Review of Synology DS415+, How to Add Memory to the DS415+, Web Pages Not Databases

December 19, 2014

As frequent readers of this blog likely know, I have not posted very many articles recently.  It seems that lately I struggle to find time to post interesting items to the blog, which is mostly focused on Oracle Database notes, so this is a three in one off-topic post.  I have been busy with a lot of items that are completely unrelated to Oracle Database.  One of those busy (non) work items is setting up a Synology DiskStation DS415+ NAS with four 6TB hard drives.

Part 1: Reviewing the Synology DS415+

Below is my review of that NAS, as posted on Amazon:

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http://www.amazon.com/Synology-America-Station-Attached-DS415/dp/B00IKTSSIO/

I have previously purchased and implemented Synology Diskstation DS1813+, DS412+, DS214+, DS212+, DS213j, and DS112j units, so Synology network attached storage (NAS) devices are not entirely new to me (I also have experience with administering various Linux and Windows servers). Most of the Synology NAS units are configured primarily as FTP destinations, although the units also provide one or more Windows shares to network computers using either Active Directory integration or Synology Diskstation internal user accounts, as well as offering network time protocol (NTP) services (to security cameras, Active Directory, and/or a PBX system), and Nagios network monitoring.

For the most part, the Synology NAS units have been very reliable. That said I have experienced occasional problems with most of the NAS units that provide FTP services to security cameras. Eventually, all of the permitted client connections become “in use” due to the Synology sometimes remembering FTP connections long after the security cameras have forgotten about those connections. This connection “remembering” issue causes a situation where client computers attempting to connect for Windows file sharing are denied access to the server, but the problem also affects the web-based access to the Synology DSM operating system. There have been issues with the DiskStation DS412+ locking up roughly 90% of the time that a reboot is attempted through the web-based DSM, resulting in a blue flashing light on the front console that could only be fixed by pulling the electrical power cord (note that it is usually possible to kill phantom connections from the DSM interface, if that interface will display, so that a reboot is typically not required to recover from the “remembered” connections). None of the other DiskStations have experienced lockups during an attempted reboot (or any other lockups that I am able to recall).

The DS415+ was bought to take the place of a DS212+, whose CPU simply cannot keep pace with 15+ high definition security cameras feeding the NAS with motion triggered video clips via FTP. I had considered purchasing the new version of the DS1813+ (possibly called a DS1815+), but that model has not been released yet, probably would have the same Intel CPU model as the DS415+ (the DS1812+, 1813+, and DS412+ all have essentially the same CPU model), and likely would have had a higher electric wattage consumption compared to the DS415+ if I filled all drive bays. So, I selected the DS415+ as a device that had some known compromises, but with also some power efficiency benefits that are not present in the DS1813+ and DS412+.

The DS415+ ships with 2GB of memory in a regular memory slot, rather than being soldered to the system board as is the case for the DS412+, opening the possibility for future memory expansion. With two gigabit network ports, two USB 3 ports (one USB 2), and one eSATA port , the Synology DiskStation DS415+ offers decent storage expansion options, although those options are more limited than what is offered by the DS1813+. The DS415+ internally supports up to four hard drives in one of several software RAID levels (SHR, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6, and RAID 10). Drive installs are potentially performed without using a screwdriver, although screws are provided to hold the drives in place if the screw-less arrangement seems too flimsy. Unlike the DS1813+, the drive carriages are held in place by a thumb-release locking clip, rather than a flimsy lock and key mechanism. The DiskStation DS415+ more than triples in weight with four typical hard drives installed – the light weight construction seems to be typical of the various Synology NAS units (at least those that support eight or fewer drives).

The DS415+ ships without an installed operating system, so the first task after powering on the DS415+ with the hard drives installed involves installing the latest DSM operating system. The process for installing the operating system is fairly simple, unless there is another DiskStation NAS on the same LAN (the directions provided in the printed quick start guide caused the DSM web page for another already set up Synology NAS to appear, rather than the operating system installation page for the DS415+ – the old Synology setup program that used to ship on CD with the NAS units probably would have helped in this situation). Once the NAS has nearly automatically downloaded the latest version of the operating system, the operating system installation should complete in a couple of minutes without a lot of issues.

