As you may already know, Amazon EC2 instances are virtual servers in Amazon’s EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) that allow users to run applications on the Amazon Web Servers. As you have plenty of options available when it comes to AWS EC2 instances, in this article we’d like to help you understand how to reduce the cost for these services. There are several strategies that you can implement, and these are the most effective.
1. Choose the right family instance
There are many families of EC2 instances available: they have different options for CPU, memory, and network. The “T” and “A” families are the most affordable. However, you should also find a good compromise between price and performance. The “T” family of instances, for example, is only suitable for websites with low traffic with some spikes, while the “A” family is based on ARM processors, so it’s used for laptops, smartphones, and tablet computers.
If you’re working in these areas, picking one of these two families can help you reduce the costs for AWS EC2 instances.
2. Choose the Region
Not many users know that some regions are more expensive than others: simply moving your instances from one region to another at a lower price can be cost-effective. Choosing a region is a very important factor when it comes to cost
3. Choose the Operating System
When you pay for your EC2 instances, you aren’t only paying for using some hardware; there are also costs associated with the Operating Systems. For example, using Windows or RedHat makes you spend more than if you were using Linux. (Migrating from one OS to another is free!).
4. Opt for a newer instance
With time, AWS releases new types of instances. As technology improves, the newer instances are more cost-effective: for the same price, they can provide better performances. Changing to a newer instance, therefore, can help you optimize the costs of your Amazon EC2 instances.
5. Change the instance according to your actual needs
Very often developers choose their instances early in their project. Their pick is based on assumptions so that, as the project begins being developed, some instances could be over-dimensioned compared to the actual usage. This is basically a waste of resources: if you change an instance that is suitable to your actual CPU and memory usage and needs, it’ll help you optimize the costs.
This gives you useful hints about how to reduce the costs for your Amazon EC2 instances. When making your choices, always try to find the right balance between costs and benefits: this is the basis of resource optimization!
What is a Progressive Web Application?
What exactly is a progressive web application? Although the concept isn’t new, its importance in modern-day web development can’t be stressed enough. At the core of every progressive web application (PWA) lies the concept of delivering an app-like experience to users regardless of platform or device. In this article, we’ll take a look at how to develop PWAs and go over some of their benefits, as well as their strengths and weaknesses compared to mobile applications.
What are Progressive Web Apps?
A progressive web app (PWA) is an approach to web development using modern web technologies to create applications that are meaningful and functional in every context of use. As opposed to mobile-first, which focuses on optimizing mobile experiences first, PWAs start with what matters most—providing a good user experience regardless of device or browser type. This document provides answers to questions you may have about PWAs.
A progressive web application (PWA) makes use of modern web capabilities to deliver an app-like experience to users. This entails the delivery of content and data progressively through technology such as service workers, responsive design, push notifications, and application programming interfaces (APIs). PWAs are much more than just websites that work offline. In fact, they’re mobile applications that just happen to work when there’s no internet connection or if a user has poor connectivity.
Another distinguishing feature of progressive web apps is their installation on mobile devices like smartphones and tablets. Users can store these apps on their home screen using an icon for easy access when they need it or want it. A Progressive Web App (PWA) is an app that feels like a regular mobile application, but works for every browser and operating system. It can be installed on your phone’s home screen just like any other app, and it will even send you notifications.
The best part about PWAs, however, is that they’re actually just websites — built using service workers and JavaScript — that can appear to users as apps if they meet certain criteria. Service workers make it possible for your website to work without an internet connection by caching resources locally on your device. These technologies let you build fast-loading web pages with rich functionality not normally found in a mobile browser window.
Why Should We Build Progressive Web Application?
Progressive web applications are taking over mobile internet usage. This year, they will account for more than half of all mobile traffic, and as many as six billion devices will be connected to them. By 2020, PWAs are expected to make up 80% of total global internet traffic. . A PWA can make it easier for people to use your products or services, especially those with low specs (such as slow connections) by providing an accessible solution.
How Can I Build a PWA?
