#cloud migration assurance | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

blackangelism · 5 months ago

Text

Dear Nobody’s Daughter, to Live Through This, you scrape off your Celebrity Skin; you know full well that you’re Pretty On The Inside...

HOW TO GET INTO HOLE?

• Angel Dust guides: I.

Aimed at @elexnorislingtxn and whomever wants to get into Hole...

HOLE is an American nineties’s kinderwhore band with a turbulent line-up and pure chaotic gold for music yet overshadowed by the controversial image of the lead singer and frontwoman of the band, Courtney Love. A staple in the grunge scene, the critically acclaimed sophomore record Live Through This of 1994 marked a peak in Hole’s career although the band was gaining audience for their 1991 debut: Pretty On The Inside. Celebrity Skin, the 1998 album, proved Hole’s peak which was rightly concluded by 2010’s Nobody’s Daughter thus finishing the legacy of Hole.

...In my very humble opinion, Courtney Love is a cunt. And, I love her music.

DO TRY Hole if you are into: Jack Off Jill, Bratmobile, Nirvana, Babes In Toyland, L7, Veruca Salt, Mommy Long Legs, Bikini Kill, Lunachicks, et cetera. Or, if you’d like to try something dolly and chaotic with an edge of feminism and aggression. I promise, listening to Hole makes you feel like a doll.

DO NOT TRY Hole if you’re a filthy misogynist who can’t stand the fact that the wife of a popular artist does in fact make good music on her own.

Yes, Courtney Love is a cunt, but she makes good music. Seperate the artist from the art.

If you’re still present here, welcome! Now, moving onto the actual guide...

FIRSTLY, I think to decode this, we’d have to learn about the albums individually. Of course, I’m going to leave my recommendation for listening, but to best suit yourself, you can find your own way around with the descriptions I give for each of these albums...

“ PRETTY ON THE INSIDE ”

Slut-kiss girl... PRETTY ON THE INSIDE of 1991 is about beauty, which is the life as a sex-worker about Courtney Love’s time as a sex-worker. It includes Courtney Love on vocals and rhythm guitar, Eric Erlandson on lead guitar, Jill Emery on bass, Caroline Rue on drums, produced by Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and Don Fleming of Gumball.

tracklist. TEENAGE WHORE, BABYDOLL, GARBADGE MAN, SASSY, GOOD SISTER—BAD SISTER, MRS. JONES, BERRY, LOADED, STARBELLY, PRETTY ON THE INSIDE, CLOUDS.

IF YOU WANT... angry, chaotic, messy and sloppily mixed music that is very heady and makes you feel like a doll, listen to this album first.

Blending elements of punk rock, the album features distorted and alternating guitar compositions, screaming vocals from Love, and “sloppy punk ethics”, a style which the band would later distance themselves from, opting for a less abrasive sound on subsequent releases. Love’s lyrics on the album are often presented in an abstract narrative form, and describe disparate scenes of graphic violence, death, and female sexuality. The record was dedicated to Rob Ritter of the Los Angeles punk rock acts the Bags and The Gun Club. [< source, wikipedia.

If you want a more refined yet more depressed version of this album, migrate to Live Through This after; if you want a more refined and self-assured, slightly sarcastic but honest record after this listen, go to Celebrity Skin.

FUN FACT: the song BABYDOLL is allegedly inspired by Madonna.

“ LIVE THROUGH THIS ”

Miss Worlds... LIVE THROUGH THIS of 1994 is about the changes that come with marriage and motherhood, themes mainly being motherhood, body image, depression, child abuse and elitism. It includes Courtney Love on vocals and rhythm guitar, Eric Erlandson on lead guitar, Kristen Pfaff on bass, Patty Schemel on drums, produced by Paul Q. Kolderie and Sean Slade.

tracklist. VIOLET, MISS WORLD, PLUMP, ASKING FOR IT, JENNIFER’S BODY, DOLL PARTS, CREDIT IN A STRAIGHT WORLD, SOFTER, SOFTEST, SHE WALKS ON ME, I THINK THAT I WOULD DIE, GUTLESS, ROCK STAR.

IF YOU WANT... a tragic and softly edgy listen with a harsh sensibility and pure womanly depression scrawled all over, listen to this album first.

Live Through This marked a departure from the band’s noise rock roots toward a more alternative rock format. Love had sought a more mellow sound for Live Through This. The resulting music was starkly less aggressive than the band's former work, blending more structured melodies and smoother arrangements with heavy guitar riffs. Consequently, this featured a mixture of songwriting techniques, including use of power chords as well as arpeggios, and occasional use of keyboards. [< source, wikipedia.

If you want a tougher, rawer, more journal-entry music than this, migrate to Pretty On The Inside; if you want a more refined and self-assured, slightly sarcastic but honest record after this listen, go to Celebrity Skin.

FUN FACT: Courtney Love’s late husband Kurt Cobain does backing vocals on ASKING FOR IT.

“ CELEBRITY SKIN ”

Petals... CELEBRITY SKIN of 1998 is about the lost people, the more opulent Los Angeles and Californian culture, about the promises and agonies of Southern California; it was aimed to divulge greatly from the grunge sound of before. It includes Courtney Love on vocals and rhythm guitar, Eric Erlandson on lead guitar, Melissa Auf der Maur on bass, Patty Schemel on drums, produced by Michael Beinhorn.

tracklist. CELEBRITY SKIN, AWFUL, HIT SO HARD, MALIBU, REASONS TO BE BEAUTIFUL, DYING, USE ONCE & DESTROY, NORTHERN STAR, BOYS ON THE RADIO, HEAVEN TONIGHT, PLAYING YOUR SONGS, PETALS.

IF YOU WANT... a rock-fueled pop sound with many lyrics that are references and have layered meanings, a comforting almost listen, listen to this album first.

The band sought to use Los Angeles and the state of California as a unifying theme and began writing what they conceived as a “California album” in 1997. Unlike Hole's previous releases, the final songs on Celebrity Skin featured instrumental contributions from several musicians outside the band, primarily Billy Corgan, who co-wrote the musical arrangements on five songs. Auf der Maur's former bandmate Jordon Zadorozny, as well as Go-Go's guitarist Charlotte Caffey, also contributed to the composition of one track. Frontwoman Courtney Love, who wrote all of the lyrics, named the album and its title track after a poem she had written that was influenced by T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land. Motifs of water and drowning are also prominent throughout the album, as well as recurring themes of angels, Heaven and stars. [< source, wikipedia.

If you want a tougher, rawer, more journal-entry music than this, migrate to Pretty On The Inside; if you want a grungier yet more depressed version of this album, migrate to Live Through This after.

FUN FACT: Love clarified that she had derived the album name from a short-lived band in Los Angeles named Celebrity Skin, as well as a bootleg pornographic magazine featuring nude candid photos of celebrities.

“ NOBODY’S DAUGHTER ”

Dirty Girls... NOBODY’S DAUGHTER of 2010 is about the time of rehabilitation that Courtney Love went through after a long cocaine addiction and legal troubles following that, written in rehabilitation; about feeling lost, confused. It was supposed to be a solo album of Love’s, but was made to be Hole’s last album after their 2002 dissolution. It includes Courtney Love on vocals and rhythm guitar, Micko Larkin on lead guitar, Shawn Dailey on bass, Stu Fisher on drums, produced by Michael Beinhorn, Micko Larkin, and Linda Perry.

tracklist. NOBODY’S DAUGHTER, SKINNY LITTLE BITCH, HONEY, PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY, SAMANTHA, SOMEONE ELSE’S BED, FOR ONCE IN YOUR LIFE, LETTER TO GOD, LOSER DUST, HOW DIRTY GIRLS GET CLEAN, NEVER GO HUNGRY.

I DO NOT RECOMMEND LISTENING TO THIS ALBUM VERY FIRSTLY, but, IF YOU WANT... a polished and the most mainstream-sounding of the four albums, sad, confused, lost record written during rehabilitation, this is your key.

Before the album’s release, former Hole guitarist Eric Erlandson publicly disputed Love’s use of the Hole name, claiming it violated a previous agreement between the two, which Love contested. On its release, Nobody’s Daughter received generally mixed reviews from music critics, with some praising its instrumentation and lyrics, while others criticized it for its folk rock elements as well as production issues and Love’s vocals. Despite this, Love said in 2010 that she considered it the best record she had made. [< source, wikipedia.

If you want a tougher, rawer, more journal-entry music than this, migrate to Pretty On The Inside; if you want a grungier yet more depressed version of this album, migrate to Live Through This after; if you want a similar but more scattered listen, to Celebrity Skin.

FUN FACT: The painting on the cover is of Marie Antoinette and the tracklist page has the edited background of a painting of Anne Boleyn.

MY RECOMMENDED PATHWAYS...

Lastly...

HOLE is a kinderwhore band, which is minutely distinct from riot grrrl. And, Courtney Love has a lot of beef with, to be honest, mostly everyone. So, yeah... For example, Babes In Toyland, a band often mentioned in the same vein as Hole, has their frontwoman, Kat Bjelland, in hatred with Love. I do not recommend looking up to these people as people, but please do try their music.