The Synology DSM operating system offers a fantastic graphical user interface which implements HTML5 and CSS, displaying the interface in a web browser. Unfortunately, Synology tends to rearrange the location of various settings with each DSM version (and change the shape/color of icons), which makes it a little confusing when managing different Synology NAS units. Much like Windows Explorer, the File Station utility that is built into the DSM operating system supports context sensitive drag and drop, and well as right mouse button popup menus. The File Station utility that is included in the latest DSM version supports displaying more than 300 files in a paged view – that 300 file limit was an irritation when attempting to copy, move, or delete several thousand security camera videos on a daily basis through the GUI using older DSM versions. Like the other DSM models, the DS415+ supports telnet sessions, which allow access to the Linux command line and the configuration of scheduled script execution through the modification of the /etc/crontab file (side note: I have had issues with only the DS112j automatically resetting the contents of the /etc/crontab file when the DiskStation was power cycled – I believe that problem was caused by the use of spaces rather than tabs as field delimiters in the file).

A plain vanilla install of the DSM 5.0-4528 (as of today at update 1) offers support for network shares (Windows, MAC, and NFS), iSCSI, Active Directory Integration, FTP (standard FTP, anonymous FTP, FTPS, SFTP, TFTP), website hosting, WebDAV, SNMP, network time protocol (NTP), remote command line with telnet or SSH, integrated firewall, VPN client, USB printer sharing, and a handful of other capabilities. The DSM operating system’s native functionality is easily expanded through the download of free software packages from the Package Center. The packages extend the DS415+’s capabilities to include antivirus, Asterisk IP phone server, Internet radio rebroadcasting to networked computers, DNS server functionality, iTunes Server, VPN server, RADIUS server, email server, CRM and ERP packages, WordPress, IP camera monitoring (now includes a license for two IP cameras, additional licenses are roughly $50 per camera), and a variety of other features. Additionally, ipkg support permits the installation of more than 900 additional applications, including C++ compilers – which in theory suggests that the source for the Nagios network monitoring utility can be downloaded and compiled on the DS415+ (I was able to compile Nagios on a DS1813+, DS412+, and DS212+, and am close to having Nagios working on the DS415+).

I installed four new Western Digital Red 6TB drives, configured in a software RAID 10 array (DSM offered to automatically configure the drives in a SHR array during the initial setup, but did not offer a RAID 10 configuration at that time, so configuring the drives for RAID 10, to reduce recovery time in the event of a drive failure, requires a couple of additional mouse clicks). Peak single network link data transfer speeds so far have been impressive, at close to the maximum possible transfer rate for a gigabit network (achieving roughly 112-115MB/s ~ 919Mb/s), which is virtually identical to the speed seen with the DS1813+ that was using four 3TB Western Digital Red drives, and significantly faster than the DS212+ which has a much slower non-Intel CPU and two Western Digital Green 2TB drives. Pushing approximately 41.6GB of large files to the DS415+ from a client computer consumed between 9% and 11% of the DS415+’s CPU (for comparison, this test consumed 20% of the DS1813+ CPU capacity).

I did not test the DiskStation’s IEEE 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation – there was no apparent benefit when I tested the feature with the DS1813+, an HP 4208vl switch, and two client computers. The gigabit switch to which the DS415+ is attached does not support IEEE 802.3ad dynamic link aggregation, so it would have been a very bad idea to connect both of the supplied network cables to the switch.

Power Consumption of the DS415+(based on the output of a Kill-A-Watt meter):
* 1.1 watts when powered off
* 16 watts with no drives installed and unit is sitting idle
* 44 watts with four Western Digital Red 6TB drives while the unit is receiving files at a rate of 112-115MB/s (for comparison, this test required 46 watts with the DS1813+ when outfitted with four Western Digital Red 3TB drives)
* 39 watts with four Western Digital Red 6TB drives installed while the unit is sitting idle for a couple of minutes (identical to the value measured for the DS1813+)
* 14.5 watts with four Western Digital Red 6TB drives hibernating