Progressive web apps can be relatively simple or complex, depending on your goals. Building a progressive web application involves coming up with an idea and then thinking through every aspect of that idea– including what you’ll build, how it’ll work, how it will look, and so on. For example, if you want to create an app for recipes that need to be followed precisely (such as baking), then you’ll have different considerations than if you’re building an app for casual browsing (such as watching cooking videos). Whether you decide to use JavaScript frameworks or native coding languages like HTML5/CSS3/JavaScript will also impact how much time goes into developing your PWA. At Perma Technologies we can customize a strategy and implement this latest technology, which will benefit your customers.
Are There Tools to Help Me Easily Create my PWA from Scratch?
There are many tools that can help you start building your own PWA. Some of these include: -The Angular CLI and Angular CDK – Lighthouse, a cross-platform mobile app development framework based on Apache Cordova, Polymer, an open-source library for building Web Components. It also provides additional tools like polymer init and polymer toolbox to help speed up PWA development. These are just some of the many options out there.
How Do I Verify My PWA Works Well Across All Platforms?
Google Chrome has a handy PWA generator built in, which can be found at chrome://flags/#enable-add-to-homescreen. If you click that link, you’ll notice it’s off by default; turning it on and relaunching Chrome will make web apps installable from your home screen just like native apps. (Windows 10 offers similar functionality with its own Web Apps option.) But Chrome isn’t your only option—many other browsers have made strides to support PWAs as well. Microsoft, Firefox, Mozilla, and Opera all have some PWA support baked in—in addition to Safari for Mac.
As Magento merchants, you may wonder if open source or commerce will work best for your store. When it comes to choosing between the two options, there are pros and cons that you’ll need to consider. In this blog post, we’ll go over a few of the pros and cons of Magento Commerce vs Magento Open Source.
What is Magento?
Magento is an open-source content management system (CMS) written in PHP. The platform was first released on 28 May 2007, by Roy Rubin with help from Michael Parson. It then became generally available as commercial software, with versions available for sale as either software or hosted solutions. As of January 2013, it’s reported that there are over 200 000 self-hosted Magento installations globally. Some new features which have been recently announced include Paypal integration, performance enhancements, and SEO keywords have contributed for more adoption.
Pros of using Magento Open Source
If you decide to use Magento open source, there are many benefits. For one, it’s free. As long as you have someone who can install it for you or do it yourself. It also has more features than many other CMSs. You can customize your own e-commerce store to make it look however you want using Magento open source. Lastly, your customers will enjoy shopping because they’ll be able to find what they need quickly and easily without being steered in any direction by advertisements or product placements. But if those reasons weren’t enough, some people would say that Magento commerce is easier to set up than open source. Plus having access to all these features is great when it comes time to market your products on social media because you’re never really limited with how much content you have access too
Cons of using Magento Open Source
Magento open source has some major drawbacks. The biggest drawback is that Magento does not offer technical support for Magento open source, it’s all community-based. While an active forum exists, without support to answer your questions, you might be stuck on your own for fixes. With other content management systems, such as WordPress or Squarespace, you can get paid support if needed.
Another downside is if you’re selling products in different currencies. This could be because your company operates internationally, or because you’re importing products from another country (that will need translated pricing). It can also happen when dealing with multiple languages online. When setting up multi-currency functionality with PayPal (PayPal lets merchants set prices in up to 135 world currencies), there are limitations with how much control over these settings you have when using Magento open source.
Pros of using Magento Commerce
Magento Commerce has been built with you in mind. It is an intuitive interface for building your store, creating experiences that engage customers, driving growth. This open-source CMS comes with the latest features like, on-site chat support, two-way live product search filters for customers, and more. Plus, you can access it anytime, anywhere through your browser or mobile app. And since it’s cloud-based, nothing needs to be installed. There are also additional platforms available as modules, including Point of Sale (POS) and Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Unlike other open-source alternatives, these add-ons are made for eCommerce so all inventory and data flow seamlessly from one system to another to create one unified customer experience.
Cons of using Magento Commerce
Magento commerce is not open source, which means you are subject to changes in your software without any form of input from you. This may be an issue if your company needs to keep your data secure, especially if you use the store to collect sensitive data. The other major issue with Magento commerce is the pricing starts from $24,000 and commissions. It could be pretty steep for any small business that is trying to adopt the Magento platform.