Die, cry, adore Hole.

FUN FACT: My favourite Hole album is Pretty On The Inside!

Dear Nobody’s Daughter, to Live Through This, you scrape off your Celebrity Skin; you know full well that you’re Pretty On The Inside...

DID YOU GET INTO HOLE?

46 notes · View notes

felassan · 1 year ago

Text

For folks who play SW:TOR, there is an important update on the follow up of its development (following on from the recent news about SW:TOR moving from BioWare to Broadsword), from Keith Kanneg [source]. (click image for better view)

Text:

"FOLLOW UP ON SWTOR DEVELOPMENT UPDATE Hi all, Appreciate your patience with us as we continue to navigate the future shift of SWTOR’s development team to a third party studio. We're working through the changes right now so I'll share with you the details I have. With 7.3 now live, our priority is continuing to prepare for Game Updates 7.3.1 and 7.4 along with planning for 2024 and 2025 with a focus on content and continued modernization initiatives. We also want to address some of the common questions we are seeing. What’s changing for players after this shift happens? For all of you, not much is changing at all. Players will continue playing the game and swtor.com and the forums will continue to remain online and a source for players to get news and updates. Support for SWTOR will remain unchanged and players can continue to utilize the EA Support Page or in-game tools for assistance. Will the SWTOR development team be moving out of Austin? We are already a remote team with staff working from home throughout the US and beyond. That said, our physical presence will still be remaining in Austin and we will be securing a new office space here. Is the game heading into maintenance mode? Absolutely not. As I’ve said before, we are working on future plans including more story and modernization initiatives for the game. We’ve upgraded the game to 64-bit, and are working on moving the servers to the cloud, and there are more content and tech updates on the way. Moving to a third party studio would allow us a lot of creative freedom, and we're very much looking forward to the opportunities that will be open to us. What’s going to happen to my account? My Cartel Coins? Nothing will change on this front. Everything will remain the same with your in-game accounts and any purchases you make. What does EA remaining the publisher on record mean for the game? Similar to what we have said a few times now, it means nothing changes. The SWTOR team continues to be in control of the development and direction of the game with EA providing publishing and player support. What will happen to moving servers to the cloud? That is still happening. We will have to reassess timelines, but we have every intention of moving forward with migrating our servers over to the cloud. We are also continuing with our evaluation regarding the APAC server as well. To close, I know that when something like this happens it can bring on feelings of doom and gloom. This isn't the beginning of the end, this truly is a new beginning for us. As you can imagine there are quite a few moving parts right now but we have a lot to talk about in our future. You can expect 7.3.1 towards the end of the summer, with the story continuing in 7.4 on its heels as we enter the holidays. Also on the tech side, we are working on further updates such as improved integrations with Steam and updating to DirectX 12. We'll start talking about all of this and more in the coming weeks. In the meantime, Game Update 7.3 is now live, and I’ll be right in there with all of you going through the new story and Flashpoint on all my characters. Thanks for your patience with this, everyone. You’ll be hearing from us again soon. -Keith Note: We will be locking this thread to keep any informational updates in one place, but you all are free to continue discussion in the original update thread."

[source]

Some coverage on this:

PC Gamer: BioWare calls Star Wars: The Old Republic's change in developer 'a new beginning' and denies that it's going into maintenance mode

Eurogamer: BioWare assures Star Wars: The Old Republic isn't shutting down, despite new developer

#bioware #sw:tor #video games #long post #longpost

40 notes · View notes

lamuradex · 5 months ago

Text

Signs of Light and Shadow - Book 1

Prologue - Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

Prologue

The trees rustled, wind whispered through branches, and a loud crack echoed through the woods. Leaves shook and fell as a woodsman pulled back his axe and buried it in the trunk again. The wood creaked. The tree was as wide as the woodsman’s shoulders, but it was still giving way, chop by chop. With a final cut, it began to lean. The woodsman stepped back as the tree’s own weight tore its trunk, ripping and collapsing it, the oak falling with a grim, splintering groan.

“Timber!” he yelled over the noise.

The tree thumped heavily into the muddy forest floor. Birds fled from the disturbance and the woodsman raised his axe again, chopping the trunk into smaller, manageable pieces. Sweat covered his brow, blonde hair sticking to his forehead, he stopped to lean on his axe and catch his breath, drying his face on his tunic, a new pile of wood at his feet. Satisfied, he piled the wood onto a sled and pulled it away, leaving tracks in the forest floor as he went.

The sky was clouded and the air cool as he arrived at a large clearing. A woman sat at the centre, clothed in a long green dress, her black hair spilling about her shoulders. A bubbling pot sat in front of her with various vegetables and herbs beside her on a cloth. The cauldron’s fire cast a warm, flickering light, as the woman added another leaf to the stew, stirring, and quietly humming to herself.

“I’m back,” the woodsman announced.

“Oh!” she started, greeting him with a surprised smile. “I didn’t expect you so soon.”

The woodsman walked over and kissed her on the cheek. “I found a good tree. Enough for a few days.”

“Well, throw some on the fire then. It’s getting low and I need it hot for this stew.”

He did as requested, placing some wood on the fire, then put the rest under an awning to shield it from the weather. He then knelt and wrapped an arm around his beloved’s waist, planting another kiss on her cheek. She grinned and wrapped her arm around him in return.

“What are we cooking tonight?” he asked.

“Deer. I’ve added some herbs, but it’ll be pretty simple.”

“Deer is good enough for me, dear,” he smirked, releasing the hug and starting back towards the sled. “Tomorrow, I’ll see if I can track down something different. Maybe fish. That might make a change.”

“We have enough for now. No need to risk the journey.” She picked up a small sprig and scraped the leaves into the pot.

“No risk. Didn’t see a trace of wolves out there today,” he said, throwing a spare log from hand to hand. “They must have migrated to the western side of the woods.”

“That’s strange. Usually they’d be all over at this time of year.”

“Maybe something scared them off.”

She shot him a look. “Something scared the wolves… and you still want to go hunting?”

He smiled cheekily back. “Honey, I didn’t see hide nor hair of anything out there. Maybe it was a clan of hunters, maybe it was just a bear, but I should go hunting too while the getting’s good. It’s no trouble,” he assured.

“Well, if you want to go, then go,” she relented. “Just please, be careful.”

“You know I always- Car’zit!” he swore, dropping the log to suck one of his fingers. “Dra’am splinters.”

“Language! The girls are just inside,” she whispered, glancing towards a den built inside one of the larger trees trunks.

The woodsman took his finger from his mouth. “The girls alright? They’re usually a bit more energetic this time of day.”

“They’re fine. Elena just got stung by a nettle. She’s been sulking.”

“Poor thing. And Cerris?”

“She went out with me to pick some lemon flower, water fruit, and willow blossom. The old remedy. Elena didn’t like how it numbed her shoulder though and Cerris is just keeping her company until she can feel her hands again. She insisted on applying the mix herself.”

The woodsman nodded. “I’ll go see how they’re doing.”

“And set a good example. No more of that cursing,” his wife added with a teasing grin.

He playfully brushed a hand through her hair as he passed, making his way to the large tree at the edge of the clearing. Hollowed out and dead, it was short but very broad, wide enough for a family to live inside. The door was an open gap with a blanket hung over it like a curtain, barely sheltering the inside from the cold.

The inside was lit by candles in little carved alcoves, which also provided a little extra warmth. Four chairs surrounded a small table in the centre while three beds sat against the walls, two on one side and a third wider bed on the other. On the far wall was a small wooden shrine, specifically lit with several candles, and across from that, beside the door, hung an old ornate shield. The shield bore a weathered emblem of a blue wolf standing before a red oak on a field of gold.

“So, how are my two favourite girls doing?” the father beamed as he entered.

“Hi Dad,” smiled a girl in the closest bed. She was sat on her knees, wearing a simple grey cloth dress, dark hair hanging past her shoulders. She couldn’t have been older than twelve. She also wore a huge smirk. “Ha ha. Mum yelled at you,” she teased.

Her father nodded piously. “And rightfully so, Cerris. I shouldn’t use bad language like that. I should make amends.” He walked over to the little shrine and knelt before it, stealing a glance to make sure Cerris was paying attention. She was watching intently.

Happy, he looked to the shrine. There were three vague figures carved into the wood. He raised his hand to them in turn.

“Forgive me for my rudeness, oh, Gods of the Heavens. First to the Father of Skies,” He gestured to the large central figure, “then to Aheazal of the Dark,” He put his hand to the right, “and then to Zaheal of the Light,” He put his hand to the left. Finished, he stood back up.

“Dad? What do those bad words mean?” Cerris asked curiously.

“Oh, one of them just means manure. The other is just something animals do. Still, best not to use them,” her father dismissed. “Never mind that though. How have you two been today?”

“Today was fun,” Cerris bounced on the bed. Then she paused, noticing a lack of movement from the other bed. “Time to get up, Elena. Dad’s back.”

The other bed was occupied by a little blonde girl of a similar age. She wore a brighter yellow dress and lay huddled against the wall.

