Here at Voxel, we continue to push forward our vision of Cloud Computing (API-based, incrementally billed infrastructure) with our VoxCLOUD and VoxSERVER product lines. Recently, we’ve spent some time outlining where we think the industry is going in 2010 and how IaaS providers like Voxel fit in. Two recent press mentions include:
As always, if you’re a client of Voxel’s using our cloud products or have questions, feedback or comments, please feel free to reach out to us with your thoughts and opinions.
This video demonstrates how easy it is to set up both a physical and virtual server with just a couple clicks. Plus, see a basic overview of how to use Voxel’s content delivery network interface, VoxCAST.
Some high level goals we set for this app:
Ease of Use
Display an overview your Voxel global infrastructure at a glance
Give real-time feedback of your infrastructure’s status
Run fast while engaging user with a slick interactive UI
For this first iteration we focused our development around infrastructure. Eventually, we’re going to add full control of client management, including billing, support and more. We’re letting clients test drive our new portal while it’s in development.
It’s been a while since we last talked about Voxel Labs’s mod_cdn Apache module for easily interfacing an existing site with VoxCAST, so it’s definitely time for an update.
We’ve just released mod_cdn 1.1.0, which includes the following new features: * Support for timestamp-based VoxCAST OnDemand token authentication * Support for SSL-based sites * Support for using the X-Forwarded-For header when computing authentication tokens
For current users of mod_cdn, you’ll definitely want to update your server to use this new version in order to take advantage of the new features. Note that existing installations of mod_cdn will require a slight change to the CDNHTMLToServer option in the module’s configuration, so check the included example.conf for more details.
We’re still looking into adding new features such as “intelligent switching” to allow users to have their site automagically use VoxCAST to prevent their server from ever being overwhelmed with requests. With such a feature, a site could easily protect itself from things such as the Slashdot and Digg Effects all without your having to do a thing!
If you’re currently using VoxCAST for your CDN needs and haven’t yet tried mod_cdn, it may be well worth your time to take a look. We’re always available day or night at support@voxel.net to help you with any issues you may encounter, and, of course, we love receiving feature requests for ideas you may have for future releases.
Voxel is expanding worldwide! Following the expansion of the lower Manhattan HQ, Voxel dot Net Pte Ltd (Singapore branch) recently moved into bigger offices in preparation for more staff and expanding regional sales capabilities in the coming months. This move allows us to continue the growth of our Singapore-based cloud hosting and dedicated server offerings, as well as our Asia CDN (Content Delivery Network) services.
The Singapore staff settled into their new home in late November — a sprawling 2,376 sq. ft., office space that definitely has more room than our previous 872 sq. ft. office at Clarke Quay. It is really, really big! The office is located within the Central Business District of Singapore, specifically at 138 Cecil Street, Cecil Court #12-02, Singapore 069538 (Check it out on GoThere.sg). It is very close to the famous Raffles area and the festival market, Lau. Pa Sat, where you can find multi-cultural cuisines — and probably a good number of the Voxel SG staff during lunch time.
If you happen to be in the Asia-Pacific region anytime soon, make sure to drop by our office and be delighted with the Voxel Spirit in our new and colorful home. We’d be more than happy to give you a tour of our office, as well as our Singapore Cloud Hosting and Dedicated Server facility nearby! See you around!
Since Voxel hosts some of the web’s most widely read, most highly trafficked websites, we run across (and thrive on) complex, multi-server, multi-stage deployments. This means that we’re continually trying to find the best way to automate releases into these environments. Recently, we were tasked with figuring out the best way to push code updates onto a large web cluster running a popular Ruby on Rails application. Here’s what we did:
I posted to the Voxel blog a little while back alluding to our plans for the deployment of the Internet Protocol version 6, “IPv6″ or “v6″ for short. Since then, a lot has changed!
The Voxel backbone is fully deployed for support for both Internet Protocol versions 4 and 6 on the same physical circuits and interconnects, commonly known as “dual-stack”. We’ve now extended this capability down to the “edge” of our network, where customers connect. Existing VoxSTRUCTURE (physical and virtual server) users familiar with IPv6 and interested in kicking the tires around are encouraged to mail (noc at voxel.net) for a “technology preview” of this exciting new capability. Additionally, we are committed to supporting IPv6 throughout our Content Delivery Network (CDN), and hope to have additional updates to share several months in.
We’re pleased to announce the release of new Voxel hAPI methods, now available for use via the version 1.0 endpoint. These new methods add more CDN API functionality with the introduction of VoxCAST OnDemand log manipulation, both for retrieving access logs and configuring the settings and format of the logs.
We’ve also introduced a new section, billing, with initial methods for viewing invoices and payments. hAPI methods are released as they’re completed, so look for more on the horizon and continue to send us your feedback and suggestions for new API methods!
Here are quick links to the documentation for the new methods:
Web Hosting Industry Review (“the Whir”) has picked up on our latest announcement on our hybrid-cloud infrastructure service: VoxSTRUCTURE. Over here at Voxel, we’re super excited about melding the benefits of cloud computing into our total infrastructure product line. Please have a look at our product page for a quick overview (http://voxel.net/products-services/) and read through the WHIR full article here. We’ll be posting more as we get feedback from our clients and partners on how VoxSTRUCTURE is being used to deploy hybrid infrastructure.
We’ve been super lucky to have visits from some of our clients here at our Lower Manhattan offices — but over the past year, Voxel headcount has been going up and our offices haven’t kept pace with our need for sys-admin space, sales offices and developer desks. As such, we’ve recently started work on the floor below us here at 29 Broadway (just south of Wall Street, across from that big Wall Street Bull). It’s going to be noisy and dusty for the next month or two, so please excuse any jack hammering you hear when calling our support or sale teams in New York.
We hope to have a house warming party in December sometime so make sure to look us up if you’ll be in the NYC area. The space boasts a cool outdoor patio, great views of the WTC rebuilding site and a connecting staircase to our current floor. Some pictures attached so you can all see the progress.
Security researchers recently uncovered an attack on web APIs that:
Compute a “string to sign” containing a shared secret followed by a concatenation of parameter names/values.
Compute a “signature” based on the string to sign using the MD5 hashing algorithm.
This authentication scheme is quite popular, in part due to its use by Flickr’s API, one of the first and most popular web APIs. We use a related authentication scheme for our Hosting API, hAPI.
The security researchers contacted us with the details of their attack at 11:30 EDT on Friday, September 25. The attack exploits technical properties of the MD5 hashing algorithm to append additional parameters to certain API calls, given the length of the API secret and the signature from a previous call. Their paper, which focuses mainly on Flickr’s API but makes brief mention of Voxel, and provides complete technical details of the potential vulnerability, is available online.
