in using Ceph’s object store as a potential alternative to Swift.

The OpenStack project has been an important part of Ceph’s development effort.  To learn more about how the Ceph team is contributing to the OpenStack project, visit http://ceph.newdream.net/openstack/ .

RSVP today to save your spot at this upcoming OpenStack Meetup.

Agenda

6:30 PM – Food, drink, & networking

7:15 – Welcome

7:25 – “Introduction to Ceph and DreamHost’s Object Service Deployment”

Ben Cherian, GM of Emerging Tech at DreamHost, will kick off the discussion.  He’ll provide a general overview of the Ceph project.

Tommi Virtanen, Senior File Systems Engineer, will continue the overview from a much more technical perspective.

Carl Perry, Cloud Architect, will finish with a real-world description of the DreamHost object storage service implementation of Ceph.

8:15 – Intermission

8:30 – “OpenStack Block Storage with Ceph”, Christopher MacGown, Co-Founder and CTO of Piston Cloud Computing, Inc.

9:15 – Sessions are complete – more networking

 
Written by: Brent Scotten

Customer Spotlight: Splatter Music

Congratulations on Splattermusic.com winning DreamHost Site of the Month in the content, design and overall categories! Tell me about Splatter Music?

Jim: Thanks! I launched splatterMUSIC.com in February 2011 as a video site that focused on more serious, user-generated content such as new music videos and album reviews. I quickly realized the comedic content of the site was getting the most attention and it’s what I really enjoyed the most too. In July, I shifted splatterMUSIC to focus completely on the comedic video and music content, and the rest is history. Our slogan is — “All Music. All Video. All Funny.” — because we are the only comedic music site and feature only hilarious, quality, video content.

And aside from being a website with a lot of crazy FAIL, music video parodies and barfing drummer videos, we’re increasingly known as a powerful place for bands to get unique exposure. When there is a stage mishap caught on video, for example, you have a cool way for you to reach new fans and that’s where we come in. Just this week actually, we launched a short clip from a local LA band called “Raw Geronimo” to be funny, while also giving them some cool publicity and new fans.

Who designed your site?

Jim: I did. I am not very technical, but I had built some previous websites with WordPress and can usually figure out how to do what is needed. A huge amount of time went, and still goes, into the site’s design. It’s meant to be simple, clean, LOUD and fun.

What is your web traffic like?

Jim: Well, our busiest day last month had over 282,000 video views. I’m working hard to make every day that awesome. An average day isn’t too far below that though. Most of all, we have a really active audience that hang out and watch a few videos at a time, which is awesome. I even created a fake user name that I use when I comment and talk to people on the site.

Which Splatter Music landing page has the most traffic?

Jim: Our viewers usually come to the site from a link to a particular video that was shared with them. So the most popular videos are the most popular pages. A lot of people then stick around and cruise the homepage for more videos, which makes me super happy.

What are your favorite videos?

Jim: All of them are really my favorites since I approve the final content of the site. I am the Hugh Hefner of splatterMUSIC. I think two of my favorites today are “Top 5 Worst Guitar Solos Ever” and “Orchestra Fail.” Those rip me every time.

What videos got the most action on your site?

Jim: The most popular video ever is “Notorious B.I.G. Calms Crying Baby.” When we posted that video ahead of the curve, the discovery engines and social networks got hold of it and it exploded.

 How long have you been using DreamHost?

Jim: When I decided to create the site, I went with DreamHost. I also use DreamHost for my late father’s website, which holds many of his books, lectures and writings. That site is RonMillersWorld.org. He was a highly-regarded expert, so anyone with an intellect in theology and spirituality should check it out.

How did you find DreamHost?

Jim: I used Google search and carefully researched the companies that were recommended for web hosting. I called each of them and the person I spoke to at DreamHost was really down to earth and helpful. I didn’t feel like he was trying to sell me. It’s been a perfect marriage ever since.

Any parts of the DreamHost Panel you use?

Jim: Yeah, I use the DreamHost Panel all the time: 1-click Installs, site status, support questions, renewals and registrations, WebFTP, etc. There might even be some new additions coming to the “splatter” family later this year.

What’s next for splatterMUSIC?