“Oh yes. I heard you had an accident with a nettle,” her father said, sitting beside the huddled girl.

Cerris rolled her eyes. “Her sting wasn’t that bad. She’s just sulking. I got stung by a bush a while back and it didn’t hurt that much.”

“Now, Cerris, don’t be rude,” her father gently scolded. “So, Elena, what are you making such a fuss about?”

“It hurt,” came the muttered reply.

“Does it hurt now?”

Elena slowly rolled over to face him. “My arm feels weird.”

He put a comforting arm around her. “I know, but by the time the numbness wears off the stinging will have stopped. All the balm does is numb the pain.”

“Yeah, see? My hands stopped tingling a while ago,” Cerris chimed in, proffering her hands as proof.

“You see. It shouldn’t be long now.” He smiled as Elena sat up. “Nothing to be sad about.”

“Ok,” Elena conceded.

“Great. Now, do you feel up to helping your mother with the dinner?”

“Yes…” she said with a small smile.

“That’s my girl.”

“What about me?” Cerris bounced excitedly.

“Calm down, I think you can help too…”

“Honey?” The shout came from outside.

“Just a minute, girls.” Their father stood and moved back outside. Elena and Cerris hopped off their beds, following to the doorway. Their parents were stood near the fire, talking.

“…I could have sworn I saw something,” their mother muttered, glancing about.

“Could have just been the wind.”

“Maybe, but I thought I heard branches breaking.”

“Hold on.” Their father walked back towards the door. He smiled at the girls as he reached in and grabbed the shield off the wall. He placed it on his arm, returning to the fireside. “Could it have just been a wolf?”

“It sounded bigger.” She eyed the nearby trees warily. “A bear perhaps?”

“They don’t normally come this far south, but one could have gotten lost or driven away from their hunting grounds.”

“It couldn’t be a person could it?”

The father drew his axe from his belt. “I’ll go take a look.”

He shifted the axe in his hand, creeping to the edge of the clearing. He peered into the dense trees beyond, between branches and thorns. Something rustled, maybe twenty paces ahead. His grip tightened. A shape moved amongst the branches. He stepped forwards, pushing the brush apart to step. A twig snapped. The movement in the bush ceased. He took another step.

Something moved. Something big.

It roared.

Branches splintered and earth trembled as something barrelled towards the clearing. The woodsman retreated as the beast tore through the brush. It stopped, looming over the camp. It was twice the height of a man, with black fur and grey markings. Its forelegs were sturdy, with two massive claws in place of toes, while its rear legs were nimble and hooved. Its body had the broadness of a bull with various sharp quills littering its back, its head was something between a wolf and a boar, armed with dozens of sharp, snarling teeth, and two tusks protruded at the edges of its maw. Along its snout, a plate of something resembling bone stretched from the nape of its neck to its nostrils, as its eyes gleamed from the side of its head, small, red and shining.

The beast roared. The woodsman swung his axe. It connected with the beast’s snout and the monster recoiled. He turned to his family.

“Run! Take the girls!”

The beast swung a claw and caught his raised shield. The mother ran to the girls, still standing frightened in the doorway. She grabbed their hands and ran. They ran and ran. The roar of the beast echoed through the forest behind them, but still they ran on. They ran until the noise became distant. They ran until they had to stop, panting and exhausted. The girls clung to their mother. She kept looking back the way they had come. She dropped to one knee and looked each of her children in the eyes, first Elena then Cerris.

“Stay here. Don’t move. I have to go back to help,” she said desperately. The girls nodded. Then their mother let go and ran back the way they’d come. She picked up a large branch as she went, glowing runes searing into the bark at her touch. Then she was gone.

The girls listened to the noise. The rustling of trees. The roar of the beast. The thunder of its footfalls. The sun grew low in the sky, and the roars became more and more distant. Finally, there was silence. The girls didn’t move. The air turned cold as evening crept in, and the sisters huddled together. There was no noise other than the birds and the trees.

Slowly, holding hands, they wandered back the way they had come.

“Mum?” Elena called out into the fading day. “Dad?” Both of them shook as they drew close to the camp.

“Mum?” Cerris cried fearfully. “Dad?” They gripped each other tightly as they reached the clearing. They stood before the scene.

They saw the bodies that lay before them.

Tears ran down Cerris’s face as Elena screamed.

#writeblr #writers on tumblr #writing community #lamura dex writes!#fantasy #Signs of Light and Shadow #S.o.L.a.S Chapters #novel #novel writing #novel wip

5 notes · View notes

satans-helper · 1 year ago

Text

Reaching for Stardust - Part VI

Read Looking For Space here // Playlists here // Read on wattpad

Word Count: ~2700 (why so short?? I don't know. I wrote this what feels like ages ago lol)

Warnings: none...but buckle up for later?

This is super late because I was 1) busy writing that GVF slash mini-series 2) busy being out of town to see OUR BOYS again 3) busy writing that new Sam fic I just posted. Anyway...

---

Morning began with a tangerine sun suspended in a hazy, buttercup yellow sky. The clouds seemed to come to life as the sun got higher, moving past the orange glow in such gentle, soft movements that it was hard to even keep track of the changes, at least from mine and Josh’s spot on the porch. We were both hungover worse than we’d experienced in, well, we weren’t sure–it was hard to remember anything with our heads pounding, throats parched and stomachs lurching.

“Fuck. We fucked up,” Josh lamented with a little groan. He shut his eyes and leaned against me, a mug of coffee in his hands. “We should’ve bought food yesterday. I’d take a single saltine cracker right now.”

I felt the same. Hindsight was always 20/20. “Yeah, we fucked up,” I agreed. I tried to shut my eyes in solidarity and to just bask in the warm glow of morning but, when I did, I felt the earth spin beneath my feet. “I need Gatorade or something, jeez.”

“I shouldn’t have suggested shots,” Josh went on, sounding off a louder groan to punctuate his statement. “It’s all my fault. Are we going to survive?”

“We’ll survive,” I assured him, though the coffee from the Keurig machine was too bitter on my tongue and too hot in my stomach. I was dreaming of an ice-cold blue sports drink from an air conditioned gas station, chased with an iced coffee loaded with cream and sugar. “Nothing’s gonna stop us from going to the beach today.”

“Tybee Island, yes,” Josh concurred. He sat up straight and brought the mug of coffee to his lips, eyes half-lidded as he sipped again despite the enthusiasm in his voice. Once half of his coffee was gone he was up and moving, shuffling away from the porch, beginning to sing to himself as he carried on into the bedroom. If it’d been anyone else, that relentless cheeriness and resilience would have irritated me, but it was Josh, so listening just made me laugh to myself.

I was still excited for our beach day, though at the moment the thought of baking in the sun made me feel even more queasy. I diligently sipped the rest of my coffee and groggily hauled myself into the kitchen to chug lukewarm tap water, which tasted so different than the water back home. I did love Savannah so far, but I still couldn’t imagine living there. In my mind, home was where our most beloved people were and that was back in Michigan.

That thought reminded me to check my phone for a reply from Jake. He had texted back later in the night and I immediately smiled huge and delirious at the picture–a selfie taken with the help of Danny’s long arm that showed all three of the boys that I missed so badly. The text read: First birthday without Josh was weird. He sent me a text that was half gibberish did you guys go out?

I typed back, relaying that we went to the rooftop bar and got absolutely wasted and that Josh’s birthday seemed a little weird without Jake and Sam and Danny, too. As I migrated to the bedroom after Josh, I realized how it was also the first birthday of Josh’s that felt so empty after the fact–normally, the whole “one year older” and effects of whatever party we’d had trailed into the next day. I didn’t feel that at all. Was it yet another product of actually getting older? Sometimes in my head, Josh was still the same 23 year old I’d met in that poetry class, both of us so fresh and green, with him so ready to fall headfirst into something new with me. I’d been so apprehensive and fearful and now, looking back, it felt so silly. Josh was a dream come true.

The beach was also a dream come true. We had nothing to compare it to back home, not even close–the ocean right at our literal fingertips was enough for Josh and I to drop our bags and hightail it to the sea, running through the foamy waves until the water reached our knees. The sun was partially hidden by some of the morning clouds that had stuck around, but what sunlight pierced through hit hard and beautiful, turning the water into an infinite expanse of glittering blue and green that melted into the pale blue horizon. Seagulls circled overhead; pelicans coasted in the water; boats floated on by far off in their own little worlds and our little world seemed to be a seaside fairytale that I was content to live in for much longer than we actually had.

The wind caressed our damp legs as we stepped back out onto dry land. My heart was beating fast, even faster still when I looked at Josh–the strips of white clouds were reflected in his eyes and his smile was bigger and brighter than any sun. I was sure of that. We watched each other more than what our hands were doing as we held the big beach towel we’d packed between us and spread it out in the air, trying to get it straight and taut to lay flat on the sand. Josh smirked; I stuck my tongue out at him and he laughed.

“This is perfect,” he remarked once we were getting situated on the ground. He laid back, putting his hands behind his head, and closed his eyes. “I could stay here forever.”