Even though the throughput and CPU of the DS415+ with software based RAID are no match for the performance and capacity of a high end Windows or Linux server, the Synology NAS units consume far less electrical power, are competitively priced (even though these units are expensive once four 6TB drives are added), should yield a lower total cost of ownership (TCO), and are likely easier to configure and maintain for their intended purpose than either a Windows or Linux server. Like the DS1813+, the DS415+ supports up to 512 concurrent remote connections from other devices (a computer with five mapped drives pointing to the DS415+ consumes five of those 512 concurrent connections). The 512 connection count may not be the hard upper limit on the Synology NAS units – I have encountered some problems with the DS112J blocking connection attempts long before its 64 concurrent limit is reached – I do not yet know if this issue affects any of the other Synology device models. The lack of an available redundant power supply is a shortcoming of the DS1813+ and other less expensive Synology NAS units, but the power supply for the DS415+ (and the DS412+) is external, so it should be easier to obtain and install replacement power supplies for the DS415+ should the need arise (the power supply may not have a standardized connection, which would permit a replacement power supply to be purchased from a third party supplier).

Synology offers a group of customer support forums. However, those forums are apparently not actively monitored by Synology support staff. So far, other than whether or not Plex on the DS415+ is able to transcode 1080P videos, there has been no significant negative comments about the DS415+ on the Synology forums.

The Synology DiskStation DS212+ has served its role surprisingly well for the last two and a half years, even when equipped with slow Western Digital Green drives in a software RAID 1 array. While that NAS was able to support 15+ cameras that potentially simultaneously send video clips via FTP, concurrently allowing a Windows client to connect to the share for the purpose of reviewing the video clips was often just a bit too much of a load for the less powerful DS212+. I am expecting few problems from the DS415+ when serving in a similar role along with supporting a couple of optional packages such as the Media Server, Audio Station, Nagios (currently receiving a Segmentation fault (core dumped) error message when executing the check_ping test command found in my “Install Nagios on a Synology DiskStation DS1813+ or DS412+” blog article), and possibly Plex. Most of the optional Synology packages appear to be decent. However, the Synology Surveillance Station, while possibly useful, still seems to be an overly fragile, overly expensive, experimental package that tends to tax the wireless and wired network much more than the FTP solution that I use with my cameras (your experience with that package may be different than mine).

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Part 2: Voiding the Warranty on the Synology DS415+ (Upgrading the Memory to 8GB)

The DS415+ ships with 2GB of DDR3 1600 MT/s (PC3-12800) CL11 SODIMM memory pre-installed, and from what I am able to determine, Synology does not and will not offer memory upgrades for the DS415+.  The memory is installed in a laptop style memory socket, so… I installed a Crucial 8GB memory card into the DS415+.  The greatest difficulty in the memory upgrade, other than the concern for destroying a $630 device, was breaking into the DS415+ case without destroying the plastic clips that hold the two halves of the case together.  I posted the upgrade process to one of the Synology forum threads, but I thought that I would also post the process in this blog article so that it is easier to find the steps for the process later (the pictures do not fully display in the Synology forum thread).

If you have never disassembled a desktop or laptop computer, consider just being happy with the installed 2GB of memory to avoid damaging the Synology. If you have never removed a memory card from a laptop, consider just being happy with the installed 2GB of memory to avoid damaging the Synology. Upgrading the memory will likely void the warranty – there was a label on the installed memory card indicating that the warranty was void if the label was removed from the memory – the label is still attached to my old memory card (so, maybe my warranty is still in effect 😉 ).

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Step 1, unplug the Synology and attach labels to each of the hard drives. Write the numbers 1 through 4 on the labels to indicate the ordered position of the drives in the NAS. Release the latch, and remove the drives. Make certain that you ground yourself by touching a large metal object before attempting to open the NAS. When working on the NAS, do not touch any of the contacts inside the NAS or on the memory card (click for a larger view of the picture):

There are three screws on the back of the Synology that will need to be removed using a #1 Phillips screw driver. Wait to remove the screw that is pointed to by the screw driver in this picture until you have successfully separated the two halves of the NAS case:

There are plastic clips permanently attached to the smaller half of the NAS case. Use a flat blade screw driver to gently pry up on the larger section of the case at the top-back of the case near the seam between the two sections of the case. A popping sound should be heard when the latch releases. When the first latch releases, move the screw driver to the position of the next latch and gently pry up to again slightly raise the larger section of the case at the seam until the next latch releases. Continue working to release the remaining latches along the seam. Once all of the latches on the top are released, it should be possible to pivot the larger portion of the case so that the bottom latches release. Separate the two halves, being careful not to damage the retaining clips that normally hold the hard drives in place:

There are four screws on each side of the drive cage – four of the screws are long, and four are short. Remove the screws using the #1 Phillips screw driver. Make note of where the longer screws were installed. Remove the third screw from the back of the NAS if it was not already removed:

Gently lift the drive cage straight up and then set it aside. Note that there are two slots pointed to by the arrows in the picture below – when it is time to re-assemble the NAS, the gold colored ends of the two circuit boards must be reinserted into those slots. There are two fan connectors circled in the picture – if the fan connectors are carefully removed from the sockets, it is possible to move the drive cage out of the way. The circuit board holding the memory card is below the metal plate – that metal plate should lift straight out of the enclosure, although there may still be some wires that attach it to the enclosure

There is a metal clip at each end of the pre-installed memory card. Gently push the left clip to the left, and the right clip to the right until the memory card releases. When removing the memory card, make note of the location of the cut out section of the slot, so that the replacement memory card may be installed in the same orientation:

Slide the replacement memory card into the slot, and gently tilt it down until the two clips lock the memory card in location.

Reverse the order of the steps to reassemble the NAS. Reinsert the drives in the correct order by referring to the labels. Plug in the NAS – the blue light on the front of the unit may flash for a minute or two.

If all goes well, the Resource Monitor in the Synology interface should show 8GB of memory installed:

After a day or so, the NAS may show in Resource Monitor that it is using 6.9GB (or 7.0GB) of memory for the file cache, as shown below.

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Why install additional memory in the DS415+?  The 2GB of memory should be sufficient for most tasks that are typically assigned to a NAS.  I was mostly just curious after seeing a couple of questions on Amazon about memory upgrades, as well as on the Synology forums, without a clear description of the upgrade process, and only a passing mention of the memory specifications in a review of the DS415+.  There were a handful of discussion threads on the Synology forums were people were trying various memory modules in their DS1815+ units, and mostly failing to locate compatible memory modules (the Crucial memory module that I used was reported to not work in the DS1815+’s easily accessible memory slot).  So, I bought the memory, tried to figure out how to break into the DS415+ case, and took pictures as I put the unit back together (I thought that there was little point in me taking pictures while disassembling the NAS, especially if I destroyed the NAS during the upgrade attempt, but doing so while disassembling the unit is probably a good idea).

How does the DS415+ utilize the additional memory?  Mostly for the file cache (the NAS runs Linux at its core) – a day after the upgrade I checked the Resource Monitor and found that the Cached statistic increased from 670.5MB to roughly 7GB.  If there is an interest in running various background packages on the NAS (for instance, Nagios, Plex, WordPress, etc.), then the additional memory could have a significant positive impact on performance.  My installation directions for installing Nagios on a Synology DS412+, DS1813+, and DS212+ almost work with the DS415+.  I receive a Segmentation Fault, Core Dumped error message when trying to run Nagios or the Nagios check_ping plugin – I seem to recall seeing similar error messages when trying to find a compiler that would work on the DS412+ and DS1813+, so maybe there is still hope for Nagios on the DS415+ if I try downloading a different compiler (the ToolChain library for the DS415+ was released roughly a week ago, so there may be a solution – I was able to compile Nagios once and it executed without a Segmentation Fault error, but I could not reproduce the result a second time).

Part 3: Web Pages Not Databases

While I have had this blog on wordpress.com for a bit over five years, I had never tried using the standalone version of WordPress.  An opportunity developed recently to use the standalone version of WordPress.  The website for the company were I work has been in the process of being redesigned since roughly June by an outside web development company.  That web development company was making very slow progress on the website, selected to use the standalone version of WordPress as the development environment, and somehow was apparently given the task of designing the website so that it looked great on an Apple iPad, Apple iPhone, and even a now extinct Motorola Xoom tablet – any compatibility with Windows desktop computers using Internet Explorer seemed to be purely accidental, but the website apparently appeared fine on the developer’s Mac.  (Hint for developers: Test what you create using equipment that is similar to your target audience’s equipment.)