Jim: Right now we are testing original splatterMUSIC videos, and also teaming up with celebrity musicians to shift into becoming a production entity as well as a distribution channel. One example is a video by Mat Devine of Kill Hannah called “MAT DEVINE READS: “Damn It Feels Good To Be a Gangster.” We’re high school friends from back in Chicago and it is hilarious. So the short-term will increasingly see a lot more of these partnerships, as well as a lot of crazy original splatterMUSIC productions.

Where else can we find you online?

Jim: We are all over that information highway, but Facebook and Twitter are our primary social networking hubs.

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/splatterMUSIC

Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/splatterMUSICco

In the DreamHost spirit of transparency and openness, I’m providing this update on our blog on the security issue yesterday. It’s necessarily pretty dry and factual, unlike most DreamHost posts, but that’s important to communicate as much detail as possible while not disclosing the inner workings of our security defenses. The bad news is that we detected access to one of our databases and took rapid action to protect customer accounts and passwords. The good news is that it does not appear that any significant malicious activity has occurred on any customer accounts as a result of the illegal access.

Early yesterday, one of DreamHost’s database servers was illegally accessed using an exploit that was not previously known or prevented by our layered security systems in place. Our intrusion detection systems alerted our Security team to the potential hack, and we rapidly identified the means of illegal access and blocked it.

Our first priority in this situation is to protect the safety and security of our customers’ websites and information. A quick review of the data potentially accessed indicated that some customers’ FTP and shell access passwords may have been compromised. So we decided to err on the side of caution and immediately initiate a forced reset of all customers’ FTP and shell access passwords, with the aim of preventing any illegal activity on customer websites. All FTP and shell access passwords were reset, and customer notifications were inserted in the web panel and on www.dreamhoststatus.com asking customers to specify new passwords once they’d logged in.

DreamHost has three types of user passwords – a web panel password, FTP/shell access passwords, and email passwords. Web panel passwords and email passwords were not accessed or affected. However we recommended in an update email to customers and their email users late yesterday that they reset their email passwords as well, as a precaution. It’s important to note that NO CUSTOMER BILLING INFORMATION OR OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION WAS ACCESSED.

Our Security and Software teams have been investigating if any customer sites, apps or blogs have been affected as a result of the intrusion. As yet we have not identified any major issues – potentially as a result of the swift action to force a password reset. We’ll continue to monitor all systems and investigate and assist with any issues if they come up. We’ll all be working hard over the coming days to minimize any impact on customers beyond the password reset.

DreamHost uses a sophisticated suite of security software and constant monitoring that typically prevents any type of illegal access to our systems. In this case, our systems were not able to prevent the unauthorized access, however our intrusion detection system did allow us to respond immediately and minimize customer impact. We’ve already implemented changes to prevent any similar attempted hacks, and we’re performing a rigorous security review including a detailed review of customer input on potential vulnerabilities. Defending against cyber attacks is unfortunately an everyday part of business for Internet companies, so we’re constantly evolving our security measures to prevent them.

Thanks to all our customers for your patience, support and understanding. We acted swiftly to minimize the risks of the intrusion, and we know that changing passwords has caused you inconvenience. Customers who have ongoing concerns can contact our support team through the web panel. And I’ll be posting another update here if further information that can be shared publicly.

Simon Anderson
CEO, DreamHost

Shhhh! Do you hear that?

Listen!

Close your eyes and really concentrate.

That, my friend, is the sound of about two thousand oversized nerd guts clenching in feverish anticipation of the Southern California Linux Expo!

We can count ourselves among the clenched faithful as both DreamHost and the Ceph team are sponsors of the show this year!

SCALE 10x (it’s the 10th one!) kicks off TOMORROW at the LAX Hilton!

Ceph’s chief architect, Sage Weil, will be speaking at SCALE Sunday, January 22nd, at 4:30pm in the “Los Angeles B” room: “Ceph Distributed Storage System”

If you plan to attend SCALE this year make sure you stop by the Ceph booth (booth #6!) to meet some of our team!

Bring a resume too, because you never know what might happen… Both DreamHost and Ceph have plenty of jobs and not enough people!

Try to get some rest tonight.

Unclench yourself and prepare to be assaulted by an open source love-fest.

Things will get weird.