I grabbed his sunglasses from his backpack and slid them over his eyes. “It does feel like a little slice of paradise. We just need some fruity cocktails.”

“A little hair of the dog that bit us wouldn’t be such a bad idea right now, actually.”

I laid down next to him, shielding my eyes with my hand to look at the sky. “We used to be able to drink all night and be relatively fine the next day. I miss that.”

“I think Jake, Danny and Sam drank all night. Sam sent me a video of Danny drinking straight from a bottle of tequila.”

I chuckled. “Those two degenerates have ruined our good boy.”

“Sam singlehandedly corrupted Danny years ago, I’m sure of it,” Josh said, turning his head to look at me. His bare skin was already so naturally tan–I could imagine how much more rich and glowy he’d become with the extra sun we were getting. “He’s just good at keeping it under wraps, that Daniel of ours. Well, sometimes. Seems like the most debauchery comes out when Sam peer pressures him and Danny can’t contain himself.”

It was true–so many nights of Sam practically pouring shots down Danny’s throat himself. It seemed like Danny only tried to hold back because he knew he’d end up having to take care of Sam later on.

“I think they’re in love,” I said.

Josh laughed. “Me too.”

I sat up to retrieve a bottle of water from my backpack. “But really–none of them have girlfriends. Is it because they’re touring now? I just can’t imagine any of them not finding a girl to click with.”

“Well, we are their best groupies. I don’t think anyone else can compete with us in that regard,” Josh said, still lying flat, lounging beneath the penetrating sunrays. “But I do think the fact that they’re playing shows all over now is a factor. I can’t imagine how hard it would be to commit to someone you’re not going to see even every week.”

“Not gonna lie, I wanted Sam and Bev to work out.”

“I think he was a little too young then. It might be different now.”

“Well, maybe it’s a good thing.” I took a drink then settled back down, moving closer to Josh. “They should just be focused on the music and having fun. Relationships complicate things.”

Josh raised his sunglasses and winked at me. “Not if they’re perfect.”

I smiled. “We’re not exactly perfect.”

“Close enough.”

I’d considered the idea that Josh really would propose to me during our vacation. The beach seemed like a good place for it–though there were people around, we had plenty of privacy, no way to make a big public fuss about it. The weather was perfect and the whole ambiance of the ocean and sky made for a picturesque setting. He was too relaxed though–if Josh were to propose now, I would have had a real inkling. Still, the impending mystery proposal and the subsequent unplanned wedding was on my mind again.

“Where would you want our wedding to be?” I asked. “Obviously outside somewhere. We’ve already agreed on that. But where specifically?”

Josh reached between us to take my hand, still lying idle by my side. “I’m not sure, darling. I’m not privy to the venues and what have you that are in our area. Why, did you have a particular place in mind?”

“Not really. But some place quiet and open would be nice. Lots of flowers and trees and whatnot. That’d be pretty, right?”

“Very pretty. Though it sounds like we’d be waiting another year if we wanted the greenery and sunshine.” Josh squeezed my hand lightly, let it go to roll onto his side and look at me. “I don’t feel like waiting another year.”

I knew as much, but my heart still skipped a beat at hearing the words. “It takes time to plan a wedding. Even if you proposed to me right now, the planning would take months.”

“We have months as it is. But don’t worry–I’m not proposing today.” Josh leaned in and cupped my face, giving me a kiss. “It’s still going to be a surprise. And I have to get the timing right.”

“Oh?” I quipped, reaching out for him, tugging on his hair to bring him back and kiss again. He tasted like sunscreen and coconut lip balm.

Josh propped his head up in one hand, remaining on his side. “I know you have your bridesmaid all figured out. Kirsti would be your maid of honor, naturally.”

“And Jake would be your best man. Naturally.”

“You’ve told your mom we’re planning on getting married, right?”

“Josh, she started pressuring me to marry you like two years ago,” I reminded him with a laugh. “Once she came around to you, she came around hard. And I’m pretty sure she’s desperate for just one of her kids to get married.”

“Oh, that’s right! Last Christmas she asked me where the ring was.” Josh laughed too, turning to look up at the sky. “I didn’t tell her I had it already. Maybe I should’ve.”

“Since I already know you’re going to propose, isn’t most of the surprise moot anyway?”

Josh laid back down. “Not at all. People should talk about it beforehand. It doesn’t kill the romance. It just makes things more solid.”

“You know what’s also solid? A house,” I replied, giving his nose a tap with my finger before I laid back down, too.

“Seen any around here that you like?”

“I’ve seen some back home that I like.” I quickly considered spilling about the house from the estate sale, but I didn’t know if that was a sure thing yet. And anyway, I didn’t want to get caught up in thinking about being home when we were on vacation. Josh was so skilled at enjoying the present–I was going to do the same.

Once we were feeling the burn from the sun, Josh and I waded back into the cool Atlantic. This time, we went far enough out until the water reached our necks and the waves were gentle and stirring around us, crashing loudly behind us; I gazed out at the blue horizon, thinking of how the ocean seemed as infinite as the sky itself, as infinite as the whole universe, really. I laughed when Josh decided to swim out even farther, kicking and paddling along until he called out that he couldn’t feel where the bottom was and I told him to watch out for sharks. He tipped back to lie flat beneath the sky and float atop the water, arms out at his sides and eventually looking too much like a dead body that I swam out and dragged him back by his hand.

We took our damp and slightly sunburnt selves to a very late lunch at a little seafood shack afterward. It was quite literally a shack, actually, and it was situated down a curvy road, far more in the grasslands than the actual beach, but I could still smell the ocean when we stepped out of the rental car and moseyed up the wooden ramp to the doorway, where inside it smelled like, not to either of our surprises, fish, crab and fryer oil.

After our greasy and satisfying lunch, we headed out to the shops lining the island that were even more blatant tourist money grabs than what we’d encountered downtown, and we loved it. The sweatshirts, t-shirts, hats, keychains and the beach-inspired hemp necklaces and bracelets fit the energy of the island and our sun-soaked bliss; neither Josh nor I cared about how silly the purchases were. We walked out with plastic bags full of mementos and soft hoodies, our hair stiff from salt water, my heart full of undeniable happiness.

While Josh drove us back over the bridge to take us back to our temporary home for much-needed showers, I got a text from Jake: How do you like Savannah?

I love it. It’s beautiful! We’re having the best time. Where are you guys tonight?

Cleveland. So far so good. Josh hasnt been texting me much so he must be enamored with the city haha

He is! But we miss you guys. We have so much to tell you when we get back

Same here. Wish you guys could see the show

We’re your biggest fans. Don’t forget it ;)

“Jake misses us,” I announced to Josh, who had a very pleased smile on his face when I looked at him.

“I know he does,” he said while we glided over the bridge back to the city. “I miss him, too.”

When night fell, we were one of four other couples and one trio during the ghost tour, which took us from the starting point outside a diner, long shut down since its last dinner hour, around what felt like far more than just a couple miles of the city. The guide was a witchy woman who had the right energy and charisma to make all the stories–surely, some more exaggerated than others–come to life in the warm night and the yellow glow of the street and house lights and the abundance of Spanish moss hanging from so many of the trees surrounding our steps added to the spookiness of it all. Josh loved it, as did I, and we were wired by the time the tour ended, wanting more ghost stories–really, wanting to find some ghost stories of our own.

But instead of ghosts, we found ourselves back at the airbnb, sipping wine with our limbs tangled together on the porch. I couldn’t see the stars–the lights of the small city were still too many and too bright to get a good view–but the brightest star of all was right there next to me. I said this to Josh and he laughed lovingly at the cliche, wrapped his arm tighter around me and pressed his wine-stained lips to my cheek: “Thank you for coming with me on this journey,” he said.

“To Savannah or just, like, life?” I asked, happy and mutually grateful either way.

“All of it.” Josh sighed softly and rested his cheek on my shoulder. “I just wish it were longer.”

“We have tomorrow,” I reminded him. “And a whole lifetime.”

Josh clinked his glass with mine. “Infinity.”

I ran my fingers up his back, tracing each vertebrae. “Infinity.”

