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Parse is down due to SSL certificate expiry

parse.com

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Re: Parse is down due to SSL certificate expiry

#32
post #17

This is why I think its always good to build your apps in the 'Good old way', instead of relying on a third party like Parse. It becomes a bottle-neck in situations like these, where in you are kind of stuck - Either, you will have to re-write your code from scratch, or wait for them to fix it, with a lot of uncertainty.

Is there any value in companies like Parse selling their software as installable on your own servers (i.e., GitHub Enterprise). I ask, rhetorically, because I built a somewhat competing service that isn't doing too well and I'm looking to make it so you can install it on your own servers.

Yes. I think that is a useful business. If you could make a system that was scalable and provided an API like parse that sounds like something interesting. Have virtual machine images you can host. The hard part would be figuring out how to simplify scaling it out. That is one really nice thing about hosted solutions. I can forget the IT. I'd be happy to work in a middle ground where i traded the IT effort for additional control/changes/features.

Re: Parse is down due to SSL certificate expiry

#33

It costs $100 for a 5 year SSL certificate. Why do seemingly smart internet companies let this happen?

Well, it's a 1 year wildcard certificate from DigiCert, which costs $595 according to [1] - while their 3 year certificate costs $1425.

That's quite a bit of cash when you're a small business - and your minimum viable product doesn't need a 5 year cert, you just have to remember to renew your cert if you're still in business after a year...

[1] http://www.digicert.com/wildcard-ssl-certificates.htm

Re: Parse is down due to SSL certificate expiry

#35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where the hell are you buying your certs? I'd honestly love to know.

Namecheap or SoftLayer (where I host my servers) unless I need something fancy like EV or Wildcard (in which case, you're gonna have to pay).

I've only had a couple situations where I needed enough subdomains to warrant the wildcard cert. $10/yr for RapidSSL through namecheap, most wildcard certs are at least 100-ish; I usually only need 5-6 subdomains and it's cheaper to just buy all the single certs at $10 each.

Re: Parse is down due to SSL certificate expiry

#36
post #15

Do yourself a favor and run this nightly: http://prefetch.net/code/ssl-cert-check A simple loop over your certs will solve so many problems: cd ssl/certs; for pem in *.pem; do ssl-cert-check -a -x 15 -e admin@yourdomain.com -q -c $pem; done [imagine a grumpy "silly companies with millions of dollars in funding, no actual processes, and too little systems knowledge" rant here. it's like a racecar driver who's team let…

Also, the nagios monitoring "check_http" will check the time to expiry of HTTPS certificates, and warn you when you have 30 days left. http://nagiosplugins.org/man/check_http

I would recommend checking all certificates on every host locally too, as you then can catch other than HTTP certificates too, like IPSec and OpenVPN. I found a good plugin on GitHub that does just this. If you then just put your certificates in the proper directory you can have them all checked and monitored by Nagios. I use nagios check_http to verify that a page is actually serving content via SSL.

https://github.com/kumina/nagios-plugins-kumina/blob/master/...

Re: Parse is down due to SSL certificate expiry

#38
post #17

This is why I think its always good to build your apps in the 'Good old way', instead of relying on a third party like Parse. It becomes a bottle-neck in situations like these, where in you are kind of stuck - Either, you will have to re-write your code from scratch, or wait for them to fix it, with a lot of uncertainty.

Is there any value in companies like Parse selling their software as installable on your own servers (i.e., GitHub Enterprise). I ask, rhetorically, because I built a somewhat competing service that isn't doing too well and I'm looking to make it so you can install it on your own servers.

Your best bet would be to follow the OpenX model - Release a community friendly version of your software that anyone could install on their servers, (would be good if it was open source; not necessarily free though) and also at the same time, target the Enterprise guys with a hefty premium plan, by offering a hosted service,with some extra features and with Service uptime Guarantees. I see no reason why you wouldn't be hitting the gold pot, this way.
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