This article is in response to a request by Shawn Laasch and Jordan Rinke. Request your topic today! This article will focus on Rackspace Cloud Load Balancers .

Cloud Load Balancers

Load balancing is performed by a device or service acting as a single endpoint to your application or site. This device then spreads the requests it receives across multiple back end nodes. There are benefits to using a load balancer in your configuration:

Following proper coding standards is important to ensure others can read and modify your code. I make use of the following tools when writing Python to ensure I am formatting my code properly.

Install Dependencies

Let’s start by installing a dependency of the Vim plugin we are going to use. The Flake8 module will be needed for our vim-flake8 setup. As root (or using sudo), run the following commands:

easy_install pip
pip install flake8

The first command installs the latest version of pip , a tool for installing and managing Python packages. The second command uses pip to install the flake8 package. Now let’s configure vim.

My initial draft of the cf_pyrax.py script used in my automation deleted all the contents of a Cloud Files container, and then re-uploaded this content. This process was inefficient and also caused issues loading the site while this process was running.

I have now updated this script to use the new sync_folder_to_container method from pyrax. This method was introduced to pyrax in this commit . Make sure you update your pyrax modules before using this new script.

When using yum-cron, you might want to receive email notifications when updates are applied. Here is how you enable these notifications for CentOS. This article assumes a properly configured mail service.

Installing yum-cron

Install yum-cron using the yum package manager:

yum install yum-cron

Configure yum-cron

Modify the /etc/sysconfig/yum-cron file and add your email address to the MAILTO line.

MAILTO=email@address.com

Be sure to read up on the other settings in this file. You can disable automatic updates and only have the system send the notification.

I’ve been using a tablet as a laptop replacement for the past week. These are my thoughts concerning my experiences with the current state of Android on a ThinkPad Tablet.

The feature of my typical Linux laptop I missed the most on Android were floating windows. Android makes you focus on a single task, for better or worse when considering your work flow. I often reference documentation and articles when I’m working on a new project or a complex issue. This work flow doesn’t carry over well to Android.