---

Tagging: @jjwasneverhere @colorstreammind

Want to be tagged? Let me know here! (or just DM me lmao)

#greta van fleet #gvf #josh kiszka #josh gvf #sam kiszka #danny wagner #jake kiszka #gvf fic #josh fic #lfs #rfs #josh kiszka x reader

10 notes · View notes

jennyacid · 1 year ago

Text

Debunking Web Hosting: A Comprehensive Guide to Picking the Right Carrier for Your Site

Introduction: In today's digital age, having a solid online existence is essential for companies and people alike. Whether you're releasing a new web site or wanting to migrate an existing one, among the most vital decisions you'll need to make is choosing the right host supplier. With a huge selection of alternatives available, each using various features and prices strategies, it can be overwhelming to navigate the world of host. In this comprehensive overview, we'll demystify the concept of internet hosting and offer you with beneficial insights to assist you make an informed decision.Paragraph 1: Internet hosting is a service that enables individuals and organizations to publish their internet sites on the net. Think about it as leasing an area on a web server where your site documents and information are saved. A reliable internet holding service provider ensures that your internet site is easily accessible to visitors 24/7, supplying quick loading speeds and minimal downtime. There are various types of internet hosting readily available, consisting of shared organizing, VPS hosting, committed holding, and cloud holding. Recognizing the differences between these alternatives is vital for identifying which one fits your details requirements. Elements to think about consist of web site web traffic, storage demands, safety and security attributes, scalability, and technical support.Paragraph 2: When choosing a host provider, it is essential to assess a number of vital variables. Firstly, take into consideration the uptime guarantee supplied by the holding business. This indicates the portion of time your website will come to visitors. Search for carriers that offer a minimum of a 99.9 %uptime assurance, as even a small downtime can result in shed revenue or damaged online reputation. Secondly, assess the degree of customer support supplied by the provider. A dependable holding firm needs to offer 24/7 technological assistance via various networks like online conversation, phone, or email. Furthermore, think about the scalability options readily available, as your site might experience growth in the future, requiring added sources. Lastly, consider the pricing plans and features supplied by different carriers, guaranteeing they align with your budget plan and requirements.Conclusion: Choosing the ideal webhosting company is a vital action in ensuring your internet site's success. By understanding the concept of web organizing and evaluating vital factors such as uptime warranty, customer assistance, scalability, and pricing, you can make an educated decision that best matches your demands. Bear in mind, dependable host is the structure of an effective online presence, so put in the time to research and select wisely.

Read more here Choose here

#honting web

3 notes · View notes

nguyenconditions · 2 years ago

Text

My City23: Tontine

I started up this account in order to record and share my Dungeon23 / City23 progress and I'm obviously behind. On the sharing, not the writing, I've successfully done my dailies since Jan 1, 2023. A pre-paid postage sachette is en route for you to applaud into and return.

For my city I'm loosely writing assuming it to be run with my game Trouvaille or it's soon to be started rework & expansion, but so far nothing written is mechanically reliant so it's universally compatible until proven otherwise.

Against my better wishes I'm writing the city without an overarching theme or pitch. Discovering my way through the setting as I write, which I'm assured has some creative merit -- assurances I accept for lack of motivation or satisfaction to argue.

I do have pre-laid guidelines I've set for myself though, so I'm not flying totally foolishly into clouds.

Tontine, the guilds' frontier fortress. Built atop and aside a butte jutting up from deep jungle. Official reports from the guilds in The Capital claim the deep bush round below full of danger and glory, residents know otherwise.

So it's still going to be my South-East Asia silkpunk bullshit. BUT! It's not going to be river oriented. Every other city I've written is all river based, not surprising cities usually migrate to rivers go figure, with canal focused intercity pathways. Tontine is a mountainous parcel that relies on underground reservoirs.

I also know I want dirigibles (very few highly regulated, prone to accidents, and not stupid silly like steampunk ones), public transit trains & cable cars (highly accessible, very accident averse, but lots of weird & wild shit happens on them just as a result of the number of people that get on and off), and populated sewers (populated by like normal ass people not just monsters). So with my typical political bullshit there's like an exploration of technological advances in a fantasy/silkpunk setting kinda like what Legend of Korra and The Greenbone Saga propose.

Bit of a rant but it's free so if you want future posts copy-edited you can find my ko-fi somewhere. I'm excited to keep writing and hope to share soon. Play a bit of catch up where I can and ideally start hitting a weekly share routine. 12 districts, 52+ locations factions & NPCs, 365 details.

First (soon TM): The Godswell (district) and Home (location) the public house famous across the city for it's dumplings.

#dungeon23 #city23 #ttrpg design

9 notes · View notes

techvins · 2 years ago

Text

Techvins is a software development and consulting company that provides a wide range of services, including:

Custom software development

Cloud migration and management

Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning solutions

Marketing

Quality Assurance and Testing

Maintenance and Support

#web development #app development

3 notes · View notes

lifeinapic · 11 days ago

Text

If you are working in the cloud, you need to treat disaster not as a matter of if, but when. Sooner or later, you are likely to experience some issues regarding the integrity or availability of your data and IT environment. Having a solid Disaster Recovery plan ensures your downtime is kept to a minimum, and that you can restore your operations with minimal damage. This can be the difference between being in or out of business. Amazon Web Services (AWS) users can take advantage of several features in the AWS cloud environment to build a robust recovery plan. Read on to learn how to you can take full advantage of the functions in your AWS environment, to keep your data safe. What Is AWS Disaster Recovery? Disaster recovery is the process of restoring applications, data and hardware to ensure business continuity. An attack or disaster is always close, therefore, it is critical for every organization to have a Disaster Recovery Plan (DRP) in place. DRP is a documented, structured layout of instructions with the goal to recover disrupted systems and networks in the event of a disaster. While this may sound fairly straightforward, you shouldn’t think of this as a static process in which you can design the plan and rest assured nothing bad will happen. Amazon Web Services defines disaster recovery as “a continual process of analysis and improvement, as business and systems evolve”. Amazon Web Services provides its users with a set of cloud-based disaster recovery services. Organizations migrating to AWS cloud find the ability to cross-region disaster recovery very attractive, increasing the popularity of the platform. How do you start planning a disaster recovery plan for AWS? You should start by conducting a Business Impact Analysis to define two key metrics: Recovery Time Objective(RTO)—the maximum acceptable time your application or system can be offline before the data loss presents a danger for the business continuity. Recovery Point Objective (RPO)—the time it takes to recover your business operations after the disruption started. This metric varies according to the type of data the application uses. For example, modified user data can have an RPO of a few minutes, while infrequently modified data can have an RPO of hours. Timeline of RTO and RPO After defining what RTO and RPO work for your organization, the next step is to choose the disaster recovery method. AWS offers four different methods for backup and disaster recovery, which can be used in combination with each other or with third-party solutions depending on the RPO and RTO metrics. The Cold Method This involves periodically backing up the systems on tape and sending them off-site. Depending on what RPO you determined, you can use services such as S3, Direct Connect, or Import/Export to define backup solutions. Pilot Light Using this method involves scripting the environment as a template and a minimal version of the system is running in a different region. Usually, the database is activated for data replication, such as if needed, there is a core element always ready for recovery. This core, or Pilot Light, can be scaled up in case of a disaster. Although this method reduces the RTO and RPO, it can be costly to implement. This method requires defining retention time and regularly testing the backups. Warm Standby This method ensures a minimal recovery time by running a scaled down version of a fully functional environment. During recovery, this standby infrastructure is scaled up, updating DNS records to re-route the traffic to the new AWS. This approach reduces RTO and RPO. However, since it runs 24/7, it incurs higher costs. Multi-Site This approach duplicates the environment in its totality, meaning there is always another active environment running in a different region. Usually, it involves configuring automated failover to re-route the traffic from the affected site in case of disaster. 5 Tips for Planning Disaster Recovery for AWS

Although AWS doesn’t have a proprietary Disaster Recovery solution, it provides the users with tools they can use to create a customized recovery solution. When implementing an AWS disaster recovery plan, the following tips can come in handy: #1. Backup and Recovery are Not the Same Thing Having recent backups of your organization’s data is essential for a successful recovery. After all, you will only recover what is safely backed up. As important as is to schedule regular backups, it is not enough. Automating the backups, for example by using the snapshots LifeCycle Manager, is a good practice to ensure the data is up to date. Your disaster recovery plan should include processes to access the data quickly in case of an outage or security event. #2. Identify the Critical Data You should conduct an audit of your assets to identify your mission-critical data and applications as part of your DR plan. At this stage, you should choose how your data will be stored, whether using snapshots or Amazon Machine Images (AMIs) for instance. #3. Use Cross-Region Backups One of the most important considerations is to spread your backups geographically to avoid large-scale disasters to affect business continuity. To protect your data, you should take advantage of the AZ (Availability Zones) around the world, to keep your backups in multiple locations. A good practice could be to replicate the EBS volumes to another AZ or, better yet, to another region. This can be done simply by creating a snapshot and recreating the volume in the destination AZ from that snapshot. #4. Test Your Disaster Recovery Plan This ensures you can identify any gaps and potential flaws when there is no disaster around. Therefore, you are better prepared with a well-oiled plan, even if using third-party vendors. #5. Consider a Disaster Recovery as a Service Solution Most companies handle disaster recovery planning in-house. However, more organizations are opting to outsource to third-party services the implementation and maintenance of their DR plans. Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) enables companies to focus on production while their DR plan is being taken care of. The Bottom Line For AWS users, it is very convenient to take advantage of the existing tools provided by AWS to build a customized recovery plan. While AWS doesn’t have a proprietary disaster recovery solution, this is compensated for by the flexibility offered to users to repurpose functions and features to create their own DR solution. In this article, I covered several considerations to keep in mind when planning your DR plan with AWS, which should help your strategy up-to-date and effective.

