Cornell Stack

The new Cornell Stack provides an updated platform that combines the hosting services onto a single VM.

The service is intended for customers that have technical skills/knowledge in installing/maintaining web software. Customers that have limited technical knowledge/skills may be more comfortable with some of the options listed at: http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/hosting/

The Cornell Stack provides the following level of support: http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/hosting/support.cfm

Customers that require a higher level of customization and/or have a deep technical background may be more comfortable with a "Managed Server" and installing the web application stack on their own: http://www.it.cornell.edu/services/managed_servers/

What's new

A summary of the updated features:

• 64-bit RHEL 6 (Coldfusion can allocate more than 2 GB of memory)
  • CF9/LAMP currently using 32-bit RHEL5
• Coldfusion 10 using Java 1.7
  • CF9 currently using CF9 with Java 1.6
• PHP 5.4
  • LAMP2 currently uses PHP 5.3
  • PHP-FPM also now available as an alternative to mod_php (uses less memory)
• Python 2.7
  • No change from LAMP2
• Ruby 1.9.3
  • LAMP2 currently uses Ruby 1.8.7
• Perl 5.16
  • No change from LAMP2
• MySQL 5.5
  • Same version from LAMP2
  • MySQL database located on same VM versus separate
• Local storage
  • No longer uses NFS (Shared File Service) for storage
  • Customers can opt to continue to use SFS, but will incur additional charges
• Updated administrative tools
  • Can now modify both ".wdaccess" and ".htaccess" via web inteface
  • Can upload files via PHP Shell
  • Can utilize "pip" for installing Python software
• Shared Apache instance
  • Provides lower memory footprint for hosting multiple isolated instances

The PHP Shell/virtualenv utilities are no longer an "experimental" utility. There are some new "experimental" features that may be of interest for advanced web developers by special request.

• Git Repository
  • A git repository that can be used as an alternative to webdav for publishing code
• Mercurial Repository
  • A mercurial repository that can be used as an alternative to webdav for publishing code

What's Changed

Apache Web Server (httpd)

• The Apache version is now 2.2.15, some features from LAMP2/CF9 may not be available (i.e. FallbackResource)
• Many "default" configurations that existed in CF9 have been removed. Some examples:
  • Default "allow from all" for the "scripts","images","styles","icons" sub-folders
  • Default "allow from localhost" for the "tasks" sub-folder
• When using "PortalProxy" it may be necessary to update configurations
  • Previous configurations that used "localhost" may no longer work and need to be updated
• It is no longer possible to have "legacy" CU WebAuth configurations
  • This may require obtaining an SSL certificate and/or updates to ".htaccess" configuration files
• Change in ".htaccess" behavior (no longer inherit from "htdocs")
  • Previously in LAMP2/CF9 ".htaccess" files would be inherited up to the "htdocs" level when multiple sub-sites existed under once instance
  • This change can impact sites that make use of a large number of redirects/rewrite rules

Coldfusion 10

• Secure Profile enabled
  • Table of these listings can be found at: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/ColdFusion/10.0/Admin/WSf23b27ebc7b554b629cab0421369741d5a7-7fff.html
  • In a development setting you may want to remove the custom error templates to restore behavior similar to Coldfusion 9
• Oracle (tm) JDBC driver no-longer included
  • The Oracle driver from Adobe is provided, but customers may need to upload their own copy of the Oracle JDBC driver
• "Cornell" jar files for Fedora are no longer included

PHP-FPM 5.4

• When using PHP-FPM you will no longer be able to use a ".htaccess" file to manage PHP settings. Instead use a ".user.ini" file http://php.net/manual/en/configuration.file.per-user.php
• php_suhosin is no longer available

MySQL

• The mysql configuration has changed. Please use "localhost" instead of the previous hostname from LAMP2

File snapshots / restores

• You can no longer access file snapshots in the ".snapshot" directory. Instead you will need to use TSM to restore any files.