Hermes Memcached Virtual Appliance
Provides a high-performance distributed memory object caching system using memcached
Features
Collegiate:
No
One-line Description:
Provides a high-performance distributed memory object caching system using memcached
Filename:
Hermes.zip
Size Compressed:
3
Allocated Memory:
256
Username:
root
Password:
root
VMware Tools Installed?:
No
Operating System:
Linux-2.6.15
Applications:
Memcached : 1.1.12, libevent : 1.1a, BusyBox : 1.1.3, uClibc : 0.9.28, Dropbear : 0.48.1, udhcp : 0.9.9-pre
Description:
Welcome to Hermes
Hermes - Memcached Virtual Appliance
Hermes is a virtual appliance that provides a high-performance, distributed memory object caching system by using the popular memcached project. The cache itself is generic and can be utilized for any caching needs, but it is most often used to speed up dynamic web applications by easing the database load. You start up the virtual appliance and it starts up a memcached daemon waiting to serve requests ! The default memcache daemon's parameters are printed in a message on the screen after startup. You can login and change the parameters if you want to change any of the options. It runs on a linux os built from scratch to have a minimal footprint. So all the memory that you assign to the VM can be utilized by the memcached daemon! Hermes also provides a built in ssh server and dhcp client. You can administer the machine remotely via ssh. It is setup for dhcp so the networking is setup automatically.
The amount of disk space used by it is 3.0 MB. The virtual disk will
expand as needed and has a maximum size of 100 MB. The compressed/zipped image of this appliance is 3.0 MB !
Power it up and start reaping the rewards of using a blazing fast distributed cache for your applications !
Why would you want this appliance
- You want to speed up your dynamic database driven applications.
- You want to experiment easily with multiple memcached daemons and a wide variety of configurations.
- You want to investigate caching for your other applications.
How was the appliance built
Hermes runs on a custom built tiny footprint version of linux.
- A tiny version of a linux os was built using BusyBox and uClibc.
uClibc is the tiny version of the glib library. BusyBox provides tiny versions of the linux toolset. - A virtual appliance must have the ability to automatically detect and configure its network interfaces so that it can be accessible on the network immediately after booting up. A tiny dhcp client udhcp is used for providing dhcp client support.
- The virtual appliance must also have the ability to be accessed/administered remotely in a secure manner. Dropbear ssh client and server were used to provide this functionality.
- Memcached is the project that provides the caching functionality. It was also compiled with uClibc.
- Libevent is the eventing library utilized by memcached. It was also compiled with uClibc.
- The shell used is ash. All the libraries and binaries are stripped of all debugging symbols to make them even more smaller.
- Added startup scripts for the daemons.
- The linux kernel used is 2.6.15, compiled to remove all ununeeded things to make it as small and lean as possible.
- The final system after bootup uses 3 MB of disk space !!
- Start VMware player or Workstation.
- Open Hermes.vmx.
- Click "Start this Virtual Machine".
- The os will boot up, get a dhcp address and startup the ssh server.
- It will also start up the memcached daemon with default
parameters and display a message which shows you the default parameters
used - Finally it will display the login prompt.
- Log in as root with password root.
- Change the parameters for memcached if you like. Start exploring memcached and the wonders of distributed caching ! There are no config files. Memcached has only a few command line parameters that are passed to it. You can take a look at /etc/init.d/memcached to see how it is started up.
- You will need to use a memcached client from one of your applications to interact with the memcached daemon (to check if something is in the cache and to put things into the cache). This is very easy and client APIs are available in perl, python, php, ruby,
java, c# and c. Use whatever language you are comfortable with. See the
links sections below. - Add users as you like and change the password !
- Ash shell is provided along with most of the usual linux commands.
- Vi is available as the text editor.
- Start up as many Hermes Virtual Appliances as you need to experiment.
Virtual Machine Configuration
- Memory : 256MB (This is just a default parameter I picked.
Normally you would use much higher memory, as this is afterall a cache) - Hard Drive : One IDE disk expandable to 100 MB
- Networking : Bridged
- Processors : 1
Links and Resources
Licenses
I honor the GPL and will send anybody the sources to the GPL software in Hermes Virtual Appliance. If you want to recieve copies of the software please send me US$7 (cost of media and shipping) and I will gladly mail you the sources.Please send the check to:Prabhakar Chaganti955 Ballentree CourtAlpharetta, GA 30005
Technical Specifications
Operating System:
Linux-2.6.15
VMware Tools installed: No
Size: 3MB
Allocated Memory (RAM): 256
Applications Installed:
Memcached : 1.1.12, libevent : 1.1a, BusyBox : 1.1.3, uClibc : 0.9.28, Dropbear : 0.48.1, udhcp : 0.9.9-pre
Virtual Appliance Account Information
Download link provided by the submitter, not VMware. Report broken downloads here.
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