0 notes

igtsolutions · 9 months ago

Text

Ensuring Seamless Cloud Migration: Your Path to Business Continuity

Unlock the potential of secure and efficient cloud migration with our expert assistance. Our services guarantee a swift and reliable transition for your business-critical applications, prioritizing speed, security, and cost-effectiveness. Trust us to navigate the complexities of cloud migration, ensuring a smooth journey towards enhanced performance and resilience. Experience the assurance of a seamless shift to the cloud with our tailored solutions, optimizing your business operations and safeguarding critical data. Elevate your digital transformation with our proven expertise in cloud migration assurance, delivering results that exceed expectations.

#cloud migration assurance

0 notes

fromdevcom · 11 days ago

Text

0 notes

sifytechnologiessify · 16 days ago

Text

Sify’s Data Center in Noida: A Hub of Reliability and Innovation for Modern Enterprises

In the heart of India’s industrial and technological hub, Sify’s Data Center in Noida stands as a testament to advanced infrastructure, state-of-the-art technology, and seamless connectivity. Strategically positioned to serve the Northern region, Sify’s Noida Data Center is a reliable choice for organizations seeking secure, scalable, and sustainable digital infrastructure to power their operations.

Key Features of Sify’s Noida Data Center

Cutting-Edge Infrastructure

The Noida Data Center is built with industry-leading architecture, ensuring a resilient and high-performance environment. This facility incorporates world-class hardware, power redundancy, and advanced cooling technologies designed to maintain optimal performance and uptime.

Energy Efficiency and Sustainability

Sustainability is integral to Sify’s approach, and the Noida Data Center is no exception. Utilizing energy-efficient designs, advanced cooling mechanisms, and green power options, the facility minimizes environmental impact while optimizing energy usage. This sustainable approach supports businesses in meeting environmental goals while controlling operational costs.

Robust Security and Compliance Standards

Sify’s Noida Data Center is equipped with top-tier physical and digital security, including biometric access, round-the-clock monitoring, and advanced fire suppression systems. Compliance with global standards, such as ISO, PCI-DSS, and GDPR, makes this data center a secure environment for businesses in highly regulated industries, such as finance, healthcare, and government.

Scalability and Flexibility

Sify’s Noida Data Center is designed with scalability in mind, allowing enterprises to expand their digital footprint as their business needs grow. With flexible infrastructure solutions, from colocation to cloud integration, businesses can customize deployments and access scalable resources without costly migrations or infrastructure changes.

Network Connectivity and Redundancy

One of the key benefits of Sify’s Noida Data Center is its superior network connectivity. Located strategically in Noida, the data center provides high-speed access to multiple network carriers and direct connections to global cloud providers, reducing latency and ensuring consistent performance. Redundant connectivity options also safeguard against service interruptions, ensuring reliable access to data and applications.

Disaster Recovery and Backup Solutions

For enterprises seeking resilient business continuity solutions, Sify’s Noida Data Center offers comprehensive disaster recovery and backup services. With geographically distributed backup facilities and automated recovery protocols, businesses are assured of quick restoration times, minimizing the impact of potential disruptions.

24/7 Managed Support and Technical Expertise

The Noida Data Center offers round-the-clock support, with a dedicated team of technical experts and IT professionals available to assist with everything from routine maintenance to incident response. This ensures that businesses benefit from consistent support, with Sify’s technical team always ready to address issues and optimize performance.

Benefits for Businesses Operating in Northern India

Sify’s Noida Data Center provides crucial digital infrastructure for businesses across various sectors, from IT and e-commerce to manufacturing and finance. By hosting their operations in Noida, companies gain access to a local data center with international standards of service and security, enabling them to scale, optimize, and secure their digital assets in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

Supporting Digital Transformation and Innovation

The Noida Data Center plays an essential role in supporting digital transformation for Indian enterprises. By providing a platform optimized for cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and big data, Sify empowers companies to innovate and adopt advanced technologies. This capability is instrumental in helping organizations stay competitive and adaptive in a rapidly changing digital landscape.

Why Choose Sify?

With a commitment to operational excellence, Sify’s Data Center in Noida is backed by years of experience in the IT services and infrastructure sector. Sify’s Noida facility reflects the company’s dedication to providing high-performance, secure, and sustainable digital solutions. Businesses partnering with Sify gain a reliable data management and storage partner that prioritizes uptime, security, and efficiency, helping them achieve seamless operations and drive growth.

Sify’s Noida Data Center is more than a data storage facility; it is a comprehensive digital ecosystem designed to support businesses through every phase of their digital journey. As Northern India’s industries continue to expand and digitize, Sify’s Noida Data Center will remain a cornerstone of digital infrastructure, delivering secure, scalable, and innovative solutions that fuel growth and innovation.

#noida data center #data center in noida

0 notes

govindhtech · 25 days ago

Text

From Cassandra To Bigtable Migration At Palo Alto Networks

Palo Alto Networks’ suggestions on database conversion from Cassandra to Bigtable

In this blog post, we look at how Palo Alto Networks, a leading cybersecurity company worldwide, solved its scalability and performance issues by switching from Apache Cassandra to Bigtable, Google Cloud’s enterprise-grade, low-latency NoSQL database service. This allowed them to achieve 5x lower latency and cut their total cost of ownership in half. Please continue reading if you want to find out how they approached this migration.

Bigtable has been supporting both internal systems and external clients at Google. Google Cloud wants to tackle the most challenging use cases in the business and reach more developers with Bigtable. Significant progress has been made in that approach with recent Bigtable features:

High-performance, workload-isolated, on-demand analytical processing of transactional data is made possible by the innovative Bigtable Data Boost technology. Without interfering with your operational workloads, it enables you to run queries, ETL tasks, and train machine learning models directly and as often as necessary on your transactional data.

Several teams can safely use the same tables and exchange data from your databases thanks to the authorized views feature, which promotes cooperation and effective data use.

Distributed counters: This feature continuously and scalablely provides real-time operation metrics and machine learning features by aggregating data at write time to assist you in processing high-frequency event data, such as clickstreams, directly in your database.

SQL support: With more than 100 SQL functions now included into Bigtable, developers may use their current knowledge to take advantage of Bigtable’s scalability and performance.

For a number of business-critical workloads, including Advanced WildFire, Bigtable is the database of choice because to these improvements and its current features.

From Cassandra to Bigtable at Palo Alto Networks

Advanced WildFire from Palo Alto Networks is the biggest cloud-based malware protection engine in the business, evaluating more than 1 billion samples per month to shield enterprises from complex and cunning attacks. It leverages more than 22 distinct Google Cloud services in 21 different regions to do this. A NoSQL database is essential to processing massive volumes of data for Palo Alto Networks’ Global Verdict Service (GVS), a key component of WildFire, which must be highly available for service uptime. When creating Wildfire, Apache Cassandra first appeared to be a good fit. But when performance requirements and data volumes increased, a number of restrictions surfaced:

Performance bottlenecks: Usually caused by compaction procedures, high latency, frequent timeouts, and excessive CPU utilization affected user experience and performance.

Operational difficulty: Managing a sizable Cassandra cluster required a high level of overhead and specialized knowledge, which raised management expenses and complexity.

Challenges with replication: Low-latency replication across geographically separated regions was challenging to achieve, necessitating a sophisticated mesh architecture to reduce lag.

Scaling challenges: Node updates required a lot of work and downtime, and scaling Cassandra horizontally proved challenging and time-consuming.

To overcome these constraints, Palo Alto Networks made the decision to switch from GVS to Bigtable. Bigtable’s assurance of the following influenced this choice:

High availability: Bigtable guarantees nearly continuous operation and maximum uptime with an availability SLA of 99.999%.

Scalability: It can easily handle Palo Alto Networks’ constantly increasing data needs because to its horizontally scalable architecture, which offers nearly unlimited scalability.

Performance: Bigtable provides read and write latency of only a few milliseconds, which greatly enhances user experience and application responsiveness.

Cost-effectiveness: Bigtable’s completely managed solution lowers operating expenses in comparison to overseeing a sizable, intricate Cassandra cluster.

For Palo Alto Networks, the switch to Bigtable produced outstanding outcomes:

Five times less latency: The Bigtable migration resulted in a five times reduced latency, which significantly enhanced application responsiveness and user experience.

50% cheaper: Palo Alto Networks was able to cut costs by 50% because of Bigtable’s effective managed service strategy.

Improved availability: The availability increased from 99.95% to a remarkable 99.999%, guaranteeing almost continuous uptime and reducing interruptions to services.

Infrastructure became simpler and easier to manage as a result of the removal of the intricate mesh architecture needed for Cassandra replication.

Production problems were reduced by an astounding 95% as a result of the move, which led to more seamless operations and fewer interruptions.

Improved scalability: Bigtable offered 20 times the scale that their prior Cassandra configuration could accommodate, giving them plenty of space to expand.

Fortunately, switching from Cassandra to Bigtable can be a simple procedure. Continue reading to find out how.

The Cassandra to Bigtable migration

Palo Alto wanted to maintain business continuity and data integrity during the Cassandra to Bigtable migration. An outline of the several-month-long migration process’s steps is provided below:

The first data migration

To begin receiving the transferred data, create a Bigtable instance, clusters, and tables.

Data should be extracted from Cassandra and loaded into Bigtable for each table using the data migration tool. It is important to consider read requests while designing the row keys. It is generally accepted that a table’s Cassandra primary key and its Bigtable row key should match.