In general, Magento open source is more cost-effective than Magento commerce. If you’re looking for an e-commerce solution and don’t want to spend too much upfront, Magento open source could be a great option for you! Most of these are going to be specific to a business – if you have any questions around the different versions, please feel free to contact Perma Techologies to discuss further.
Website slowness is a common complaint among many people. In this blog post, we are going to talk about some of the reasons why websites might be slower than they should be and what you can do to fix it. How much time have you wasted sitting there waiting for your website to load? Is your internet connection slow or does your web browser just take too long to open up certain pages? Well, if any of these sound familiar then you’re in luck because that’s exactly what we’ll be talking about today!
Here are five of the top reasons your website may be slow and how to fix them.
Performance testing
Performance testing, also known as load testing, is essential to ensure that your website can handle an increased number of visitors. It is a key performance indicator, when performance is monitored and measured, it can be a valuable tool for monitoring performance against goals. With enough load testing, you can identify performance bottlenecks so you can optimize both hardware and software for better results. In addition to slower response times and an overloaded server, certain errors may be present with poor performance-related metrics. Identifying these problems before it’s too late will help avoid any negative effects to your conversion rates.
Loading Time: Page loading time is something every visitor notices quickly – if it takes more than 10 seconds just to fully load content, visitors won’t wait around much longer before they navigate away from your site. Utilize tools like Google Analytics to see how long your pages take to load, which browser types need fewer redirects and which parts of your site could benefit from caching. Removing unnecessary scripts and increasing compression settings are only two ways to make pages load faster. A third way is to use new web technology called AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages). Performance testing is important because it helps pinpoint performance issues on your site – and fixes usually come at a minimal cost. Contact Perma Technologies to identify what is blocking your website from running faster and fixing them.
Image optimization
I’m sure you’ve noticed that your site seems slow on different devices. This can be due to multiple reasons, but one of them might be loading time on mobile devices. Mobile connection speeds can vary significantly from one device to another and if your website does not load fast enough, users will abandon it for other sites they know work well on their phones. One way to make sure that your site loads fast for all devices is through image optimization. Reducing images’ file size and removing unnecessary layers can have dramatic effects on loading times which can make your site pages load faster without changing anything else. Too many images- run an audit to find out what images are being used.
With today’s numerous page-viewing options available, it’s important that your images not only look great but are optimized for quick viewing. After all, what good is an infographic about how many bowls of cereal Americans eat per day if visitors leave because they’re waiting too long to see it? Contact Perma Technologies to learn more and see how we optimize and improve website speed and performance
Javascript issues
JavaScript performance is another important factor to consider. Check your JavaScript code for performance issues and optimize it where possible, such as by inlining heavy scripts or using a cache module (i.e., $.cache). A really common performance issue with web pages is that they have too many different plugins on them which are adding overhead without being used.
The other important thing to consider is that some scripts are blocking the javascript execution on your webpage (i.e., asynchronous javascript). If you find any of these, then it may be time for a rethink: do we really need this script on our website? Is there a way we can use an API instead? Or have another javascript (or javascript library) load this script instead?
Caching
Caching can be done with plugins on Apache servers, in web browsers, or through CDNs. On Apache servers caching is either done through proxy caches or at what we call layers 3 and 7. Layers 3 and 7 refer to software that sits on top of the OSI model. Layer 7 operates at an application level and includes various middleware like WAFs (web application firewalls), and cache headers. Layer 3 refers to cache management built into your operating system’s kernel such as disk caching or RAID systems. A browser cache can store objects retrieved from web pages and reuse them for subsequent requests in order to save time retrieving data from external sources.
CDN gives you access to cached content stored in many different geographic locations around the world in order to provide faster delivery of your content while reducing load times on your own site because it offloads traffic from its origin server, instead of sending it directly to end-users who are geographically closer than you are. Inefficient code- use best practices such as caching, minification, and running scripts asynchronously where possible to improve website speed.
Currently, some popular CDN providers include Amazon CloudFront, Google CDN, Akamai Technologies, and MaxCDN which has the cheapest pricing plans
The number of requests on a page:
The more the number of requests on a page you have, the slower it takes to load the content and show them in the browser. A lot of websites are using too many plugins which they don’t need because some scripts or modules (e.g., social media share buttons) slow down the loading time of a webpage.
