In at the deep end - getting a VPS
Well, after some research, I've decided to go and take the plunge and get a basic VPS. My aim is to get Railo/Resin/Apache/PHP/MySQL running on Centos 5.3. I've gone for Wizz VPS, as they're UK based, and a child company of my current PHP hosting - Layershift, with whom I've had good experiences - they are also staggeringly cheap.
They're also completely unmanaged, so I'm on my own... Getting mySQL and PHP installed was easy, just using the VPS containers package management system (so a bit of point and click). Installing yum and then using that was equally easy. 'yum update' = genius. I've been fairly taken back by just *how* efficiently RAM seems to be handled under Linux/Centos. I'm used to a windows box, where just running the OS and CF8 can take up the best part of a GB. I've currently got MySQL and PHP, and the OS running under 40MB (not under any load of course) which is amazing.
The tricky part is going to be getting Railo in and running. Whilst there seems to be a fair amount of chat on the Railo Google group about creating some definitive install guides, I'm finding the lack of a definitive install guide somewhat frustrating. I've managed to do some things, like install Java for compiling connectors etc, but the syntax (and really, the true understanding of what I'm trying to achieve) does escape me a bit at the moment. My Linux Kung-Fu needs work. Hopefully we should start seeing some proper documentation for Railo production environments soon! (and I mean documentation for the latest Railo version, and the latest and greatest Linux distros).
Gert Franz wrote on 07/03/09 2:47 PM
http://www.railo.ch/blog/index.cfm/2009/2/16/Railo-Installation-guides
And lately Jordan Michaels from Viviotech even created an installer for Railo and CentOS. You just need to test it (since it's in Beta) by joining the railo-beta user group:
http://groups.google.com/group/railo-beta
Hope this helps!
Greetings from Switzerland
Gert Franz
Railo Technologies Professional Open Source
skype: gert.franz gert@getrailo.com
+41 76 5680 231 www.getrailo.ch