Make sure that the column families, data types, and columns in Bigtable correspond to those in Cassandra.

Write more data to the Cassandra cluster during this phase.

Verification of data integrity:

Using data validation tools or custom scripts, compare the Cassandra and Bigtable data to confirm that the migration was successful. Resolve any disparities or contradictions found in the data.

Enable dual writes:

Use Cassandra and dual writes to Bigtable for every table.

To route write requests to both databases, use application code.

Live checks for data integrity:

Using continuous scheduled scripts, do routine data integrity checks on live data to make sure that the data in Bigtable and Cassandra stays consistent.

Track the outcomes of the data integrity checks and look into any anomalies or problems found.

Redirect reads:

Switch read operations from Cassandra to Bigtable gradually by adding new endpoints to load balancers and/or changing the current application code.

Keep an eye on read operations’ performance and latency.

Cut off dual writes:

After redirecting all read operations to Bigtable, stop writing to Cassandra and make sure that Bigtable receives all write requests.

Decommission Cassandra:

Following the migration of all data and the redirection of read activities to Bigtable, safely terminate the Cassandra cluster.

Tools for migrating current data

The following tools were employed by Palo Alto Networks throughout the migration process:

‘dsbulk’ is a utility for dumping data. Data can be exported from Cassandra into CSV files using the ‘dsbulk’ tool. Cloud Storage buckets are filled with these files for later use.

To load data into Bigtable, create dataflow pipelines: The CSV files were loaded into Bigtable in a test environment using dataflow pipelines.

At the same time, Palo Alto decided to take a two-step method because data transfer is crucial: first, a dry-run migration, and then the final migration. This tactic assisted in risk reduction and process improvement.

A dry-run migration’s causes include:

Test impact: Determine how the ‘dsbulk’ tool affects the live Cassandra cluster, particularly when it is under load, and modify parameters as necessary.

Issue identification: Find and fix any possible problems related to the enormous amount of data (terabytes).

Calculate the estimated time needed for the migration in order to schedule live traffic handling for the final migration.

It then proceeded to the last migration when it was prepared.

Steps in the final migration:

Set up pipeline services:

Reading data from all MySQL servers and publishing it to a Google Cloud Pub/Sub topic is the function of the reader service.

Writer service: Converts a Pub/Sub topic into data that is written to Bigtable.

Cut-off time: Establish a cut-off time and carry out the data migration procedure once more.

Start services: Get the writer and reader services up and running.

Complete final checks: Verify accuracy and completeness by conducting thorough data integrity checks.

This methodical technique guarantees a seamless Cassandra to Bigtable migration, preserving data integrity and reducing interference with ongoing business processes. Palo Alto Networks was able to guarantee an efficient and dependable migration at every stage through careful planning.

Best procedures for migrations

Database system migrations are complicated processes that need to be carefully planned and carried out. Palo Alto used the following best practices for their Cassandra to Bigtable migration:

Data model mapping: Examine and convert your current Cassandra data model to a Bigtable schema that makes sense. Bigtable allows for efficient data representation by providing flexibility in schema construction.

Instruments for data migration: Reduce downtime and expedite the data transfer process by using data migration solutions such as the open-source “Bigtable cbt” tool.

Adjusting performance: To take full advantage of Bigtable’s capabilities and optimize performance, optimize your Bigtable schema and application code.

Modification of application code: Utilize the special features of Bigtable by modifying your application code to communicate with its API.

However, there are a few possible dangers to be aware of:

Schema mismatch: Verify that your Cassandra data model’s data structures and relationships are appropriately reflected in the Bigtable schema.

Consistency of data: To prevent data loss and guarantee consistency of data, carefully plan and oversee the data migration procedure.

Prepare for the Bigtable migration

Are you prepared to see for yourself the advantages of Bigtable? A smooth transition from Cassandra to Bigtable is now possible with Google Cloud, which uses Dataflow as the main dual-write tool. Your data replication pipeline’s setup and operation are made easier with this Apache Cassandra to Bigtable template. Begin your adventure now to realize the possibilities of an extremely scalable, efficient, and reasonably priced database system.

Read more on Govindhtech.com

#Cassandra #BigtableMigration #PaloAltoNetworks #SQL #meachinelearning #databases #Networks #PaloAlto #Pub/Sub #datamodel #News #Technews #Technology #Technologynews #Technologytrends #govindhtech

0 notes

sanyaaa-12 · 28 days ago

Text

The Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Chief Technology Officer for Project-Based Leadership

As businesses grow and increasingly become filled with technical issues, experienced leadership at the top may often be necessary. Not every company, however, can afford or requires a full-time Chief Technology Officer. That is where a fractional CTO might come in handy. A fractional chief technology officer is ready to provide the same strategic advisement and technical expertise a full-time CTO would but on a part-time or project-based basis. That makes hiring a fractional CTO a sensible decision for businesses that want to scale quickly or implement specific projects.

Key Benefits of Hiring a Fractional Chief Technology Officer for Project-Based Leadership

Flexible and Cost-Effective Leadership

Another key strength is that a fractional CTO offers flexibility. Instead of hiring an executive full-time, businesses can gain the technical leadership required as needed. This is particularly helpful to startups or small- to medium-sized companies that might need expertise but lack the budget or demand to retain a full-time CTO.

A fractional chief technology officer would provide only the know-how and leadership without needing a long-term financial commitment to your company. You can manage your budget while deriving the benefits of expertise at the highest tier of leadership.

Experience for a Given Project

Whether a new product launches, a technology shift, or a growing infrastructure, a fractional CTO helps in the strategic lead of all these programs for successful completion. A Fractional CTO has been through it all and understands how to capitalize on the challenges of scaling technology, new systems, and technical change during growth.

They help define the project's scope, align technology decisions with business goals, and ensure everything runs smoothly from the initial planning to execution. A fractional chief technology officer ensures that your tech projects remain on course and deliver real value.

Customized Technology Strategy

Another benefit of a fractional CTO is that the person can help you build a specific tech strategy tailored to your business. When the need for migration to the cloud, software development, or cybersecurity arrives, they will assess what's there now and create a roadmap that supports the long-term goals of your company.

A fractional chief technology officer will be able to explain all the technical and business aspects of your operations so that all your technology investments are resource-efficient and fit for purpose to execute your overall growth strategy.

Scalable Infrastructure

As your business grows, so will your technology infrastructure needs. An interim CTO will enable you to design scale systems within your company. This gets you ready to scale much faster because you'll be sure you've lost none of the performance or efficiency in meeting that increased demand.

As one issues the proper platform for designing scalable architecture data, part-time chief technology officers ensure that your infrastructures are built for growth and keep you away from common scaling problems and technical bottlenecks.

Risk and Security Management

It also brings its share of risks, from cybersecurity threats to compliance issues. A fractional CTO helps protect against risks by implementing the proper security protocols and allowing you to rest assured that your system complies with regulatory requirements. This approach of preparing for the future ahead in your line of business can protect and prepare you for the challenges ahead as you grow.

Conclusion

Hiring a fractional chief technology officer is an innovative, cost-effective solution for businesses managing a specific technical project or looking to scale effectively. A fractional chief technology officer provides strategic direction and technical expertise with the flexibility your business needs but without the commitment of hiring a full-time member.

CTO Bridge offers a wide range of professional fractional CTO services to solve the specific technology problems your company may be experiencing. Let us help you establish the exemplary leadership to confidently advance your business.

0 notes

marketresearchintent · 1 month ago

Text

Certificate Authority Market Booms as Demand for Secure Communications Rises Globally

In today’s interconnected world, securing online communication is more crucial than ever. That's where Certificate Authorities (CAs) come in. These organizations ensure that the digital certificates we use every day are secure and trustworthy, helping businesses, governments, and individuals protect their information. In 2023, the Certificate Authority Market was valued at around USD 0.2 billion, and it's projected to surpass USD 0.3 billion by 2030, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 10.3% from 2024 to 2030. But what’s driving this impressive growth? Let’s explore.

What is a Certificate Authority (CA)?

At its core, a Certificate Authority is an entity that issues digital certificates. These certificates verify the authenticity of websites, individuals, or devices in online communication, ensuring encrypted data transfers. Think of them as the notaries of the internet, certifying that the party you're interacting with is legitimate.

Access Full Report @ https://intentmarketresearch.com/latest-reports/certificate-authority-market-3158.html

Why Are Digital Certificates Important?

Imagine shopping online without knowing whether the website is legitimate. Without a digital certificate issued by a trusted CA, you could easily fall victim to phishing scams, data theft, or malware. Digital certificates encrypt the communication between your device and the server, ensuring that sensitive information, like passwords and credit card details, remains secure.

Market Overview and Growth Projections

The Certificate Authority market has gained immense momentum due to the rapid adoption of digitalization, cloud services, and the expansion of e-commerce. With cyber threats evolving, the demand for more secure and trustworthy online communications has driven organizations to adopt SSL/TLS certificates in large numbers.