I became involved in the new website development a couple of weeks ago, trying to refocus the web development company on what the target viewers of the website will likely be using to view and interact with the new website – chances are that a too-large-to-ignore percentage of those target viewers are still running Windows Vista or Windows XP, and will be accessing the site using some version of Internet Explorer other than the latest version (some websites still are not compatible with Internet Explorer 11, so the potential target viewer may still be forced to run Internet Explorer 8 or 9 – Internet Explorer 8 is the last version supported on Windows XP, and Internet Explorer 10 is the last version supported on Windows Vista).  Ability to Print?  No, people have no need to print the website’s contents (especially not using a PDF virtual printer from Adobe or BlackIce, where all of the text from the new website was replaced by odd symbols) and have it appear on the printed page anything like what appears on-screen.  Viewing the website in a non-maximized window – who would be so silly to do such a thing?  Hamburgers are not on the menu – they are the menu, or it seems that is the official name for the three parallel white lines that sometimes appear on screen and sometimes in the printed copy.  Developers are full of fun surprises some days.

A week ago (now two weeks ago) the web development company was told to stop development on the website for a variety of reasons.  A lost six months of development, or an opportunity to beat one’s head on the table and hammer out a solution for the issues that still existed with the website?  I installed the WordPress package on a Synology DS213j NAS and on the Synology DS415+ NAS and had a go at fixing the issues with the website without affecting what the web development company had done to date.  I picked up the development process reasonably quickly (the five years of blogging on WordPress helped), but found that I was repeatedly flipping back and forth between WordPress’ Visual editor and the Text editor while trying to fix the issues and add additional text information to the pages.  Additionally, the path to files (and web pages) on the Synology must also include /wordpress (when working in a Telnet session, the actual path is /volume1/web/wordpress).  My HTML and cascading style sheet (CSS) skills were very rusty, so tasks that are incredibly easy in Microsoft Excel and Microsoft Word, such as manipulating tables, took quite a bit of Google search skill, for instance determing how to right align or center certain columns in a table without altering the HTML TD attributes of each table cell in the column when composing the table using the WordPress Text editor.  The WordPress pages appeared acceptable on the Synology NAS units, so the same changes were applied to the web development company’s best efforts – hopefully this is not true, but I think that I made about as much progress on the website in three days time as did the web development company in the last three months.  Since then I have been fixing other minor issues, such as the search box disappearing when the website is viewed using a Windows 8.1 tablet that lacks a keyboard and mouse, and improving the website appearance.  I learned, or relearned a couple of skills along the way, so this process definitely was not a wasted effort.

The VP of Manufacturing at the company where I work has become somewhat of an expert recently at creating video and composing written content for the website, so the newly redesigned website is a good platform for his many years of manufacturing experience.  If you feel so inclined, take a look at the new company website, and leave a message here to let me know what you think about the website.  The website development company didn’t like my green highlight when the mouse pointer passed over links – I guess that explains one reason why I am not a graphics artist.

For future reference, this is the CSS code that I constructed to format some of the tables that appear on the website.  In the HTML code, I assigned the table to have a class of km_equipment_table, and then added the following to the style sheet’s CSS:

Handle general formatting of the table:

.km_equipment_table { width:100%; border:1px solid; padding:8px;  }
.km_equipment_table td { padding:8px; border:1px solid; }
.km_equipment_table th {background: #0072BC;}

Alternate between two colors for all but the header row of the table – note that this code is ignored by Internet Explorer 8.0:

.km_equipment_table tr:nth-child(even) { /*(even) or (2n 0)*/
 background: #F1F1F1; border:1px solid;
}
.km_equipment_table.tr:nth-child(odd) { /*(odd) or (2n 1)*/
 background: #FFFFFF; border:1px solid;
}

Set the column alignment of all tables that were assigned the class of km_equipment_table – the first column is number 1 (not 0) – note that this code is ignored by Internet Explorer 8.0:

.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(1) {
    text-align: left;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(2) {
    text-align: center;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(3) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(4) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(5) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(6) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(7) {
    text-align: right;
}

To keep the printed copy of the page appearing correct, I had to specify @media screen for several of the style sheets.  As such, a special style sheet, print.css, was previously set up to handle formatting when printing.  Among other adjustments in that print.css style sheet, I added the following so that the column alignment worked correctly in the printed copy of the web pages (note that this code did not work on Internet Explorer 8.0):

.km_equipment_table {
    border:solid #000 !important;
    border-width:1px 0 0 1px !important;
}
.km_equipment_table.th, .km_equipment_table.td {
    border:solid #000 !important;
    border-width:0 1px 1px 0 !important;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(1) {
    text-align: left;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(2) {
    text-align: center;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(3) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(4) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(5) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(6) {
    text-align: right;
}
.km_equipment_table td:nth-child(7) {
    text-align: right;
}