If you want to reduce cache memory consumption, use scripts that are loaded asynchronously so they don’t block parsing and rendering. And make sure your plugins load only once on a page from either external CDN or local server (i.e., no inline script).
Having a website that is slow can be the worst. That’s why performance testing is important for any website. Contact Perma Technologies to increase your website speed and improve your performance.
Ransomware, cybercriminals, data-napping…not common words you typically think you’d have to deal with when running a company. However, when your online space is compromised by security attackers, this can jeopardize everything you’ve worked for. Let Permeate, our software services company, explain how we are here to help.
Ransomware is a form of script which can be downloaded into your network via a computer or smartphone. This usually happens when we overlook the IT security risks. Ransomware typically works very quickly. In seconds, the malicious software will take over critical processes on the device and search for files to be encrypted. The ransomware will likely delete any files it cannot encrypt. It will then infect any other hard drives or USB devices connected to the infected host machine. Any new devices or files added to the infected device will also be encrypted after this point. Then, the virus will begin sending out signals to all of the other devices on the network, to attempt to infect them as well. This whole process happens extremely quickly, and in just a few minutes all the devices will display a message that all the files are locked. A payment is required to unlock the computer. We all know the recent Colonial pipeline attack on its IT assets. This is a similar concept.
A typical infection can mostly happen because of weak security across the IT infrastructure, ultimately overlooking security risks.
How can you prevent your company from similar attacks?
Obsolete hardware and software:
Many organizations also rely too heavily on hardware and software which are out of date. Over time, attackers discover security vulnerabilities on an obsolete technology. They also rely heavily on older software versions where no code update has happened in years, meaning they are open to vulnerabilities. New ransomware variants are released regularly. To avoid being victim of the newest release, consistently update security software and operating systems. If not done, it makes the job easy for the cybercriminal to attack your software.
Training:
The people within your organization are often your biggest security risk. In recent years there has been a huge growth in Security Awareness Training platforms, which train users about the risks they face using the internet at work and at home. Awareness Training helps to teach users what threats within email look like, and best security practices they should follow to stop ransomware, such as making sure their endpoints are updated with the latest security software. Security Awareness Training solutions typically also provide phishing simulation technologies. This means admins can create customized simulated phishing emails, and send them out to employees to test how effectively they can detect attacks. Phishing simulation is an ideal way to help view your security efficacy across the organization and is a useful tool to help identify users that need more security training to help stop the spread of ransomware.
Web & Email filters: DNS Web filtering solutions stop users from visiting dangerous websites and downloading malicious files. This helps to block viruses that spread ransomware from being downloaded from the internet, including trojan horse viruses that disguise malware as legitimate business software. DNS filters can also block malicious third party adverts. Web filters should be configured to aggressively block threats, and to stop users from visiting dangerous or unknown domains. Utilizing Isolation can also be an important tool to stop ransomware downloads. Isolation technologies completely remove threats away from users by isolating browsing activity in secure servers and displaying a safe render to users. This can help to prevent ransomware as any malicious software is executed in the secure container and does not affect the users themselves. The main benefit of Isolation is that it doesn’t impact the user’s experience whatsoever, delivering high security efficacy with a seamless browsing experience.
Data Backup and Recovery:
If a ransomware attack succeeds and your data is compromised, the best way to protect your organization is to be able to restore the data you need quickly and minimize the downtime. The best way to protect data is to ensure that it is backed up in multiple places, including in your main storage area, on local disks, and in a cloud continuity service. In the event of a ransomware attack, backing up data means you will be able to mitigate the loss of any encrypted files and regain the functionality of systems. The best Cloud Data Backup and Recovery platforms will allow businesses to recover data in the case of a disaster, will be available anytime, and will be easily integrated with existing cloud applications and endpoint devices, with a secure and stable global cloud infrastructure.
VPN services: Conscientious use of public Wi-Fi networks is a sensible protective measure against ransomware. When using a public Wi-Fi network, your computer is more vulnerable to attacks. To stay protected, avoid using public Wi-Fi for sensitive transactions or use a secure VPN service.
At Perma Technologies we can help you implement any of these strategies and you can count on us to enhance your IT security.
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