2023 Market Valuation

In 2023, the market was valued at USD 0.2 billion, signifying the growing reliance on online security and authentication services.

Projected Growth to 2030

By 2030, the market is expected to surpass USD 0.3 billion, driven by a CAGR of 10.3% between 2024 and 2030. This growth is being fueled by various factors, including the surge in cybercrime, regulatory changes, and the increasing need for secure communications.

Key Factors Driving the Market

1. Rising Cybersecurity Threats

Cybersecurity threats are escalating globally, with cyberattacks becoming more sophisticated. Organizations are under pressure to protect their sensitive data from breaches. This urgency has led to a massive demand for digital certificates and enhanced security solutions, making Certificate Authorities pivotal in securing networks and communications.

2. Increased Adoption of Cloud Services

As more companies migrate to the cloud, the need for security and encryption becomes critical. Cloud platforms host sensitive data, and digital certificates ensure the integrity of data transmission between users and servers. CAs provide the backbone for securing these cloud interactions.

3. Regulatory Compliance

Governments and regulatory bodies across the globe are enacting stringent cybersecurity laws. Compliance requirements such as GDPR in Europe or HIPAA in the U.S. have made digital certificates essential for companies that need to protect personal data. Businesses that fail to comply face heavy penalties, further driving the demand for CA services.

Types of Digital Certificates Issued by CAs

1. SSL/TLS Certificates

These are the most widely used digital certificates, ensuring secure communication between a browser and a website. Whenever you see "https://" in a URL, an SSL/TLS certificate is working in the background, encrypting data to protect users.

2. Code Signing Certificates

These are used to verify that software or applications are authentic and have not been tampered with. They are essential for developers who want to assure their users that their software is safe to install.

3. Email Certificates (S/MIME)

These certificates are used to ensure that emails are sent securely, verifying the sender’s identity and ensuring that the message content has not been altered.

Download Sample Report @ https://intentmarketresearch.com/request-sample/certificate-authority-market-3158.html

Challenges Faced by the Certificate Authority Market

1. Rising Costs

As the demand for digital certificates grows, so do the associated costs. Organizations, particularly smaller businesses, often face difficulties in bearing these expenses. This could limit market growth, especially in regions where budget constraints are a major concern.

2. Trust Issues

While CAs play a crucial role in securing communications, they are not immune to breaches themselves. In rare instances, CAs have been compromised, leading to a loss of trust in their services. Restoring that trust after a breach can be difficult and slow, potentially affecting market growth.

Regional Market Insights

North America

The North American market is expected to maintain its dominance due to stringent data privacy regulations and the high adoption of advanced technologies. The U.S. is a key driver, with tech companies and government entities pushing the need for enhanced cybersecurity solutions.

Europe

Europe's focus on privacy, thanks to regulations like GDPR, makes it a significant player in the CA market. European companies and organizations must ensure their digital certificates comply with these regulations, driving demand for secure, certified communications.

Asia-Pacific

This region is expected to experience the fastest growth, with emerging economies like India and China adopting digital certificates rapidly as their internet infrastructures grow and cyberattacks rise.

Innovations in the Certificate Authority Space

1. Automation of Certificate Management

Automation is becoming a key trend, with tools that help businesses manage, renew, and track their digital certificates efficiently. Automation reduces human errors and ensures that certificates do not expire, reducing vulnerabilities.

2. Quantum-Safe Certificates

As quantum computing develops, new encryption techniques will be required. CAs are already researching quantum-safe certificates to ensure that encryption standards remain robust in a post-quantum world.

The Future of the Certificate Authority Market

With cyber threats continuing to evolve and the global reliance on online services expanding, the role of Certificate Authorities will only become more critical. The integration of automation, cloud adoption, and advanced cryptographic techniques will drive the market forward.

Conclusion

The Certificate Authority Market is poised for significant growth as businesses, governments, and individuals prioritize cybersecurity in an increasingly digital world. With rising cyber threats, the need for secure communication, and evolving regulatory requirements, the demand for digital certificates is only set to grow. As we move towards 2030, innovations like quantum-safe certificates and automated management will further revolutionize the space, ensuring a bright future for Certificate Authorities.

FAQs

1. What is a Certificate Authority (CA)?

A Certificate Authority is an entity that issues digital certificates, verifying the legitimacy of websites, individuals, or devices in online communication.

2. Why is the Certificate Authority market growing?

The market is growing due to increased cybersecurity threats, regulatory compliance needs, and the adoption of cloud services, all of which drive the demand for secure communications.

3. What are SSL/TLS certificates?

SSL/TLS certificates are digital certificates that encrypt the communication between a user’s browser and a website, ensuring data security.

4. How do CAs contribute to cybersecurity?

CAs issue digital certificates that secure data transmission, preventing unauthorized access to sensitive information during online communications.

5. What innovations are expected in the CA market?

Automation of certificate management and quantum-safe certificates are two key innovations that will shape the future of the Certificate Authority market.

About Us

Intent Market Research (IMR) is dedicated to delivering distinctive market insights, focusing on the sustainable and inclusive growth of our clients. We provide in-depth market research reports and consulting services, empowering businesses to make informed, data-driven decisions.

Our market intelligence reports are grounded in factual and relevant insights across various industries, including chemicals & materials, healthcare, food & beverage, automotive & transportation, energy & power, packaging, industrial equipment, building & construction, aerospace & defense, and semiconductor & electronics, among others.

We adopt a highly collaborative approach, partnering closely with clients to drive transformative changes that benefit all stakeholders. With a strong commitment to innovation, we aim to help businesses expand, build sustainable advantages, and create meaningful, positive impacts.

[email protected]

US: +1 463-583-2713

0 notes

helicalinsight · 1 month ago

Text

Streamlining Firebird to Snowflake Migration with Ask On Data

Migrating data from one database to another is a critical task that organizations often face as they scale and evolve. For businesses using Firebird, an open-source SQL relational database management system, transitioning to Snowflake, a cloud-based data warehousing solution, can unlock significant advantages, such as improved performance, scalability, and analytical capabilities. This article explores how Ask On Data, an NLP based data engineering tool, simplifies the Firebird to Snowflake migration process.

Understanding the Migration Challenge

Data extraction, transformation, and loading (ETL) are among the many challenges associated with data migration. Firebird databases often contain legacy data that may not align with Snowflake's architecture, necessitating careful planning and execution to ensure data integrity and consistency. Key challenges during this migration include:

Data Compatibility: Different data types and structures between Firebird and Snowflake can lead to complications. For instance, Firebird may utilize custom data types that need conversion to fit Snowflake’s schema.

Data Volume: Large datasets can pose performance issues during migration, especially if not managed correctly. Ensuring that data is moved efficiently without causing downtime is crucial.

Data Quality: Maintaining data quality throughout the migration process is essential. Poor data quality can lead to inaccuracies and hinder analytical capabilities in Snowflake.

User Access and Permissions: Transitioning user access and permissions from Firebird to Snowflake can also be challenging, as both systems manage security differently.

How Ask On Data Facilitates Migration

Ask On Data revolutionizes the migration process with its intuitive interface and natural language processing capabilities. Here’s how it addresses the challenges associated with Firebird to Snowflake migration:

1. Simplified Data Extraction

Users can utilize natural language instructions to query Firebird databases using Ask On Data. This user-friendly approach eliminates the need for complex SQL queries, allowing data engineers and analysts to extract the necessary datasets efficiently. By simplifying data extraction, organizations can focus on the migration strategy rather than getting bogged down in technical details.

2. Intelligent Data Transformation

After data is extracted, it frequently needs to be transformed in order for it to fit Snowflake's schema. Ask On Data automates much of this transformation process. Using predefined templates and customizable rules, users can easily map Firebird data types to their Snowflake counterparts. This reduces the risk of errors and ensures that data maintains its integrity during the migration.

3. Seamless Data Loading

Loading data into Snowflake can be daunting, especially with large datasets. Ask On Data streamlines this process by facilitating bulk data uploads, optimizing load performance, and ensuring that data is inserted into the correct tables and formats. The tool also monitors the loading process, providing real-time feedback on any issues that may arise.

4. Data Quality Assurance

With AskOnData, organizations can implement data validation checks during the migration process. The tool enables users to define quality metrics and automatically assess data against these standards. By ensuring that only high-quality data is migrated to Snowflake, businesses can enhance their analytical capabilities and maintain data integrity.

5. User Access Management

Transitioning user permissions and access controls can be simplified using Ask On Data’s intuitive interface. It allows administrators to manage user roles and permissions effectively, ensuring that access to sensitive data is maintained throughout the migration process.

Conclusion

Migrating from Firebird to Snowflake doesn’t have to be a complex and daunting task. With Ask On Data, organizations can leverage NLP-based capabilities to streamline the migration process, enhance data quality, and reduce the risk of errors. By automating key ETL functions and simplifying user interactions, Ask On Data empowers teams to focus on deriving value from their data in Snowflake rather than getting lost in technical challenges. As businesses continue to embrace cloud-based solutions for their data needs, tools like Ask On Data will play a crucial role in ensuring successful migrations and unlocking the full potential of their data.

0 notes