In the WordPress Text editor for the page containing the table, I constructed the HTML code for the table to begin as follows – the style and border specifications probably could have been handled in the style sheet, but the printed output was not ideal without these changes:

<table class="km_equipment_table" style="border-collapse: collapse;" border="1" width="100%">

To handle cases where the filenames on the old web server had to be redirected to the correct page on the new web server, adjustments had to be made to the .htaccess file – .htaccess files found in parent directories will apply to child directories also.  I spent a couple of days trying unsuccessfully to make the page redirections work, and then stumbled on a solution, again using the WordPress package on a Synology NAS as a test bed.  The old website had a number of web page addresses that contained ? characters, such as this one:

/page.php?menu_id=10

To send requests for that page to the WordPress permalinks naming convention that uses the article titles as the web page address, I added the following to the .htaccess file (R=301 indicates that this is a permanent redirect, while L indicates that this is the last rule that should be processed):

RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} menu_id=10
RewriteRule (.*) /industries/? [R=301,L]

To redirect a web page found on the old server that was named large_machining.htm to the appropriate page in WordPress, I added the following to the .htaccess file:

RewriteRule ^large_machining.htm/?$ /large-machining/ [R=301,L]

Those rewrite rules must be wrapped in the file, so a portion of the file may appear as follows – note that if there were a page on the old server with a menu_id=100, that entry must appear before the entry for menu_id=10, and the entry for menu_id=10 (and menu_id=11) must appear before the entry for menu_id=1 – otherwise the person attempting to visit the website from a saved bookmark (favorite) may be sent to the wrong web page:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    RewriteEngine On
    RewriteBase /
     
    # industries
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} menu_id=10
    RewriteRule (.*) /industries/? [R=301,L]
     
    # careers
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} menu_id=12
    RewriteRule (.*) /careers/? [R=301,L]
     
    # ... many more
    RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} menu_id=1
    RewriteRule (.*) /about/? [R=301,L]
    
    # Misc. redirects
    RewriteRule ^ABOUT.HTM/?$ /about/ [R=301,L]
    
    RewriteRule ^large_machining.htm/?$ /large-machining/ [R=301,L]
</IfModule>
    
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
    
    # ... Standard WordPress entries here
</IfModule>
# END WordPress

Part 4: Idle Thoughts (Yes, this was supposed to be a three part article)

So, I was becoming impatient while waiting for the web development company to finally push the new version of the website over to the publically accessible website (I expected this process to happen a week ago, last Friday, but it did not go live until midnight today).  This past Monday I was beginning to think that this task was too much for the web development company.  So, I set out to learn a bit about Amazon’s AWS hosting options.  It turns out that Amazon offers a t2.micro hosting solution that is free for a year.  At the time I was almost completely unfamiliar with Amazon’s hosting offerings, so I signed up for a free account.  After puttering around for a bit, I managed to create an instance on AWS, figured out that I needed to assign an elastic IP address to the instance, determined how to connect to the instance using Putty, installed LAMP in the t2.micro instance, set up an FTP server in the instance, installed WordPress in the instance, imported the new website’s contents, changed the domain’s global DNS settings, and had a fully functional website in probably five or six hours – not too bad for having so little experience with those items. The website in the t2.micro instance crashed three times on me this past Tuesday during final testing due to consuming the full 1GB of memory that is allocated to those types of instances, but at least I think that I was able to demonstrate that the web development company was either seriously dragging this project out longer than necessary, or there is a problem with their method of assigning priority to projects.  The new website went live this morning with a couple of minor issues: 1) No one onsite at my company could view the website because the development company insisted on removing the www. portion of the website address (at companies that use an Active Directory internal domain, that causes the DNS name resolution to point to the web server on one of the internal domain controllers – none of those domain controllers has web server software installed); 2) The .htaccess file that I spent a couple of days creating was overwritten by a file written by the developer – that file either redirected most of the traffic to the wrong page (see my notes above about why the order of entries in that file is important), or sent the person to a 404 error page (page not found) for all historic web page filenames; 3) College was spelled as Collage.  Oh, well.  Close counts in website development, just as it does with horse shoes and hand grenades.